Paul Sills: The Rock on Which Chicago Theatre Stands

BY Jeffrey Sweet

I was finally talking to Paul Sills, and it felt as if the center of gravity was shifting under my feet.

In the mid-’70s, I wanted to read a book about Second City. Discovering that nobody had written one, I decided to write it myself. I quickly learned that all roads led to Paul. I also was told that Paul was not the easiest interview.

To prepare, I talked to as many people who knew him as I could. Key among these was Sheldon Patinkin, who had known Paul from when they were at the University of Chicago in the early ’50s, had assisted him at Second City and served a stint as director of Second City himself. Sheldon observed that, while I may have originally become interested in the place because I was curious why so many stars whose worked I admired came from there, Paul himself had no interest whatsoever in stars or conventional showbiz considerations. If I was going to have a productive session with him, I should not press for anecdotes about Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Alan Arkin, Severn Darden, Paul Sand, Mina Kolb or Barbara Harris. You didn’t go to Paul Sills for candid memories of colleagues’ foibles. In fact, he was careful not to speak about specific performers with whom he’d worked. If he refrained from mentioning anybody, then none of his collaborators could have their feelings hurt because he’d forgotten to say something about them.

Now, about gravity shifting...

When I started writing what became “Something Wonderful Right Away,” I thought this was the way theatre is made: a playwright writes a play, some producer decides to put it up, a director comes on board and guides actors to realize the playwright’s vision. (That I held this view might have had something to do with the fact I’m a playwright.)

What the one conversation with Paul made me realize was that I’d gotten it all wrong.

The theatre does not exist for the glory of the playwright. The theatre is about what happens when actors and audience encounter each other. You don’t need a writer or a director or designers to have theatre. They may be useful on certain projects, but the only necessary elements are actors and an audience. And, in fact, the origins of the theatre lie in the actors emerging from the audience. There isn’t a wall of professional certification between them. You get up in front of other people from your community and share stories, news and ideas that you all should know if you’re members of that community. Everybody is audience, everybody is actors. That was Paul’s vision.

What I thought was theatre—which involved my evaluating actors who auditioned for me—Paul called “slave market bullshit.” He was interested in the liberation of the actor as part of the larger struggle of “liberating the people.” (Remember, I was talking with him with the ’60s fresh in our memories.)

In the wake of his death, there have been lots of articles and letters about the influence of Paul on American comedy, and the usual and very impressive list of stars will be reprinted. I suspect he would prefer to be remembered for something other than founding an institution that created SNL stars. I never got to ask him how he felt about the effect of his work on scripted projects such as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Nicholas Nickleby, Frank Galati staging The Grapes of Wrath with Steppenwolf or the book Terrence McNally wrote for the musical version of Ragtime (which Galati also directed), but I suspect that though that may have been gratifying, this too was incidental to his main concerns.

“I’m not interested in improvisational theatre per se,” he told me. “I’m interested in the establishment of these free spaces where people can do their own work, and I’m interested in the forms which begin to emerge in these free spaces.”

I mentioned to him that Alan Arkin told me he had a particular gift for forming ensembles, and I asked him if he had any special way of putting together companies. He laughed and said, “Yes. Whoever shows up. The company is who is there. I don’t form great companies. Just any company is a great company if the people are released to what they can be and do.”

I believe that, for those of us privileged to work in Chicago theatre today, his legacy is…well, Chicago theatre today.

A number of years ago, Richard Christiansen wrote a piece for Panorama, the weekend cultural magazine published by the Chicago Daily News (I told you it was a number of years ago) in which he theorized that Second City and Sills’ work were in the DNA of the Chicago theatre renaissance. The history of the Goodman is marked by collaborations with Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Del Close, David Mamet, Richard Kind and many others with Second City on their resume. Sheldon Patinkin has been directing and teaching at Steppenwolf for years and is a constant influence through Columbia College. Second City alum were among the founders of Victory Gardens. The work of Lookingglass clearly builds on Sills’ story theatre explorations. Chicago Shakespeare began its life with an evening of cuttings directed by Barbara Gaines in a room lent to her at Second City. And those of us with a little grey in our hair remember the improvisationally-developed, ensemble-based Bleacher Bums and E.R. at the Organic, which was founded by a guy named Stuart Gordon who came to town because he had seen a show on Wells Street when he was in college and wanted to work there.

It’s time someone name a theatre for Paul in Chicago. God knows he provided the foundation.