Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and professor Dr. Frank Galati died on January 2, 2023, but his impact on those he worked with and loved (they were one and the same) and his legacy are imperishable. He won two Tony Awards in 1990 for adapting and directing The Grapes of Wrath, and was a nominee in 1998 for his direction of Ragtime. In 1989, he was nominated for an Academy Award (alongside Lawrence Kasdan) for his screenplay for The Accidental Tourist, adapted from Anne Tyler’s 1985 novel. His work, notes, and interviews are captured in Julie Jackson’s 2022 book, The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping Theatre in Chicago, Illinois (Bloomsbury Publishing).
He received many other awards and accolades throughout his prolific, richly varied, and theatrically adventurous career. But among those he sometimes addressed as “dear ones,” he is revered and emulated for the extraordinary human being and friend he was as much as for the ground he broke and all that he accomplished as an artist.
In April 2022, Galati addressed the Asolo Repertory Theatre’s cast of Knoxville, a musical based on James Agee’s novel, A Death in the Family, adapted and directed by Galati, with a score by his Ragtime collaborators, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens. The story explores the impact of a father’s sudden death on his family and community. One cast member recorded some of Galati’s remarks to the cast during rehearsal:
“I can’t overstate this, and I won’t come back to it much, but even in the most fun that we’ve had in here, these joyous hours in this little room, there’s reverence, not just respect, reverence, which has spiritual overtones of real importance.”
JOHN KANDER(composer, Cabaret, Chicago, and the Galati-directed The Visit): Frank would speak to a group of actors at a rehearsal and begin by saying “Dear ones.” And it didn’t sound corny; it didn’t sound fake because it wasn’t. It was that at this moment we are in this group, this lovefest, trying to create something beautiful. I think almost everybody you will talk to came away with a feeling that what they were doing was worthwhile and indeed that they were worthwhile.
B.J. JONES (actor, director, and artistic director Northlight Theatre, and longtime friend):He would create a hunger and passion and a sense of purpose that, in the next three weeks, we are going to build something together that is unique, that never existed before, and never will again because we work in an art form that is written in water. And so, we have to turn ourselves inward in order to support each other to do the work on a night-by-night basis in a selfless and passionate way. Otherwise, the magic doesn’t happen.
JEFF PERRY (actor and cofounder Steppenwolf Theatre):Frank could lay out on day one a road map of the journey that you would take. It was a remarkable articulation of what he had ingested before you all joined him in the room. But it didn’t limit the possibilities or the exploration.
TERRY KINNEY (actor, director, and cofounder Steppenwolf Theatre): He would talk about the literature, then he would talk about how that piece of literature fits in the lexicon of that author’s canon, and then he would talk about the characters and their journeys, and then the journey of mankind and the place of art in the world. And then about the inevitable privilege of being the vessels for that storytelling. And then his gratitude. His absolutely inspirational opening speeches always made you chomping at the bit to get out there because you understood on the first day that there was going to be a deep layer of spirituality. This is what he brought to the table.
JONES: Frank’s generosity of spirit was the secret of his art. The love that he extended to every collaborator, and we were all collaborators.
CHERYL LYNN BRUCE (actor and director): When I auditioned for Grapes of Wrath, there wasn’t a script yet, andI got the sense that he was looking for collaborators to figure this thing out. I thought, I might not get chosen, but this person is looking to work with people, and that’s a really exciting feeling, that I’m not going to be just a piece in the puzzle, a cog in the wheel, but that we’re going to be working together. He made everybody feel like they should be there.
KANDER: I remember the first day of rehearsal for The Visit in Chicago and all the actors were sitting around a table, Chita [Rivera] included. And Chita, who is very close to me and with whom I have been through a lot of experiences, didn’t know quite what to expect. And after maybe the first half hour of Frank talking, she was totally smitten. I remember saying to her, “You see? Sometimes it’s more fun to work for nothing.” (Laughs.) I meant that in the very least sarcastic way possible because sometimes just working for the work was that worthwhile. And Frank made everybody feel that.
MARY ZIMMERMAN (theater and opera director; playwright; resident director Goodman Theatre; former student and then fellow professor of Galati’s in performance studies at Northwestern University):Sometimes I feel I’m quoting Frank all the time. I learned so much from him, and I think I deploy what I learned from him all the time. I wouldn’t necessarily say that our taste was identical, and I wasn’t consciously imitating him aesthetically or copying images, but I was consciously imitating him as a person, and in the way he spoke to actors, and in the way he modeled a profound vulnerability.
His influence on my life is probably greater than, honestly, anyone else’s. When I was a student [at Northwestern], we had to do this thing called a “graduate recital,” a one-person, 40- to 60-minute performance that every graduate student has to do. And I did this thing on Proust. Afterward, I went in to see Frank to get his individual response, and he said to me, “This, my dear, is a work of art.” And for me, that was like a moon landing of a sentence.
By saying, “This, my dear, is a work of art” he kind of anointed me (laughs) as an artist, and because of my admiration for him, and how ungodly productive and creative he was and how skilled he was and how much I admired him, it just meant everything to me, if, in his eyes, I was interesting! As he did for so many others, he legitimized me to myself. And that’s no small feat for some of us.
It was always your ideas that he was feeding off. If you loved something and wanted to play with it, he was just all smiles and giggling. You couldn’t help but get caught up in it.
CINDY GOLD (actor; fellow Northwestern professor; longtime friend): When I first got to Northwestern in 1997, I’d walk by what I considered the “great man’s” office. (Of course, he would pooh-pooh “great man.”) I was in my mid-30s at the time. A kid. He had already won the Tonys at that point and his relationship with Steppenwolf was really exciting to me.
One day I screwed up my courage, and I just went in. I said, “You know, Dr. Galati, I heard you’re working on something about Gertrude Stein, and I love Gertrude Stein. I’d love to read it.” And, Frank, he never met a stranger. He was just so deeply, genuinely interested in everyone. He said something like, “Of course you can read it.” It was on his desk, and he handed it to me. I said, “Thank you very much,” and I turned to leave. He said, “No, no. I mean I want you to read it now.” So, I read it cover to cover out loud for him.
KINNEY: What a great story! That’s extraordinary. I mean, that is just so Frank. First of all, he’s going to learn something about his own writing. Her discovery of this literature that he’s adapted will come simultaneously with him experiencing it. And secondly, he’s honoring her love for Gertrude Stein. Yeah, that’s what he’s all about. He just takes the space and creates within it.
RUSH PEARSON (ensemble member of Practical Theater Company and cast member in Goodman Theatre’s 1986 A Christmas Carol with Galati):I was a student of Frank’s at Northwestern in the 70s. He was so tuned in, so connected to whatever you brought with you that day in the class. He was like, “What do you got? Oh, this is wonderful!” And then he’d play with it. He didn’t impose his will on anybody. He wanted you to go full throttle into what you were presenting. It was always your ideas that he was feeding off. If you loved something and wanted to play with it, he was just all smiles and giggling. You couldn’t help but get caught up in it.
ROBERT FALLS (director and artistic director Goodman Theatre, 1986-2022):I often laughed at Frank when we would see something and he would say to me, “Bobby—” (Everybody was Bobby or Billy, Johnny.) “Bobby, it was so wonderful!” And I’d go, “Frank, it wasn’t that good. It was . . . fine.” And he’s like, “Oh, no, no, Bobby, it was so . . . beautiful.” “Seriously, Frank it was OK.” “No, no! It was won-derful! ” And that’s irresistible. For over half a century, Frank was putting that sort of energy into the world.
JULIE JACKSON (longtime friend and author of The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati):A lot of people say they know how to listen, but nobody listens quite like Frank did. When he talked to you, there was no past, there was no future, there was only now.
ZIMMERMAN: I don’t know if this was the first time I saw him, but early on I saw him walking across campus to class. It was raining, and he was holding an umbrella. But the umbrella was a child’s umbrella. It was only about two feet across, and it was yellow with a bright-red handle. And he was a large man. That image is very seminal to me, and very, very dear. I don’t think it really needs unpacking, but he was so in love with beauty, and he found it everywhere, and he didn’t mind appearing foolish.
ERIC ROSEN (director, playwright, and cofounder About Face Theatre; former Galati student and longtime friend):I have an image of Frank walking down Sheridan Road in Evanston by himself eating an ice cream cone. And that has always stuck with me, like, thank you! It was in that moment that I thought, OK, Frank is a person, he’s not a god. He’s not a teacher with a capital T. He’s a guy who has a life and has done so many things and likes ice cream and would like to be alone and not be always dealing with a thousand students begging him for approval. That was a big moment for me. I’m 52 years old now, and I’m telling you about how I felt when I was 22. In hindsight, I’m like, well, of course Frank eats ice cream, and of course, Frank walks alone.
PERRY: I was an enraptured high school student when I first saw him in a production of [Peter Nichols’s] The National Health [in 1972] at the Forum Theater [in Summit, Illinois].
WILLIAM PULLINSI (director and founder of Candlelight Dinner Playhouse and the Forum Theater): I had had another actor in mind for the role, but he left town, decided to move to New York, and Mike Nussbaum, who was already hired for the show, said there’s a young actor at Northwestern, Frank Galati, you should audition him. So, I called him, and that’s how we found Frankie. He was about 28 years old at the time, I think. He had been a student at Northwestern.
I’ve got his first press, here. Want to hear it? This is Sydney Harris’s review in the Daily News. Sydney was then like the dean of Chicago critics. At the end of the review, he says, “I have saved the best for last, and that is the diabolically effective performance of Frank Galati as the orderly slash commentator. In himself, he epitomizes the strengths and weaknesses, the humor of that collective patient known as the British public. I can’t imagine that even his prototype in the original London company did a more devastating and credible job.”
Frank was that good right off the bat. Some people can just reach across the footlights, and that was one of the things he could do. He was a big performer, so big; he had full gestures, full extension, and his big voice and his performance just reached out and grabbed people.
Frank Galati (left) and John Mahoney in Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy at Steppenwolf, 2001 Credit Michael Brosilow
PERRY: There are very few people who can do this, who can be textually, intellectually, joyfully in the same league as the playwright.
JONES: [When I acted with him in Travesties by Tom Stoppard at Wisdom Bridge] he had this long 12- or 15-minute monologue as Henry Carr at the beginning of the play. He was framed in a spotlight, smoking a cigarette. At the end of the monologue, he whipped around, [facing upstage, so his back was to the audience], and I blasted through the doors as Tristan Tzara. He had thrown all the focus to me. I was the only one who could see the expression on his face every night. (Imitates Galati’s wide-eyed, broadly-smiling expression). Every night without fail for nine months! I always noticed it, but I never codified it.
Some years later, I was in a cast that Frank was directing. And he said to this cast that one of the important things is to welcome your colleagues onto the stage. You embrace them and accept them and bring them into the play. I realized then that that’s what he was doing in Travesties. And he did that as an actor, as a director, and as a person. One of Frank’s greatest artistic achievements is that, yes, he was in the limelight, but his great delight was sharing the limelight.
Frank’s generosity of spirit was the secret of his art. The love that he extended to every collaborator, and we were all collaborators.
KINNEY: While we [Steppenwolf] were still in Highland Park [1974-1979], we found out about some of Frank’s adaptations that he was doing at Northwestern. We went to see Pale Fire [adapted from Vladimir Nabokov], and we immediately started talking about needing him in the company. We needed someone like him to guide the sort of literary side of the company, and he was such a strong director on top of it. We didn’t even know how good an actor he was till later when we saw him in Travesties.
He talked to us about [joining the ensemble] and respected us but didn’t know where he fit in at first. But then I think Gary [Sinise] convinced him to join. And the minute Frank said yes, we said, “What novel do you want to adapt right now? I mean, right now.” He said, “I’ve had my eye on Grapes of Wrath for a long time.” We had done Of Mice and Men [in 1981], and we just loved Steinbeck so much, but the fact that there was this synchronicity with what Frank wanted to do was pretty much magical for us. We had limited resources for commissioning at the time, but I think we did what we could to make it happen.
Gary said, “Please begin.”
The cast of Steppenwolf Theatre’s 1988 production of The Grapes of Wrath, adapted and directed by Frank Galati Credit Michael Brosilow
The Grapes of Wrath opened at Steppenwolf Theatre in 1988, moved to La Jolla Playhouse in 1989, then to the Royal National Theatre in London. It opened on Broadway in 1990. Galati received a Tony Award for Best Play and one for Best Direction. Grapes was later adapted for television in PBS’s American Playhouse.
FALLS: Frank’s love and his enthusiasm and his artistry made him a unique figure in the American theater. It’s a small, quirky family of theater artists that have made Chicago theater and Frank was at the heart of it for 50 years.
ROSEN: I think Frank met his historical moment. He was lucky to be making theater in Chicago in the 70s and 80s and 90s when you could expect an audience to show up for whatever weird, crazy vision that you had. And if it was really good, you would find an audience. Mary [Zimmerman] came out of that. I feel like [the younger artists of my generation] really get that. So I think Frank wasn’t driven by “Will this sell?” because he could make a life for himself doing exactly what he wanted to do in the way he wanted to do it.
KANDER: I think Frank is a much larger figure in the American theater than most people realize. You don’t become famous without some effort on your own behalf, and I don’t have much interest or respect for that element. I don’t know what his ambitions were. I’m sure they were there—we just never had that conversation. But I think there were things that Frank was probably uncomfortable with and unwilling to do, things which would have made him a star, and I truly empathize with that. I mean, I’ve had a very lucky career. But the things that go on or could go on in order to make you seem more important or to be a household name are not things which interest me very much. Frank was a kind of kindred spirit in that way.
ZIMMERMAN: He was not a careerist in any way, shape, or form. He was interested in the project and the people and the thing itself and the doing. Frank had no interest in celebrity qua celebrity. He was interested in storytelling, not in making a vehicle for somebody.
JACKSON: He hated any kind of reach for celebrity because celebrity separates you from other people.
ZIMMERMAN: What drove him, I think, is what drives any artist: a kind of wonder and amazement at the beauty of the world even in its pain and terror and hardship, and a desire to fix it. Now, I don’t mean fix in terms of repair, I mean to capture, to hold momentarily the phenomenon that is the world and life and human behavior. He was just so fascinated by the moments between people, in the movements of our souls and our feelings and what the world gives us and what we can take and not take from it and all our little tragedies. And then to take all of that and state it as perfectly and accurately as possible in words and image. That’s true genius, being able to live like that, to be awake and concentrating on the world to make a play or find texts that he felt are truthful in some way to express that world.
DENNIS ZACĚK (director and artistic director emeritus Victory Gardens Theater):It wasthe desire to do good work. The desire to be an artist, to understand what it meant to be an artist, and what the joy was in being an artist, and what the challenge was in being an artist. You know, not every production he did was a success, but ultimately, that’s not what you remember. You’re not keeping score. It’s a question of just how extraordinary he was in his ability as a human being and as an artist to affect others.
KANDER: What drives Frank is that the thing he’s doing is . . . wonderful! How fucking marvelous it is to get to be in a room full of people to create something that’s . . . true. There is no way to explain that to somebody who doesn’t experience it. Believe me, becoming Speaker of the House (laughs) couldn’t possibly compare with what happens when you create one moment of truth. It’s so amazing you can’t describe it. And Frank’s joy at that was beautiful to behold. I’m very grateful to have known that.
In 2004, Galati was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. Founded in 1991, its aim has been to make residents of Chicago and the world “aware of the contributions of Chicago’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities and the communities’ efforts to eradicate homophobic bias and discrimination. . . . As time passes, it is our goal to see that the achievements of our predecessors are not lost or forgotten.”
ROSEN: I hope that people talk about Frank’s husband, [director, choreographer, performer] Peter [Amster] and who they were together because Frank couldn’t have been Frank without Peter. Gosh, Frank loved Peter so much. And it was incredibly moving when he would talk about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. It always felt like he was talking about them and the way in which they were really partners. For 52 years, I think. I mean, as long as I’ve been alive.
I have a picture of Frank with [my husband, Clay, and] my son, Beau, who was two or three at the time. And I remember Frank [looking at it and saying] something to me along the lines of, “You got to do a thing that I never got to do.” Recently, I was at the Asolo walking with Beau, who’s five now, around the lobby, and I saw Terrence McNally and Frank and Peter and Steve Flaherty all looking over at me running around being silly with Beau, and I was like, wow, these greats of the theater are looking at me taking care of a tiny kid which was never a thing in their generation.
GOLD: I think he would have been a wonderful father. I’ve felt like he was my second father, in many ways. (Pauses.) I’m sorry. I just got . . . (Pauses.) I don’t even know why I was lucky enough to have him in my life.
KINNEY: When you’d see him again after a time away, the catching-up part was absolutely giddy and joyous, and I don’t know anybody that knew him and loved him that didn’t feel that way. A little bit like being in love, you know? Where you’re just, “Oh my God, he’s here!”
PERRY: A few years back I felt moved to write to [director] Austin Pendleton and to Frank just to say, “I don’t know if I’ve ever said this, but I want you to know you’ve shaped me, you’ve helped me, you’ve inspired me. I’ve always looked up to you. You are my heroes.” And I remember Frank’s response of true humility. He said, “Oh no, no, no. You are my brother in art.”
ZACĚK: It is interesting because there were many years in between [working with him], and each of us had changed over the years, if in no other respect than perhaps growth from what we had learned from mistakes that we had made. But whenever I encountered Frank, whenever we met each other, it was just like picking up a great book that I had put aside, and I could start reading it again.
KANDER: There was never enough Frank.
“I’m so proud of my friend Frank, who certainly deserves this honor. His loyalty to old friends and new is unparalleled, as evidenced by his request that an old friend, whom most of you don’t know, induct him into the American Theater Hall of Fame.” —from B.J. Jones’s induction speech, November 14, 2022
JACKSON: [Being inducted] was such a thrill for him. He was in a wheelchair, and he could hardly stand, but he still wanted to come to the podium. Two people helped him. His speech was very short, but moving, especially since, well, I have looked over my emails from him from the past year, and he was very aware that death was close by. I don’t think he knew he was dying, but he was very aware of death, and he talked about living as not adding up, but counting down, now. It’s [one of the few things] he said to me that was sort of melancholy.
NAMBI E. KELLEY (actor and playwright): It’s strange, now that I think of it. I never physically met him, but he was a giant when I was a kid in theater, so I always knew his name. You know how you just hear people’s names floating around? He was one of those people. And when I heard that he had died, it took my breath away. I was like, “No-o-o! Mountains don’t die.”
JONES: I would argue that one of the great spotlights of this community went out when Frank died, because that spotlight wasn’t just shining on himself. He was shining it on all of us.
GOLD: The first day of [class at NU] was the day after he passed, and I had a class to teach. I thought, “How can I do this? How can I go in to teach today?” And one of our friends said, “You know, Frank used to start every class with a reading. So why don’t we all read in class at the beginning?” I found a little piece from “Tender Buttons” [a Gertrude Stein poem] that I know he loved, and I started the class with that.
KANDER: When I heard of his death, I felt very selfish because Frank Galati wasn’t going to be here anymore, and even though I’m 95, I looked forward still to a time when maybe we would be communicating. I think it was very selfish that I felt like there was no more Frank to hope for.
PERRY: What a life. What a life. What a life lived. (Pauses.) Your full, gigantic purpose, your practice, and your work, and how you were connected to and touched so many people.
Frank Galati as Prospero in The Tempest at Steppenwolf, 2009 Credit Michael Brosilow
ZIMMERMAN: I had a dream once, and it sounds like I’m quoting Star Wars, unfortunately, but I had a dream where he said to me, “I’m your real father.” And then he said, “We have to go to the island.” It was so preposterously a wish-fulfillment dream, such a literal dream, but I actually did feel a kind of artistic parenting from him for sure. That kind of unconditional love that parents are supposed to give you where everything you do is just so fabulous. I’ve said that we all came out of Frank’s overcoat. It’s something that Dostoevsky said about Gogol. “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat.”
JACKSON: You know, though, it’s hard to mourn when there’s so much to celebrate.
GALATI (to the Asolo Repertory Theatre’s cast of Knoxville): As you watch this family deal with this crisis and this community deal with this loss—even the loss of Knoxville, which is long gone, [you think about] ‘the cloud-capped towers, the solemn temples, yea, the great glow itself, and all that it inherit shall dissolve and leave not a rack behind.’
It’s all gone. But beating in our veins is the memory of our own parents. I can hear my mother in my voice. You can hear your parents; you can feel them in your bones. And every single person who receives this story will be profoundly touched because they’ve been there. That loss is something they have experienced: the first time you realize you are an orphan.