Robert Falls

Robert Falls (born March 2, 1954, Springfield, Ill., U.S.) American stage director noted for many innovative stagings during his tenure at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Falls grew up in rural Illinois. Drawn to drama even as a boy, he began to school himself by putting on puppet shows and directing his friends in performances. When his father’s career took the family to Urbana, Ill., Falls, then in middle school, enriched his imagination—and dealt with the loss of his friends—with an orgy of moviegoing. He won his first stage role when he was a sophomore in high school. As a student, Falls fed his blossoming interest by making trips into Chicago to watch professional theatre. He began to write and direct plays in addition to acting, and in 1976 he graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana with a B.F.A. in playwriting and directing.

Falls studied briefly with an acting coach in New York City, but he returned to the Midwest to become part of the burgeoning little theatre scene then springing up in Chicago. It was a heady time for regional theatre, and Falls eagerly embraced the dynamic climate, accepting a variety of acting and directing jobs. He worked initially with playwright David Mamet at the St. Nicholas Theatre. After staging an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men in 1977 at Wisdom Bridge Theatre (founded 1974), Falls was asked to become the ensemble’s artistic director, a position he held until 1985.

Under Falls’s leadership, Wisdom Bridge became known for its innovative interpretations and made a significant contribution to off-Loop theatre. Among the plays Falls directed while at Wisdom Bridge were Arthur Kopit’s Wings (1979), Tom Stoppard’s Travesties (1980), Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1981), Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1982), an adaptation of Jack Abbott’s letters, In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison (1983), and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1985).

In 1986 Falls became artistic director of Chicago’s renowned Goodman Theatre. There he extended a reputation he had gained for shocking the audience with what some considered to be gratuitous violence, nudity, and couplings. Nevertheless, during his tenure at the Goodman, he directed a number of highly successful productions, including Horton Foote’s The Young Man from Atlanta (1997), Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1999), and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (2002), whose transfer to Broadway the following year won three Tony Awards. He collaborated notably with actor Brian Dennehy on a number of plays.

Falls also directed O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and many other plays both within and outside the United States. In addition to winning several Tony Awards, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.