OBITUARY
William Robert “Bob” Sickinger
Photo courtesy of Jo-Ann Sickinger
Bob, who is believed to be the oldest Tinneny descendent in the
United States, passed away May 9, 2013 at his winter residence in
Delray Beach, Florida. He was raised in the Manayunk section of
Philadelphia. As a young man he moved to Chicago where he earned
icon status in the world of Chicago theater. He subsequently moved
to Manhattan, New York where he continued work on theater productions. Bob was
surrounded by his wife Jo-Ann and his children when he passed away.
He was buried with military honors in Florida.
Bob
was the great-grandson of
Patrick “Yankee Pat”
Tinneny
of Goladuff, Newtownbutler, County Fermanagh Northern Ireland,
Greenock Scotland and Philadelphia and the grandson of
Catherine Tinneny
Sickinger
and the son of
Francis Sickinger.
The below obituary and photo appeared in the New York Times:
Bob
Sickinger, Chicago Stage Innovator, Dies at 86
By Bruce Weber
Published: New York Times
May 14, 2013
From left, Bob Sickinger, Dan Schoch and Charles E.
Gerber collaborating in New York in 2009.
Photo by
Stephen Schwartz
Bob
Sickinger, a director whose mostly nonprofessional productions in
the 1960s seeded a Chicago theater scene that evolved into one of
the country’s greatest, died on May 9 at his home in Delray Beach,
Fla. He was 86.
The
cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter Erika said.
Mr.
Sickinger was something of a Pied Piper, an alluring, commanding
personality with an irresistible idea: that theater isn’t presented
to a community but arises from it. The program he nurtured in
Chicago is considered by many to be the beginning of off-Loop
theater, a network of dozens of troupes and theaters that is the
city’s equivalent of Off and Off Off Broadway.
“To
the extent that any individual founded off-Loop theater, a case can
be made that Sickinger was that man,” Chris Jones, the chief theater
critic of The Chicago Tribune, wrote after Mr. Sickinger’s death.
When Mr. Sickinger (pronounced SICK-in-jer) arrived in Chicago from
Philadelphia in 1963 and took over the Hull House theater program at
the Jane Addams Center on the city’s North Side, theatrical
productions in the city were largely limited to Broadway road shows.
The Second City improvisational troupe, founded in 1959, was in its
infancy; the venerable Goodman Theater was known largely for its
drama school. The birth of the influential ensemble Steppenwolf,
whose success inspired theater companies in Chicago and elsewhere,
was more than a decade in the future.
Mr.
Sickinger, whose taste ran to the provocative and difficult — he was
a Samuel Beckett aficionado — produced and directed challenging,
sometimes distressing contemporary plays, introducing Chicago
audiences to writers like Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, Athol Fugard
and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). He took on subjects that had been
taboo in an unadventurous theater environment, presenting Jack
Gelber’s grim portrayal of drug addiction, “The Connection,” and
John Herbert’s harsh prison-rape drama, “Fortune and Men’s Eyes.”
Though the theater and Mr. Sickinger took some heat for his
thumb-in-the-eye aesthetic, critics praised many of the productions
as revelatory. Of Mr. Sickinger’s very first show, Frank Gilroy’s
“Who’ll Save the Plowboy?,” Richard Christiansen, a longtime critic
for The Tribune, wrote, “This is the most important achievement for
theater in Chicago since a group of young actors took over an old
Chinese laundry and turned it into a cabaret called Second City.”
More remarkable was that he found his casts and crews among
nontheater people — students and other artistically inclined people
who were making a living by other means — and inspired many to
pursue lives in the theater, among them the actor Mike Nussbaum and
the playwright David Mamet.
In
a 1984 essay for Vanity Fair, Mr. Mamet called Mr. Sickinger “one of
the greatest directors I’ve ever known” and recalled his days at
Hull House: “I was 16 years old. I was a member of the chorus, I
tore tickets, I was on the scene crew, I fetched coffee. There was
drama every night, onstage and off. Sickie exuded drama. He had a
boundless passion for beauty on the stage, and a complete conviction
that said beauty was just and exactly what he said it was.”
“It
was the first time in my confused young life,” Mr. Mamet added,
“that I had learned that work is love.”
William Robert Sickinger was born on Nov. 7, 1926, in Philadelphia,
where his father, Francis, ran a trucking company. Drafted before he
finished high school, he served in the Army, part of the time in the
Philippines, at the end of World War II. Afterward he went to
Bloomsburg State Teachers College (now Bloomsburg University of
Pennsylvania), where he gave up football for the theater; he later
studied English and speech in a graduate program at Temple
University.
While working as a public-school teacher in Philadelphia in the
1950s, he started several small theater companies. When a fellow
Philadelphian, Paul Jans, became executive director of the Hull
House Association in Chicago, he hired Mr. Sickinger to run the
theater program.
Mr.
Sickinger’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his
daughter Erika, he is survived by his wife, the former Jo-Ann
Pastor, whom he married in 1974; three other daughters, Robin
Sickinger, Denise Stabenau and Judi Fazzie; a son, Robert Porter;
two sisters, Patricia and Charlene Snyder (they married brothers);
six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
Amid financial troubles at Hull House and his own conflicts with the
board, Mr. Sickinger left in 1969 and moved to New York, where he
had limited success. He wrote and directed a handful of shows Off
Broadway, including “22 Years,” a play about Charles Manson, and a
musical adaptation (with music and lyrics by Mel Atkey) of the
Frances Hodgson Burnett children’s tale “A Little Princess.” He
directed a 1980 film, “Love in a Taxi,” featuring Jim Jacobs, a Hull
House alumnus who was one of the writers of the musical “Grease.”
Mr. Sickinger also ran an answering service that had many actors as
clients.
“I
tried to direct theater and film when I came to New York, but I
found it very difficult,” Mr. Sickinger said in 1989. “I probably
moved the wrong way — I should have gone to California. But I don’t
miss it, really. I had true love once, in Chicago. That was pretty
much a perfect experience. And when you’ve had true love nothing
else is as good.”
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