Eugene Troobnick

Life1926-2003

Eugene Troobnick was a Boston-born actor and improviser who co-founded the Playwrights Theatre Club in Chicago in 1953 alongside Paul Sills and David Shepherd, became a founding member of the Compass Players in 1955, and performed in the original cast of The Second City when it opened in December 1959. His Broadway credits include The Odd Couple (1965-1967) and From the Second City (1961), and his television career included the recurring role of Stavros Kouperakis on Guiding Light from 1991 to 1995 and appearances in All That Jazz (1979) and Deconstructing Harry (1997). He died on February 19, 2003, in Seattle, Washington, at age seventy-six.

Career

Eugene Troobnick, whose full name was Ezra Eugene Troobnick, was born on August 23, 1926, in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. He began his stage career in 1947 and became part of the University of Chicago community in the early 1950s, where he fell in with Paul Sills, David Shepherd, and the group that would produce both the Playwrights Theatre Club and the Compass Players.

In June 1953, Troobnick co-founded the Playwrights Theatre Club with Sills and Shepherd, opening at 1560 N. LaSalle Street in Chicago in a 150-seat thrust stage above a Chinese restaurant. The company's first production was Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and the ensemble used Viola Spolin's Theater Games as a foundation for its rehearsal and performance work. The Playwrights Theatre Club was a direct predecessor of both the Compass Players and The Second City.

In 1955, when Shepherd and Sills reorganized into the Compass Players, Troobnick was among the founding performers. He was subsequently replaced in the ensemble's formal roster, though he remained part of the extended community from which the Second City's founding cast was drawn.

Troobnick was a member of the original cast of The Second City when it opened in Chicago in December 1959, alongside Howard Alk, Roger Bowen, Severn Darden, Andrew Duncan, Barbara Harris, Mina Kolb, and Allaudin (Bill) Mathieu. He appeared in From the Second City, the Broadway transfer of Second City material that ran from September 26 to December 9, 1961, at a New York theater.

His Broadway career subsequently encompassed a range of productions. His most sustained Broadway run was in The Odd Couple, Neil Simon's 1965 comedy, in which he appeared from March 10, 1965, to July 2, 1967. Additional Broadway credits include Before You Go (1968) and The Time of Your Life (1969). He appeared briefly in Requiem for a Heavyweight in March 1985.

For television, Troobnick played Stavros Kouperakis, a recurring character on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light, from 1991 to 1995. He also appeared in Law and Order (1990) and had guest roles in Kojak and Hawaii Five-O. His film credits include Funny Lady (1975), Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), and Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997). He also contributed to CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Troobnick died on February 19, 2003, in Seattle, Washington, at age seventy-six.

Historical Context

Eugene Troobnick's co-founding role at the Playwrights Theatre Club in 1953 places him at the earliest institutional origin point of the Chicago improv tradition, preceding even the Compass Players. The Playwrights Theatre Club's use of Viola Spolin's Theater Games in its rehearsal process represents one of the earliest documented applications of Spolin's methods in a professional theatrical context, and Troobnick was present as a founding member at that experiment. The company's opening production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle established the serious theatrical ambition of an ensemble that would go on to generate the improvisation-centered work of the Compass Players and, subsequently, The Second City.

His presence in the original Second City cast in 1959 further establishes him as a participant across the three foundational institutional moments of Chicago improv: the Playwrights Theatre Club, the Compass Players, and The Second City itself. Very few figures in the Chicago tradition can claim founding-generation presence at all three of these consecutive companies. The Compass Players' development of the scenario-based improvisational format, in which performers improvised scenes based on agreed-upon plot outlines drawn from newspaper stories and contemporary social material, created the template from which the satirical revue format of The Second City was derived. Troobnick participated in both stages of this institutional evolution.

The subsequent Broadway arc of his career, including The Odd Couple's two-year run and the Broadway transfer of From the Second City in 1961, documents the movement of Second City's founding generation into mainstream American theatrical production. The Broadway transfer of Second City material in 1961 was among the earliest demonstrations that the Chicago improvisational tradition had produced performers capable of sustaining commercial theatrical engagements at the highest level of American theater.

Legacy

Eugene Troobnick's presence at the founding of the Playwrights Theatre Club, the Compass Players, and The Second City makes him one of the small number of individuals who participated in all three foundational institutions of the Chicago improv tradition in sequence. His name appears in accounts of the tradition's origins alongside Sills, Shepherd, Nichols, May, Darden, Harris, and the other Compass and Second City originators. The particular significance of the Playwrights Theatre Club co-founding, which preceded the Compass Players by two years and represented the first institutional application of Spolin's methods in a professional context, gives Troobnick a place at the very beginning of what would become the Chicago school of improvisation.

His Broadway career, culminating in the extended run of The Odd Couple and subsequent stage work across two and a half decades, demonstrates the sustained theatrical viability of actors whose training and early work was in the improvisational tradition. His television career, including the multi-year Guiding Light arc and the cameos in major American films by Fosse and Allen, extended his work across several decades of American entertainment after the Second City years had ended, establishing a pattern that the Second City founding generation followed into mainstream American entertainment through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Early Life and Training

Eugene Troobnick was born Ezra Eugene Troobnick on August 23, 1926, in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. He began his stage career in 1947 and subsequently became part of the University of Chicago community that produced the Playwrights Theatre Club and the Compass Players in the early 1950s.

Personal Life

Eugene Troobnick married Carol Wiederecht. Their son, Mark Nathan Troobnick, born in 1955, died in 2003, the same year as his father. Eugene Troobnick died on February 19, 2003, in Seattle, Washington, at age seventy-six.