The Broadway world has missing a star.
Chris Peluso, who portrayed Sophie’s fiancé Sky in Broadway’s “Mamma Mia!” and toured in “Wicked” as Fiyero, died Aug. 15, in accordance to Playbill and the College of Michigan Musical Theatre department. He was 40.
No induce of death has been shared.
Peluso’s demise will come just about a year just after his close friends Rebecca LaChance and Tim Oxbrow shared that the performer experienced stepped away from the stage thanks to a schizoaffective condition.
“This prognosis has resulted in Chris dealing with debilitating paranoia, which has kept him from carrying out in modern decades,” LaChance and Oxbrow wrote in a September 2022 GoFundMe fundraiser. “As properly as affecting his potential to function in the subject he crafted his vocation in more than the very last 18 many years, Chris’s psychological overall health has impacted each and every component of his life.”
Peluso reposted the GoFundMe on X, the social media platform formerly identified as Twitter. Prior to the article, his previous social media activity traced again to January 2021. At the time, Peluso celebrated the start of his daughter Aria Li Gomes-Peluso with a image of her up coming to his beloved King Charles Cavalier Peety, who died afterwards that 12 months.
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In 2022, Peluso, who lived in London in pursuit of a West Conclusion performing occupation, moved to the United States in lookup of procedure. In addition to taking a break from his career—which at that issue integrated appearances in productions “The Lady in White,” “Dying Can take a Vacation,” “Present Boat” and the revival of “Skip Saigon”—Peluso’s relocation meant he experienced to move absent from his spouse Jessica Gomes and daughter.
“In new months, the paranoia has eaten him to the extent that he is not able to operate any work and has experienced to leave his wife and youthful child and return to The us to seek out procedure,” the GoFundMe examine. “Chris has no health treatment insurance policies in the US and was lately hospitalized for about two weeks. Presently, he is searching for treatment at an inpatient psychological well being rehabilitation heart.”
Peluso shared a concept in the GoFundMe as nicely, expressing hope that his experience would arrive at other individuals.
“Ideally this allows carry some recognition to how so quite a few endure from psychological ailment in silence,” he wrote. “You hardly ever know what anyone might be likely via. Be variety to each other.”
A few months afterwards, Peluso wrote in the GoFundMe that he had revealed good development and was “equipped to maintain down a position yet again and even started taping some auditions.”
In the wake of his passing, Peluso was mourned by his fellow performers, who remembered him as a gifted artist.
“This is devastating. I only have great memories of Chris. I am keeping limited to all of the light he shared. So variety. So amusing. So providing. So proficient and loving,” Toni Vehicles commented on Michigan’s Instagram tribute to Peluso, an alumnus of the school. Desi Oakley also extra, “i acquired so considerably from his kindness & professionalism, i am sending so considerably like to all who walked closely with him.”
Peluso’s theater job stretched back again to 2004, when he rose to fame as an understudy in the revival of “Assassins.” His credits also integrated performances in Broadway’s Beautiful “The Carole King Musical” and “Lestat,” as nicely as a purpose in the 2017 U.K. Tour of “Amusing Female.”
For Peluso, his adore of theater was all-encompassing.
“Theatre is my daily life. It has presented me with buddies, spouse and children, training, structure, this means, and purpose,” he informed Pocket Dimension Theatre in 2017. “If it ended up not for theatre I would not be the man or woman I am currently.”
Peluso is survived by his wife Jessica and their two youngsters, daughter Aria and son Caio Lian Gomes-Peluso, according to Playbill.
