Īlaric “Rokko” Jans (music and lyrics) is Chicago’s most noted composer for theater and film, where he first started working with the late Robert Sickinger in 1965. This production of “Nicholas Nickleby” represents a culmination of Robert Sickinger’s love of literature, music and theater. He served as executive director at the Manhattan Theatre Club where in 1972 he directed his controversial rockumentary “22 Years,” about convicted multiple-murderer Charles Manson. Sickinger moved to New York City in 1969, and in the 1970s, he directed the feature film “Love in a Taxi” and others. He invented the Chicago theater of today,” which now boasts over 200 theaters. He was a Samuel Beckett aficionado and mounted nontraditional productions of classic works, such as Sophocles’ “Electra” and Camus’ “Caligula.” Playwright and screenwriter David Mamet called Sickinger “one of the greatest directors I’ve ever known…. From Hull House, he built several theater companies, a touring company, a “chamber theater” for staged readings in private homes, acting classes and a writers’ workshop. Sickinger made his mark as a director in Philadelphia where he created several theater companies before moving to Chicago in 1963 at the age of 35 at the invitation of the Hull House executive director Paul Jans. He is described by The New York Times as having seeded a Chicago theater scene that evolved into one of the country’s greatest. He introduced audiences to writers like Athol Fugard, Edward Albee, and Harold Pinter. Robert Sickinger (book) 1926-2013, was a director, actor and widely considered “the father of Chicago’s Off Loop theater movement,” a key figure in creating a network of theater companies equivalent to New York’s Off-Broadway and Off Off Broadway.
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