Joseph Chaikin

Actor and theatre director, born in New York City, USA. His early work as an actor was with the Living Theater, notably in The Connection (1960) and Man is Man (1962). In 1963 he founded The Open Theater, which for a decade produced some of the most original work in the US theatre, such as America Hurrah (1965), Terminal (1969), and Nightwalk (1973). He suffered a stroke in 1984 but went on to co-write The War in Heaven (1991) with Sam Shepard.

He then formed a company called The Winter Project, whose members included Ronnie Gilbert and Will Patton. Chaikin had close working relationship with Sam Shepard and together they wrote the plays Tongues and Savage/Love, and were commissioned to write When The World Was Green for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Chaikin was also an expert on the works of Samuel Beckett, directing a number of Beckett's plays including Endgame at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Beckett wrote a poem for Chaikin entitled What Is the Word?.

In 1984, a stroke suffered during open-heart surgery left Chaikin with partial aphasia. Despite this barrier to communication, Chaikin continued to direct and to create plays collaboratively with other writers, including John Belluso, whose disability-themed plays were produced at the Mark Taper Forum, Trinity Rep, and the New York Shakespeare Festival. Chaikin was also a lifelong teacher of acting and directing, and lived in New York's West Village until his death.

Chaikin was born and died in New York City.