Ernie Lijoi, the Portland actor, playwright, composer, singer, lyricist, and recording artist, died early Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, after suffering a massive heart attack in December and being hospitalized since. He was 56.

In a little less than 10 years in Portland, Lijoi made a lasting impact on the city’s theater and music scenes.

“Ernie Lijoi looks like a tough guy and sings like an angel,” Bobby Bermea said in a Profile Theatre podcast conversation with Lijoie. “He’s also a multifaceted font of creativity; playwright, songwriter, singer, actor, musician, comedian, storyteller, and he puts on a bunch of those hats right in this podcast.”

Much of Lijoi’s work is centered on LGBTQ+ life, and he was both a board member of and a frequent performer/writer for the Portland queer-focused company Fuse Theatre Ensemble.

“Through his albums, his musicals and his voice he challenged hetero-normative frameworks, sang of love, social justice and a host of topics,” music director and conductor Ray Killian wrote on Facebook about his friend. “… The LGBTQ+ community has lost a one-of-a-kind voice. And we are all lesser for it. … Rest in Power, pal. You and Sondheim (who knew Ernie) are shakin’ it up!”

Lijoi and his husband, Greg Parkinson, moved to Portland from New York City in July 2015. “Ernie would want to say how quickly and easily and completely we were accepted by the artistic community here, specifically Rusty Tennant and the amazing people at Fuse,” Parkinson said. “He got to perform and see his play and musicals produced to very appreciative audiences, and he LOVED the collaboration and the entire creative process, and the high quality of the results, and we were constantly thankful for the people here making that possible.”

In a 2023 ArtsWatch interview with Lijoi about his musical comedy The Pursuit of Happiness: the Wacky Lesbian Adventures of Brillo Pad and Hula Hoop at Fuse’s annual Outwright Festival, Bermea wrote that audiences could “expect to fasten your seatbelt for a bumpy ride, one that will have you hooting, hollering and cracking up at things you probably don’t feel you should be laughing at. ‘Irreverent’ is an understatement with Lijoi. He doesn’t just throw stones at the glass houses of our morals, pretensions, and affectations, he brings a wrecking ball and invites us to be complicit while he swings away.”

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In the same interview, Lijoi told Bermea: “It started out as a ten-minute play I wrote for the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York City. I wrote a play about a bunch of people who are in their backyards with their neighbors and they suddenly discover they’re about to die because a bomb is about to fall on them and they start getting in arguments, confess all their secrets and the play ends at that moment when they find out it was a false alarm and now they’re stuck staring at each other with everything left on the table and it left it open-ended. That turned into the opening number for this piece.”  

Lijoi was raised in Massachusetts and spent several years in New York City before moving to Portland. In New York he studied at the BMI Lehman Engel workshop, wrote the lyrics for two songs in the 2015 Broadway show It Shoulda Been You, and also pursued a recording career, releasing three albums and, in 2016, a “best of” compilation album. His CD Better Days earned him Billboard recognition as Unsigned Artist of the Year.

“In the way that we in the queer communities choose our own families, he was a brother in the highest degree of the word,” Fuse Artistic Director Rusty Tennant said (see Tennant’s full comments below). “In Ernie, I had someone in whom I could share anything. We both loved theatre, we both loved Sondheim, we both had the same friend groups. But most importantly we had trust: trust that we would always be honest and tell the truth to each other; trust that we would operate from a place of good intentions; and trust that after the hard truths were delivered we would still hug it out (something I worked with him on over the years) and still love each other. It is this trust that I fear I will likely never find again.” 

As an actor in Portland he played Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and Jesus in Post5 Theatre’s 2016 production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. He won a Drammy Award as The Emcee in Cabaret at Fuse Theatre Ensemble, and in 2016 won another Drammy for best original music for Under the Influence. Stage and Studio’s Dmae Lo Roberts, who played Fraulein Schneider to Lijoi’s Emcee in Cabaret, talked with Lijoi and Tennant about Under the Influence in a 2015 episode of Stage and Studio on KBOO-FM radio. You can access the full program here. Hear a clip below:

In 2022 Fuse produced Lijoi’s play The God Cluster, based in part on Lijoi’s experiences for two years as a health care worker in a Covid ICU. “It’s a challenging script,” Fuse’s Tennant declared at the time. “It does a really hard thing that a lot of people don’t want to do right now, and that is criticize religion.”

Of Lijoi’s performance in Jesus Christ Superstar, Christa McIntyre wrote for ArtsWatch: “He’s soft, with a twinkle in his eye and a hypersense of malleability in his compassion for all things great and small. … Lijoi’s Jesus is a tranquil lake until Gethsemane, one of the hardest numbers in the show. As he cries ‘Peter, John, James’ in the opening lines, the iron-ore strength of one man trying to change the system shines through, and the easiness of empathy mistaken for weakness turns to heartbreak for the moment.”

Lijoi’s musical comedy Monsters! A Midlife Musical Meltdown, written with Gail Phaneuf, was produced in summer 2024 at Hanover Little Theatre in Pennsylvania and at Deertrees Theatre in Maine.

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Ernie Lijoi is survived by his husband, Greg Parkinson; parents, Ernie Lijoi, Sr. and Che-Che Scardocci Lijoi; and brother, Joseph Lijoi.

Ernie Lijoi Memorial

A memorial gathering for Ernie Lijoi will be held 6:30-8:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St., Portland, with the celebration officially beginning at 7 p.m. In lieu of flowers, Lijoi’s husband, Greg Parkinson, has asked that people donate to Fuse Ensemble:  https://www.fusetheatreensemble.com/donate

Rusty Tennant on Ernie Lijoi

Asked for comment on Lijoi and their work together, Fuse’s artistic director Rusty Tennant sent the following:

“I am fairly certain that I will never have another relationship like the one I shared with Ernie. Like Samuel Beckett found his Alan Schneider and August Wilson found his Lloyd Richards, Ernie and I were very lucky to have found each other. 

“I was lucky enough to direct three of his shows, act in one, and was slated to direct his newest show, Bring Back the Swing, in Fall 2025. He also starred in many of the shows I directed over the last decade, winning a Drammy for his role of the Emcee in Cabaret and a nomination for his portrayal of Eddie Carbone in A View from the Bridge. His musical Under the Influence won a Drammy for best original score, and The Pursuit of Happiness won a BroadwayWorld Award for Best Original Play or Musical. 

“I loved directing his work, but even more than that, I loved developing his work. We would have knock-down-drag-outs that would leave people in earshot wondering whether we actually were as good friends as we claimed to be. In reality, we were more than that; we were family. And we spoke truth to each other like family. And we therefore argued like family. 

“We had a favorite spot out at Rooster Rock where we would sit for hours in all our glory debating the world of theatre. Ernie loved to be challenged. In our relationship he found someone who could match him, and he relished every opportunity to go toe-toe with an evenly matched adversary … or friend, as the case was. 

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“In the way that we in the queer communities choose our own families, he was a brother in the highest degree of the word. In Ernie, I had someone in whom I could share anything. We both loved theatre, we both loved Sondheim, we both had the same friend groups. But most importantly we had trust: trust that we would always be honest and tell the truth to each other; trust that we would operate from a place of good intentions; and trust that after the hard truths were delivered we would still hug it out (something I worked with him on over the years) and still love each other. It is this trust that I fear I will likely never find again. 

“We also shared in our atheism. Ernie was well-known as a rationalist. Many people only saw the vitriol we often shared as queer people fighting against religion, but what most people don’t see is the history of growing up queer in a society that literally hated us, mostly based on religious reasons, and how that informed not just our anger, but who we are as queer people.

“Our vitriol is justified, but it was never directed at people, just the institutions, but that can be confusing for people to discern. I probably cared more about how people responded than Ernie did, and I envy him for that. That being said, Ernie had numerous friends who were believers. Like I said, he loved to be challenged, and if folks were willing to stay in the room and challenge him, they often gained his respect. Frankly, we need more people like Ernie on the front lines as we enter the uncertain times, and it saddens me beyond words that we will not have him leading the fight. 

“I loved his humor. I loved his intellect. I loved his OCD nature with rhyming. I loved our talks by the river. I loved the creative energy that burst forth from us when we’re were making his shows come to life. I loved him. And, as unimaginable as this all is, I know I will miss him with every ounce of my person. 

“It just won’t be the same.”