Mike Nussbaum, who rose to prominence as an actor in early performs by David Mamet and appeared in numerous roles in Chicago theatres up till almost the tip of his life, died on Dec. 23, 2023. He was 99.
Most epitaphs are formulaic and lugubrious; and lots of, after all, are essentially factitious, as there’s a deal of decency in “nil nisi bonum.”
Among the many best epitaphs are these of the soldiers at Thermopylae: “Go inform the Spartans, stranger passing by, that right here, obedient to their legal guidelines, lie,” and that of Mel Blanc, who voiced the entire Warner Brothers’ cartoon characters: “That’s all, of us.”
A Civil Warfare cemetery close to my home in Vermont had a number of monuments proclaiming, “Mother, She Made House Blissful.”
As a pal and colleague of Mike Nussbaum for 50 years, I can counsel no extra becoming nor respectful epitaph than that Kipling wrote for actors:
We counterfeited as soon as to your disport
Males’s pleasure and sorrow: however our day has handed.
We pray you pardon all the place we fell quick—
Seeing we have been your servants to this final.
Mike Nussbaum, relaxation in peace.
—David Mamet
Be Like Mike
Mike Nussbaum was my creative father. I seemed to him for help, steering, and a deep and dependable friendship. I do know he felt the identical about me. In a movie assembled for my anniversary at Northlight, he stated, “I consider B.J. as my greatest pal within the theatre.”
Prior to now few weeks I’ve obtained so many telephone calls, texts, and emails providing condolences on his passing. However in response to all of them, I’ve advised associates that I used to be completely happy for him, as a result of within the final yr after I stopped by to spend time with him, he’d inform me he was able to go. He advised his pricey pal Barbara Gaines, founder and former creative director of Chicago Shakespeare, the identical factor.
He directed me, I directed him, we acted collectively. Over a dozen performs at Northlight have been graced along with his presents, starting with our first manufacturing in 1975, Jumpers, directed by Frank Galati. Mike was then Northlight’s creative director, and one in all its founders, together with Galati and Greg Kandel, an MFA graduate at Northwestern. However he solely stayed in that job for a yr, as a result of Mike was an actor, and that’s what he wished to do.
He was a consummate skilled. He jogged when he nonetheless may, and famously did his day by day 50 push-ups. He confirmed up off-book for first read-through, sending us all scrambling residence to study our phrases.
Extra importantly, it was his loyalty to the Chicago theatre neighborhood that impressed me. In 1983 whereas he was showing on Broadway in Glengarry Glen Ross, I known as him to ask if he would seem in my manufacturing of Quartermaine’s Phrases at Northlight. He requested Annette, his spouse, what she thought, and Annette stated, “Sure! I’m bored with New York.” Coming again to the telephone, he advised me he was on. Think about leaving Broadway to seem at a regional theatre in a transformed grade college, the place, as Mike Maggio, one in all my predecessors, stated, “The lease was excessive and the urinals have been low.”
As a result of it was by no means about Broadway or Hollywood for Mike. For Mike it was about “the hold,” the work, and Chicago’s actors and audiences. He cherished sitting within the inexperienced room laughing, dishing, being adrenalized by the subsequent era of actors, racing to beat John Mahoney to complete the Instances crossword on Sundays. And all the time, all the time, telling the reality onstage.
A dozen or so years in the past, I noticed I won’t get to behave with Mike once more. So I reached out to David Mamet, whose performs had made Mike nationally acknowledged, and requested if he’d write a curtain raiser for Mike and me to learn at occasions. He replied that he would “placed on his velvet pondering cap,” and in two weeks I had a 15-minute skit known as Pilot’s Lounge. I known as Mike and requested what he thought. He stated, “I don’t get it.” However once we lastly obtained to learn it, Mike obtained laughs! As common, it was Mike’s chemistry, which Mamet knew so effectively, that bought the piece.
Mamet included a narrative a few leather-based bomber jacket Mike owned from World Warfare II. The story was that Annette had the jacket cleaned, and in Mike’s view, the cleansing ruined it. Mamet wove that story into the play. It was a narrative Mike advised David 40 years earlier than in rehearsal, and David remembered it! Mike was so touched. In the previous couple of years, I picked Mike up and drove him to plenty of gatherings the place we learn the play, and folks would ask for his autograph or he’d pose for an image and it buoyed his spirits. It’s becoming that his final performances have been in a Mamet work.
As soon as, in a manufacturing of Willy Holtzman’s play Hearts, Mike and I had a little bit disagreement over a second within the play. As a result of I used to be the director, he accepted my suggestion. As I recall, one of many critiques lauded that second, and the subsequent morning, Mike known as to thank me for insisting he play it that manner. I had forgotten about it, however in his pure sense of equity and justice, he wished to set the file straight. That was Mike.
He and Annette raised their kids Jack, Karen, and Susan that manner: progressive, with an unerring sense of social justice, and with the dedication to enhance our world.
At almost 100, Mike had come to the tip. I introduced him corned beef sandwiches and we might watch his beloved Cubs, however for the final go to he advised me to not convey him something. Regardless, I introduced a script with an ideal function in it for him, simply to maintain him hungry concerning the work.
However he wished to go; he stated he was bored. If he couldn’t act, what was the purpose? In the long run, he provided one other lesson: to depart with dignity, with blunt honesty, and on his personal phrases. For Mike it was concerning the work, and his fellow artists. It was time.
He by no means missed an entrance, and he knew learn how to make an exit.
However his ghost gentle will all the time burn brightly for me.
B.J. Jones is the creative director of Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Unwell.
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