Dick D. Zigun is a playwright, director, producer and Founder/Artistic Director of Coney Island USA: The Mermaid Parade; The Coney Island Circus Side Show; The Coney Island Museum; and Burlesque At The Beach. He is a major figure in the revival and redevelopment of the amusement industry on Coney Island and has been instrumental in nominating ‘Landmark  Status,’  as a Historic Popular Culture Preservationist, for much of the area.  His plays have been done at The Mark Taper Forum, Mettawee Theatre Company, Webster Hall, Yale Cabaret and School of Drama, Bennington College, People’s Light and Theater Company, La Mama, West Bank Café, River Street Theater and the Funhouse Philosophers Resident Theater Company founded by Zigun on Coney Island. He has received the NYC Acker Award for Avant Garde Artists (2016) as well as the ‘Sassy Lassy’ Award (2015)  from The Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, The People’s Hall of Fame from the Museum of the City of New York (2009), and the Molly Kazan Award for Best  Original Play at Yale School Of Drama (1978).   Zigun was awarded a Playwriting Fellowship from The New York Foundation for the Arts (1985). Zigun has made many television appearances, been a lecturer at The Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, The New York Historical Society, The Tenement Museum, The Wadsworth Athenaeum, The Siegel Center, The Yale Art Gallery, The New School, NYU, CW Post, and Dartmouth and Clark Universities. He is published by New Dramatists and Franklin Furnace Flue and has written for The Daily News and was Assistant to the Publisher of Playbill.  He was an Adjunct Professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1996 to 1997 and Public Relations Director of Astroland Amusement Park from 1997-2000.

Dick D. Zigun grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the home of P.T. Barnum and the winter headquarters of Barnum’s circus.  Barnum was the Mayor of Bridgeport and impressed upon Zigun the worth of such a position. Mr. Zigun is the ‘Unofficial Mayor of Coney Island,’ ‘No votes, no term limits.’  He was a Barnum scholar by the age of seven and felt ‘circus’ was a key to popular American culture and entertainment. By high school Zigun, inspired by the radical high school drama teacher Sandra Hardy, was writing plays. One, a puppet show of Christmas on Mars, was produced. His first full play production was at age 18. He gathered groups of school friends to see Off-Off-Broadway on visits to Manhattan and was introduced to Theatre of the Absurd by a group from The University of Bridgeport. He chose Bennington for his BA in Drama, and Yale School of Drama for his MFA in playwriting earning scholarships for both. Bennington gave him direct access to Walter Hadler and Ralph Lee who were associates in Theatre Genesis, a pivotal company in the development of Off-Off-Broadway theater. He also had internships at New Dramatists , Yale Repertory Theatre and American Place Theatre. Zigun was acutely aware that ‘Vaudeville,’ ‘Circus,’ ‘Sideshows,’ ‘Burlesque,’ and ‘Minstrel Shows,’ were not considered worthy subjects of theatre history/study. Many theaters were not open to Zigun’s blend of Performance-Art and Theater. While on the West Coast having his play LUCKY LINDY (1979) produced at The Mark Taper Forum he had an epiphany on the Santa Monica Pier sending him to Coney Island to build his dream. In 1980 he created Coney Island USA (CIUSA), a larger concept permitting the creation of The Mermaid Parade, Burlesque At The Beach, The Coney Island Side Show, The Coney Island Museum, and the Funhouse Philosophers Resident Theater Company, to name a few. His second phase of playwriting (since forming Funhouse Philosophers Theater) includes: THE RIDE INSPECTOR’S NIGHTMARE (2011), DIRTY WORKS AT THE PRESIDENTIAL WAX WORKS (2012/2016), DEAD END DUMMY (2014), KILL ‘N’ REPUBLICANS  (2016), BECOMING BETTY PAGE (2017), THE EDUCATION OF AL CAPONE AS IF TOLD BY JIMMY DURANTE (2018), and BLOODY BRAINS IN A JUKEBOX (2020). He is the inventor of ‘Neo-Burlesque’ and wrote The Burlesque Manifesto for the Art Page of the Franklin Furnace Flue In 1984.