Remembering Howard Witt

Few actors achieve a career that lasts six decades—and fewer still maintain a working relationship with a single theater for that length of time. Howard Witt, born in Chicago in 1932, studied at the Goodman School of Drama (now The Theatre School at DePaul University) before launching a career that took him around the nation.  From 1968 through 1977, he was a member of the resident acting company at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, and in the 1980s he understudied, and later played, the role of Shelly Levene in the original Broadway run of Glengarry Glen Ross. Later in his life, he returned to Chicago and the Goodman; after a successful Chicago run of Death of a Salesman, he earned a Tony nomination when the production transferred to Broadway. Also at the Goodman,he appeared in Uncle Vanya (1990),Three Sisters (1995), Griller (1998), Boy Gets Girl (2000), King Lear (2006) and Fish Men (2012). “I thought I was going to retire when I moved back here,” Witt noted in an interview for the Goodman’s blog in 2012. “But—Chicago. I am in love with Chicago….I thought I wasn’t going to do anything but then everything happened. And the Goodman is the most actor-friendly theater I’ve ever worked in and I’m grateful to be here.”