09/25/2026
In Memory of Lou Bluver
MusiCoLab lost one of its earliest and most generous champions last month with the passing of Louis S. Bluver, a lifelong Philadelphian who believed in this city's theater artists and supported some of the city's most adventurous companies.
Lou was there at the beginning — one of MusiCoLab's founding donors, whose support helped a small idea about developing new musicals become an organization with a real home in Philadelphia's theater community. That belief in new work wasn't new for him. For years, the theater that bears his name at the Drake — the Louis Bluver Theatre — has hosted new play and musical development for companies across the city . Among the works that we presented in the theater that bears Lou's name are Goosefeathers, In The Temple of the H***y Tonk, Far From The Tree, Finding Madame Curie and Red & Black, and Lou enjoyed all of these performances from a front-row seat.
Lou's love of the stage ran alongside a genuine curiosity about the world: a travel industry entrepreneur who visited more than 150 countries, a board member of the Philadelphia Film Society with a personal library of silent films, and by every account a man who showed up — for Broadway, for Philadelphia's small companies, for the Big Brothers he mentored, for the community he never stopped investing in.
We're grateful for his generosity, and for the years he spent making room — literally and otherwise — for new stories to be told here. Philadelphia's theater community is diminished by his loss.
