The Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance lovingly honors the memory of Sheldon Patinkin – longtime head of the Columbia College Theatre Program, noted director and teacher, and cherished friend and mentor to many in the Chicago theatre community — who was born August 27, 1935.

Sheldon Patinkin was chair of the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department from 1980 — when what was then the Columbia College Theatre/Music Department moved into what is now the Getz Theatre Center of Columbia College Chicago at 72 E. 11th St. in Chicago’s South Loop — to 2009, when he assumed the title of Chair Emeritus, continuing to teach and direct at the college until his death on September 21, 2014.

Shortly before his death, Sheldon established the Sheldon Patinkin Award at Columbia College Chicago to assist outstanding Theatre students in their journey to a professional career. For more information, and to contribute to the Sheldon Patinkin Award, please contact Columbia College’s Office of Development and Alumni Relations.

As previously reported in this blog, the Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance will host Sheldon Patinkin: The Life, Laughs, and Legacy, a reception, panel discussion, and open forum to mark the 10th anniversary of Sheldon’s passing and to celebrate the history and future of the Theatre Program at Columbia College. The free event will take place on Saturday, September 21 – the 10th anniversary of his death – at the Getz Theatre Center of Columbia College, located at 72 E 11th St. in Chicago’s South Loop, from 11 AM to 4 PM in the Sheldon Patinkin Theatre. The event will be an opportunity to hear about the future of the Theatre Program, take a tour of the building (which was extensively renovated in 2018), and – most important – share reflections on Sheldon’s distinguished and influential career and how Columbia College is keeping his spirit alive with the Sheldon Patinkin Award. The event is presented by the School of Theatre and Dance’s new Theatre Advisory Board, a volunteer organization composed of alumni and friends of the Theatre Program at Columbia College. With a mission to leverage the expertise of the Columbia College Theatre Program’s alumni and other industry members through strategic guidance, collaborative partnerships, and hands-on opportunities, the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Advisory Board aims to uplift the vibrant and innovative learning environment of Columbia’s Theatre Program for the students to thrive and excel at school and beyond. For more information about the Theatre Advisory Board and its activities – please click here.

Sheldon Patinkin: The Life, Laughs, and Legacy on Saturday, September 21, is a free event; contributions are gratefully accepted. Columbia College Chicago Theatre alumni, former faculty and students, and friends of the Theatre Program are invited to attend. Panelists and guest speakers will be announced in September. To support the Theatre Program with a financial gift please visit this link and click on “See More Gift Options”  and select “Theatre” to ensure that your contribution is assisting the Theatre Program and its students.

A beloved mentor to thousands of performers, directors and creative spirits, Sheldon Patinkin – hailed as “The Dean of Chicago Theatre” in a 2006 article in the Chicago theatre-industry publication Performink – launched his career in Chicago theatre as a teenager when, as a student at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s, he became involved with the school’s extracurricular University Theatre program, working with other students and community members including director Paul Sills, producer Bernie Sahlins, and actors Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Barbara Harris, Ed Asner, Byrne and Joyce Piven, Tom O’Horgan, and others – as Sheldon noted in a 2009 talk at the Chicago Humanities Festival; here’s a video clip of that event:

Sheldon’s relationship with Sills and Sills’ mother, teacher Viola Spolin – widely regarded as “The Mother of Improv” – led to continued work with two seminal professional Chicago theatre companies: the Playwrights Theatre Club and then The Second City, the world’s premier improv/comedy theatre and training center.

From Second City’s 1959 founding until his death in 2014, Sheldon was an influential creative voice at Second City, which is the Columbia College Chicago School of Theatre and Dance’s partner institution in Columbia’s groundbreaking, nationally renowned BA Program in Comedy Writing and Performance. Sheldon cowrote Second City’s official chronicle, The Second City: The Essentially Accurate History, and also served as a writer and associate producer for the popular Canadian TV series SCTV under the Second City umbrella.

Sheldon was also an artistic consultant at Chicago’s internationally lauded Steppenwolf Theatre and co-founder of The School at Steppenwolf, where he taught for 17 years. The School at Steppenwolf was established in consultation with Sheldon by Steppenwolf co-founder (and former Columbia College Theatre Department faculty member) Jeff Perry, Steppenwolf’s then-artistic director Martha Lavey, and Lavey’s successor as artistic director, Columbia College alum Anna D. Shapiro ’90, HDR ’15, a former student of Sheldon’s. They developed a 10-week “ensemble studies” curriculum inspired by values that Steppenwolf believes inform not only great ensemble work but great acting: the ability to act spontaneously, instinctively and with joyful abandon, while maintaining the specificity and discipline required of great dramatic writing.

Sheldon also was a prolific director, staging numerous productions at such Chicago-area theatres as Steppenwolf, the Apollo Theatre, the Wellington Theatre, the Briar Street Theatre, National Jewish Theatre, City Lit Theatre, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, the Gift Theatre, and the Grant Park Concerts as well as the Columbia College Theatre Department. He won a special Joseph Jefferson Award (the Chicago area’s top theatre prize) in 1991 for his service to the Chicago theatre community, as well as a 1993 Jeff Award for his direction of the musical revue Puttin’ On the Ritz: An Irving Berlin American Songbok at the National Jewish Theatre. Other notable directing credits in the Chicago area include Steppenwolf’s productions of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (with Mike Nussbaum, John Mahoney, John Malkovich, Terry Kinney, and Jeff Perry) and Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (with Jeff Perry, Austin Pendleton, and Rondi Reed); Arthur Miller’s After the Fall at National Jewish Theatre (starring John Mahoney); the Chicago premieres of Wendy Wasserstein’s Tony Award-winning comedy The Heidi Chronicles, Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss costarring Tony Award winner Barbara Harris, and Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport starring Shelley Berman and Garrett Morris, as well as a hit revival of David Mamet‘s Sexual Perversity in Chicago costarring Jim Belushi. In addition, his adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Setzuan was produced at the Goodman Theatre, with Cherry Jones starring under Frank Galati‘s direction.

Outside of Chicago, his notable directing credits include a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein‘s operetta Candide in November 1968 at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) in New York City in honor of Bernstein’s birthday, with the composer in attendance; the cast included Alan Arkin and Madeline Kahn. He subsequently directed a concert version of Candide starring Douglas Campbell and Rae Allen that played at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre, Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Among the productions Sheldon directed at Columbia College was the world premiere of Island of Lost Co-eds, a musical parody of Hollywood “South Sea Epics” by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, coauthors of the born-in-Chicago hit Broadway musical Grease. Sheldon co-directed Island as the inaugural production of what is now the Getz Theatre Center of Columbia College with faculty member June Pyskacek, producer of the original Grease. Sheldon’s final directing project was a Columbia College student production of Stephen Sondheim‘s musical Into the Woods, which opened after Sheldon’s death. For a gallery of posters from productions directed by Sheldon and others at the Getz Theatre Center of Columbia College, please click here.

Shortly before his death, Sheldon established the Sheldon Patinkin Award at Columbia College Chicago to assist outstanding Theatre students in their journey to a professional career. For more information, and to contribute to the Sheldon Patinkin Award, please contact Columbia College’s Office of Development and Alumni Relations: https://giving.colum.edu/s/1871/bp22/home.aspx?gid=2&pgid=1339

As previously reported in this blog, on September 28, 2015, Columbia College formally dedicated the Getz Theatre Center’s lower-level auditorium (formerly the New Studio Theatre) as the Sheldon Patinkin Theatre in Sheldon’s memory. Sheldon’s own account of his experience as chair of the Columbia College Theatre Department is chronicled in a 1998 interview for the Columbia College Chicago Oral History Project.

Earlier in 2015, a memorial celebration of Sheldon’s life was held at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in the Chicago suburb of Skokie. Here’s a video of that event, at which speakers included Scott Adsit:

Sheldon Patinkin: The Life, Laughs, and Legacy on Saturday, September 21, 2024, is a free event. Contributions are gratefully accepted. To support the Theatre Program with a financial gift please visit this link and click on “See More Gift Options”  and select “Theatre” to ensure that your contribution is assisting the Theatre Program and its students. For more information about the Theatre Advisory Board and its activities – please click here.