John Herbert (playwright)

Canadian playwright and theatre director
the playwright

John Herbert was the pen name of John Herbert Brundage (13 October 1926 – 22 June 2001), a Canadian playwright, drag queen, and theatre director best known for his 1967 play Fortune and Men's Eyes.

Herbert was born in Toronto on October 13, 1926. After completing high school, he worked in the advertising department of Eaton's and began competing in drag pageants. The cause of the confusion may be the conflation of this arrest with Herbert's subsequent arrest for gross indecency. He served another sentence for indecency at reformatory in Mimico in 1948. After being convicted, Herbert served time in a youth reformatory in Guelph, Ontario. Herbert wrote Fortune and Men's Eyes in 1964 based on his time behind bars. He included the character of Queenie as an authorial self insertion. The play was first staged as a Stratford Festival workshop directed by Bruno Gerussi, in 1965, but Herbert was unable to find a theatre company willing to mount a full production in Canada. Because of his past conviction, Herbert faced difficulties entering the United States to attend productions of his work. The play had a profound impact on producer David Rothenberg. Rothenberg went on to found the Fortune Society, a nonprofit advocacy organization that supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people reintegrate into society. A selection of manuscripts, letters and personal papers were donated to the University of Waterloo Library in 1982.