Libby Howes, Wooster Group Actress Who Disappeared After 1981

Libby Howes was a prominent performer in the Wooster Group after arriving in New York in 1975, notable for roles in the Three Places in Rhode Island pieces and for a striking extended “house dance” in Rumstick Road. Critics and colleagues credited her physical presence and intensity as central to those works.

She was the youngest of four sisters from a family of Boston intellectuals and had come to New York via a University of Michigan internship with the Performance Group. She lived and worked at the Performing Garage and was close to other young artists there, including Oskar Eustis, who recalled a brief relationship with her in 1975–76.

By the spring of 1981 Howes suffered a psychotic break. Friends and colleagues described mystical thinking and dangerous behavior; she was persuaded to sign into Bellevue Hospital and her parents later took her back to Michigan, where she finished college but then stopped treatment and became increasingly chaotic.

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