Bernard Sahlins, former owner, Second City
The solid, indeed essential, contribution that Richard Christiansen has made to the vast and vital theatre scene in Chicago is well known and universally acknowledged. As one who has been on the receiving end of his criticism (never mean) as well as his praise (never gushing) I would like to add a personal note about a splendid man who has become a good friend.
Many years ago, before I knew him very well, Jane and Richard and I went to the National Theater in London. From the time we passed through the door, Richard was on a high. Eyes shining, excited, full of anticipation; he was transformed. Was it, I thought, some special performance? No, it was a run of the mill repeat without particularly distinguished casting. Then I realized what it was. We were about TO SEE A PLAY!
Most of us are surfeited if we sit through 20 plays a season. Not Richard Christiansen. Since he started his career Richard has been to theatre more nights than he has been away from it. I reckon he has seen a couple of hundred plays a year for a good part of his life. And here at the National, though he was seeing yet another play, he was as excited as a first-time theatre-goer. It was then I realized that each night in the theatre, any theatre, remains, for him, an unalloyed delight. What a rare quality.
He is a kind man, an enthusiastic man, an acute, but fair, judge, a stylish writer, a superb advocate. But above all, there is his undiminished love for the theatre and its people.
When Victory Gardens Theater opened its doors on October 9, 1974 with the world premiere of Stacy Myatt’s The Velvet Rose, Richard Christiansen, representing the Daily News, was there. He was not only there but he understood what he called the "comic book fascination" of this play which was discovered by Mac McGinnes, one of the eight founders of Victory Gardens and a veteran of the Godzilla Rainbow Troupe. Not everyone was fascinated, and the play closed after eight performances. But in that same review, Richard coined one of the many wonderful phrases that Chicago theatre artists have treasured over the years. He named J. Pat Miller "Chicago’s foremost player of creeps," a title J. Pat relished for the rest of his tragically short life. J. Pat died of AIDS in 1985.
Victory Gardens has produced 228 plays since October of 1974. When we think of how many of them Richard has reviewed and add the output of the entire Chicago theatre community to that number, the nights he has spent in the theatre over the last 40 years boggle the mind. Playwright Jim Sherman’s favorite commentary includes "the Jewish plays of James Sherman are made of the simplest stuff: a little laugh, a little cry, a touch of schmaltz" (about Sherman’s very successful Door to Door) and "The Escape Artist should disappear" (about an earlier Sherman work that promptly did just that). Richard always supported actress Kristine Thatcher’s career as a playwright, so Kristine was thrilled when Richard reviewed Voice of Good Hope writing, "Did I say Thatcher was an emerging playwright? I was wrong. She has emerged brilliantly." Richard’s review of Rick Cleveland’s Dogman’s Last Stand contained this beautiful quote, "This is the land of Laundromats and used cars in the dog days of the 1980s, yet in Cleveland’s sensitive treatment, this wasteland of boredom becomes a landscape of heroism." Twenty-three years ago after Richard’s review of Jeffrey Sweet’s Porch, audiences slogged through a record snowstorm to attend the play. Now, 10 plays later, Jeffrey remembers many favorite reviews, but probably most welcome was Richard’s review of Ties, which he called "the play we have been waiting for all season."
This reminiscence cannot end without recollecting the glee with which Richard scooped Victory Gardens’ 2001 Tony Award announcement. He seemed almost as delighted as we were. With it, Chicago became the only city outside of New York with three Tonys. Steppenwolf’s in 1985 and Goodman’s in 1992 were all received within Richard’s tenure as Chicago critic. The 2001 Tony belonged not only to Victory Gardens but to the Chicago Theatre Community that he has fostered and supported.
Richard has made an amazing contribution to Chicago theatre. Victory Gardens artistic director Dennis Zacek claims, "If it were not for Richard Christiansen, the Chicago Theatre Movement, as we know it today, would not exist. His support, interest, criticism, enthusiasm and commitment clearly propelled the movement into one of national and international significance."
Thank you Richard for a great run. We look forward to the next act!
Russ Tutterow, artistic director, Chicago Dramatists
When I first moved to Chicago in the late 1960s to attend Northwestern University, the only theatre I could find to attend on the weekends were three downtown touring houses, the Goodman, the Ivanhoe and a couple of dinner theatres in the suburbs. (The Body Politic and Hull House existed, but I never figured that out.) Only about five years later, by the mid-1970s, I was running a theatre and could barely see all the shows I wanted to see every week. Why did native Chicago theatre blossom in the 1970s and 1980s to become such a vital industry today? There are several items on the list of reasons, including all the baby boomers graduating from college with theatre degrees, the skyrocketing expenses of producing and living in New York City, and the "discovery" of not-for-profit. But high on the list is Richard Christiansen and his championing of Chicago theatres and artists. I, for one, am very grateful.
Ina Marlowe, Organic-Touchstone Theatre
So many memories of Richard: The first time we produced as Touchstone Theatre, Richard came to our modest space at Woodlands Academy, and sat in the classroom while the actors readied for The American Dream and The Lesson. Our first review in the Trib! I was convinced that our world would change immediately, and saw instead that it would build slowly. The times that Richard called me at home telling me how much he loved The Sea Gull and Steward of Christendom. Richard following Organic and Touchstone’s various moves, the thrill he felt with the success of Jonathan Wilson’s production of The Old Settler, Learning from him the value of seeing the big picture of Chicago theatre, how the landscape changes, how we all contribute as a community to the ephemeral but lasting nature of theatre.
The Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee
Richard Christiansen’s role in nurturing the growth and enrichment of Chicago theatre over the past decades cannot be over-estimated. Champion of the new, staunch supporter of the established, his presence and influence will long be felt by those who love Chicago theatre as he does.
And, lest we forget, it was his strong voice that set the stage more than 30 years ago. He was the first to review the work of these young companies in a major metropolitan newspaper, providing them with the initial help they needed to move ahead.
The Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee recognized his enormous contribution to our community in 1996 when it presented him with a special lifetime achievement award that read: "Richard Christiansen, Chief Critic, Chicago Tribune–For his lifetime commitment to Chicagoland’s theatre community and for his unique contribution to fostering the reputation of theatre in Chicago."
That says it all.
Defiant Theatre would like to extend its gratitude to Richard Christiansen for acknowledging and understanding our work. He recognized that not only were we creative risk takers with a strong work ethic, but we were intelligent.
He was responsible for putting Defiant Theatre on the map in Chicago with his rave review of our 1996 production of Ubu Raw. His quote "Its wild and crazy spoofing has a solid and sane underpinning of scholarship" summed us up extremely well. Linda Gillum, currently media relations manager and then assistant director of Ubu Raw, remembers the overwhelming process of getting the show up with only a few dollars and many hard-working collaborators. "Joe Foust, adapter/director, had been wanting to do Ubu Raw for six years. We had no money but we had passion and determination. We dove through dumpsters and made a set. Everybody we knew came and helped for free. Joe made the Russian uniforms out of carpet scraps I found. They were a ridiculous pink color, so he drew scary symbols on them with a magic marker. Bacon, eggs and porkchops were made from foam, cardboard and lint. We were suffering from physical and mental exhaustion, most of us working through the night and trying to hold down day jobs. Nick Offerman, who played Pa Ubu, was building the set all day, rehearsing all night and then working on the set again until early morning. Unfortunately it caught up with him and being a highly physical production he fell off a tall set piece during a preview and we stopped the show. And our stage manager, Kara Loquist, was hospitalized with the flu right before we opened. At this point we had no idea if this production was going to fly.
Then, the night Richard Christiansen was scheduled to review Ubu Raw, the Bulls advanced into the final playoffs and we had 16 people in a house that held 140. We were devastated.
Then his review came out. He got it! We knew the show was a huge risk, taking a 100-year-old rarely performed script (Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi), adapting it and merging it with a mixture of styles from Kabuki to Circus to Stage Combat to Cartoons. He recognized what we had done, understood it, respected it, had a good time and rewarded us. We sold out the rest of the run and were listed in his Top Ten shows of the year among such companies as Steppenwolf, Goodman and Shakespeare Repertory.
Defiant Theatre thanks Richard Christiansen for acknowledging those small, non-equity, off-loop theatres who have little money but a lot of brains, guts and passion."
Tributes on this page:
Click here for more Christiansen Tributes