14 Facts About Joseph Chaikin

Joseph Chaikin was an American theatre director, actor, playwright, and pedagogue.

The youngest of five children, Chaikin was born to a poor Jewish family living in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Joseph Chaikin briefly attended Drake University in Iowa, and then returned to New York to begin a career in theater, studying with various acting coaches, while struggling to survive working a variety of jobs.

Joseph Chaikin appeared as a figurant at the Metropolitan Opera, and gradually began to be cast in legitimate stage roles, going on to work with The Living Theatre before founding in 1963 The Open Theater a theater co-operative that progressed from a closed experimental laboratory to a performance ensemble.

An Open Theatre exercise by Jean-Claude van Itallie, "Interview," became part of the play America Hurrah, and Joseph Chaikin directed the "Interview" section when the play opened at the Pocket Theatre in 1966.

In 1969 Open Theatre performed Endgame by Samuel Beckett, with Joseph Chaikin playing the role of Hamm and Peter Maloney as Clov, at the Cite Universitaire, Paris, and in 1970 at the Grasslands Penitentiary, a fulfillment of Joseph Chaikin's desire to experiment with audiences who would be fundamentally and culturally different from cosmopolitan audiences.

Joseph Chaikin closed the Open Theatre in 1973 because he said it was in danger of becoming an institution.

In 1977, Joseph Chaikin formed an experimental workshop company called The Winter Project, whose members included Ronnie Gilbert, Corey Fischer, Robbie McCauley, Mark Samuels, Robert Montgomery, Christopher McCann, and Will Patton, as well as core members of the previous Open Theatre, among others.

Joseph Chaikin adapted Texts for Nothing with Steven Kent who directed him in a solo show based on the material which performed at the Public Theater in New York, at the Roundhouse Theatre in London, the American Center in Paris, and in Toronto.

Joseph Chaikin directed a number of Beckett's plays, including Endgame at the Manhattan Theatre Club and Happy Days at Cherry Lane Theater.

In 1984, Joseph Chaikin suffered a stroke during his third open-heart surgery, which left him with partial aphasia.

Joseph Chaikin performed the piece in San Diego, Atlanta, and Parma, Italy.

Joseph Chaikin was a lifelong teacher of acting and directing, and lived most of his adult life in New York's West Village, at Westbeth Artists Community.

Joseph Chaikin's sisters included the children's writer Miriam Chaikin, and Shami Chaikin, an actor.