Sheldon Patinkin

Patinkin's presence at The Second City from its opening night in 1959 through the 2010s made him the institution's longest-serving creative leader and its primary keeper of institutional memory. His career spanned the company's entire history, from the founding era with Sills and Sahlins through the golden age of the 1970s and 1980s that produced John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray, to the contemporary period that trained Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, and Steve Carell.

His role as artistic consultant at Steppenwolf connected two of Chicago's most important theatrical institutions. Steppenwolf's ensemble approach, which emphasized long-term creative partnerships and risk-taking performance, shared philosophical roots with Second City's improvisational ensemble model. Patinkin served as a bridge between the two traditions, bringing his understanding of ensemble dynamics from the improv world to Steppenwolf's dramatic work.

The Comedy Studies program at Columbia College Chicago, which Patinkin co-created with The Second City in 2007, represented the formalization of comedy and improvisation as academic disciplines. The program was among the first to offer an undergraduate degree that combined theoretical study of comedy with practical training at a professional institution, creating a model that other universities would later adopt.

Patinkin's death on September 21, 2014, at age seventy-nine, removed the last direct connection to The Second City's founding generation. The New Studio Theater at Columbia College Chicago was renamed the Sheldon Patinkin Theater in his honor, and the school established a scholarship in his name.

Patinkin's legacy operates across three interconnected institutions. At The Second City, his five decades of creative leadership provided continuity through multiple generations of performers and directors, maintaining the company's artistic standards and institutional culture even as the ensemble turned over dozens of times. His book Second City: Backstage at the World's Greatest Comedy Theater remains the definitive history of the institution and the primary written record of its artistic evolution.

At Steppenwolf, his mentorship helped develop actors who became defining figures of late-twentieth-century American theatre and film. The connection he maintained between Second City's improvisational world and Steppenwolf's ensemble dramatic tradition demonstrated how the skills cultivated in improv, including ensemble trust, spontaneous response, and commitment to moment-to-moment truth, could transfer directly to scripted performance at the highest level.

At Columbia College Chicago, his nearly three decades as department chair shaped the training of hundreds of theatre professionals. The Comedy Studies program he co-created with The Second City established a new category of academic program that formalized the relationship between professional comedy training and university education. His influence extended through the directors, actors, and educators who passed through his classroom and carried his approach to ensemble training into their own institutions.