Bob Wilson, acclaimed Chicago stage actor, dies at 63
Bob Wilson, a veteran of the Chicago stage who could channel the comedic, the surreal, the absurd, and the melancholy, passed away this week.
Wilson died Tuesday after a battle with glioblastoma. He was 63.
A native of Jamestown, New York, Wilson graduated from SUNY Binghamton in upstate New York with a degree in cinema.
Wilson went on to move to Chicago, where he got involved with the legendary Second City improvisational theatre troupe, his family said. He later joined the since-disbanded WNEP Theater company, founded by fellow Second City alum Don Hall along with friends Joe Janes and Jeff Hoover.
Wilson worked as technical director for WNEP while also taking the stage for the company — notably as a dynamic performer in the company's acclaimed surrealist revue "Soiree Dada."
As described in a June 2000 review by Jenn Goddu for the Chicago Reader, "Soiree Dada" featured "silence, screaming, gibberish, and baffling exchanges," as Wilson and three other performers dressed in whiteface and suits that didn't quite fit.
In addition to the WNEP Theater's own space at 3209 N. Halsted St., "Soiree Dada" took several other stages in Chicago and beyond over the years, among them the Chicago Cultural Center, the all-night Looptopia arts festival in downtown Chicago in 2007, and the New York International Fringe Festival.
In a 2005 review of one "Soiree Dada," show the Reader's Brian Nemutsak, wrote that Wilson's canid-laden monologues [were] the show's most affecting, [howling] loudest of all."
Wilson was also involved in several other WNEP productions, including "Lives of the Monster Dogs," which he adapted for the stage with WNEP colleague Jen Ellison from Kirsten Bakis' science fiction novel, a 2001 Chicago Tribune review noted.
Chicago Improv Festival cofounder and producer Jonathan Pitts wrote of directing Wilson in his devised theatre piece "Renfield" at WNEP, and just how deeply Wilson got into the title role.
"During the process, because as a person he was so artistically, experimentally, and theatrically strong, he told me he struggled with Renfield's being a co-dependent enabler to Dracula," Pitts wrote in a Facebook tribute. "He kept exploring, trying, and working, and by the show's run, he found a way to make Renfield a memorable character mixed with wild strengths and bewildering vulnerabilities."
Having first taken to the stage of the Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland St., for "Soiree Dada" in 1996, Wilson went on to appear in numerous productions with Trap Door and became a full-fledged member of the theatre company in 2009, the company noted.
Critics gave Wilson accolades for his performance in Trap Door's 2008 staging of "No Darkness Round My Stone" — an English-language adaptation of a play by French dramatist Fabrice Melquiot that a Tribune review called a "meditation on death, grief, and grave robbers."
Wilson played Louis, the father of a pair of grave-digging brothers, who also "spends his nights dressed in his dead wife's clothes, prowling for tricks as 'Lullaby,'" the Tribune review noted. Tribune critic Kerry Reid called Wilson "simply marvelous, his sadly comic and understated demeanor imbued with unbearable loss."
In Trap Door's 2005 production of Romanian playwright Matei Visniec's "Old Clown Wanted," which made stops in New York and Romania, Wilson starred as one of what NewCity's John Beer described as "the banter between… three desiccated old clowns waiting for an audition opportunity." Beer called Wilson's "menacing" clown Peppino "reminiscent of a grouchy David Lynch patriarch."
Wilson also toured Poland and Romania for Trap Door's 2009-2010 production of playwright Dorota Masłowska's "A Couple of Poor, Polish Speaking Romanians." He also appeared in "The Fourth Sister" (2006), "Anger/Fly" (2012), "The Arsonists" (2012), "Fantasy Island for Dummies: (2016), "The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui" (2017), "The Locketeer" (2018), "Letter of Love (The Fundamentals of Judo)" (2018), "Naked" (2018), "Lipstick Lobotomy" (2020), "And Away We Stared" (2021), "Princess Ivona" (2022), "Bowie in Warsaw" (2023), and "The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey" (2024).
"Everything I saw him in, he was always fully committed, and always connecting to the moments, be they absurd, comedic, dramatic or tragic," Pitts wrote.
Wilson also worked as a commercial actor and rideshare driver, and lent his voice to numerous audio projects by interdisciplinary artist and fellow WNEP alum Noah Ginex.
"He did the kind of theatre and performance art where nobody involved ever gets financially rich, but he spent his adult life doing it because this was his art form, his personal expression, and as long as someone got something out of the show, that was enough for him," Pitts wrote.
