Yahoo Finance Roche Schulfer will step down at Goodman Theatre, with managing director John Collins taking over leadership
Roche Schulfer said Wednesday that he plans to retire from his job as executive director of the Goodman Theatre, effective Aug. 31.
“For everything there is a season,” Schulfer said in a telephone interview.
While the news is hardly a surprise, given that Schulfer is 72 and his longtime Goodman artistic partner Robert Falls exited in 2022, the departure brings to a close an extraordinary arts management career that expertly led Chicago’s largest theater through the rough waters of the COVID-19 crisis and the changing tastes and habits of audiences.
Schulfer (the Tribune’s Chicagoan of the Year in theater in 2023) was initially hired in 1973 to work in the Goodman’s box office, an era when the American regional theater movement was still young and Chicago theater was dominated by touring Broadway shows. He has remained at his post through two locations and several artistic directors, up to and including the transition to the current artistic director, Susan Booth. That said, his 35-year partnership with Falls was his most significant.
“Roche has always been the Goodman to me,” said Julie Danis, the chair of the Goodman’s board of trustees, in a telephone interview.
In Schulfer’s place, Danis and board president Linda Coberly said, the Goodman will promote the current managing director and chief operating officer John Collins, 44, a Schulfer mentee who has been at the Goodman since 2008.
Coberly said the board had considered doing a national search, as it had for artistic director in 2022, but determined instead that “we had the guy right here.” The board representatives said that the list of qualified candidates to helm one of America’s leading theaters would have been short and certainly would have included Collins, well-liked by staffers. “John is the last puzzle piece we needed to complete our new picture,” Coberly said. “We think he will be the perfect partner for Susan (Booth) as they take this theater forward.”
For his part, Schulfer said he planned to remain a consultant for a year past his retirement date, helping the theater plan its centennial, and that he would work apace throughout the summer. “I’m very grateful to the Goodman,” he said.
Schulfer’s tenure includes such highlights as the production of all 10 August Wilson plays, some of them world premieres, and the rise of the playwright David Mamet, as well as some 400 other shows of all kinds, including many that moved to Broadway. Schulfer oversaw the Goodman Theatre’s move from the Art Institute to a new theater complex in the North Loop in 2000, thereafter expanding its footprint several times.
He kept staffers employed during the pandemic, allowing the Goodman to ramp back up more quickly than many of its peers. And, of course, he found the funds and managed the logistics to allow Falls to stage such huge and extraordinarily successful Chicago productions as “Death of a Salesman” in 1998 and “The Iceman Cometh” in 2012. Schulfer also worked extensively with the League of Chicago Theatres for many years.
“Roche’s DNA,” said Danis, “is in the building.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
