Frank Galati, a leading theater director, dies in Sarasota at 79

While being inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame at Broadway’s Gershwin Theatre two months ago, Tony-winning director and Oscar-nominated writer Frank Galati said the best times of his life were spent in a rehearsal room. It was where he developed his theories on collaboration that he taught to his many students at Northwestern University and practiced with the hundreds of actors he worked with at Chicago’s Steppenwolf and Goodman theaters and Sarasota’s Asolo Repertory Theatre.

Galati, who spent the last 11 years as an associate artist at Asolo Rep – where he directed the world premiere of his musical “Knoxville” last spring – died Monday night in Sarasota. He was 79.

He became a superstar theater director with his 1988 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” which originated at Steppenwolf before moving two years later to Broadway where he earned Tony Awards as writer and director. In 1988, he was also nominated with Lawrence Kasdan for an Academy Award for their screenplay to the 1988 film “The Accidental Tourist.”

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But he had already developed a broad following for his many productions in Chicago, where he was an ensemble member with Steppenwolf and associate director at Goodman as a director and occasionally an actor.

After his success with “Grapes of Wrath,” he returned to Broadway in 1998 and earned another Tony nomination as director of the musical “Ragtime,” based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel about societal changes at the turn of the 20th century. It won Tony Awards for the book by Terrence McNally and score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. He was also the original director of another Ahrens and Flaherty show, “Seussical, The Musical” but he was replaced during the show’s Boston tryout. He also directed the short-lived Broadway musical “The Pirate Queen.”

He moved to Sarasota in 2010 with his husband, fellow director Peter Amster, who returned to an Asolo Rep rehearsal hall himself Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Galati’s passing to continue work on his upcoming production of Ken Ludwig’s “The Three Musketeers,” which opens Jan. 13.

“Like Frank, I find joy in the rehearsal hall, and solace that I can’t find just moping around at home,” Amster said.

Amster introduced Galati to a longtime friend, Michael Donald Edward, the producing artistic director of Asolo Rep, who first hired Galati to stage Reginald Rose’s drama “12 Angry Men” in 2010.

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An emotional Edwards said he “was transformed by Frank, by his work and his way of working. He came from a place of love, not from anxiety. It was so powerful to be reminded of that. His work was so rigorous, so detailed, so beautifully observed, but in the rehearsal room he made everyone feel they were the best artists ever.”

Amster said, “one director once said that Frank can take an actor and love him into a great performance. Basically, it was the love of what he was doing, the love of storytelling, the love of crafting that certainly characterized him.”

A long relationship

Amster and Galati were a couple for 52 years. They met when Galati was a graduate student working on his doctorate and Amster was a 20-year-old undergraduate theater student. “We met and talked about art and one thing led to another.” They were officially married in 2017 in Sarasota. They worked on their own projects, but collaborated on occasion. Amster choreographed Galati’s production of “1776,” which launched the Asolo Rep’s 2012-13 season.

They may have achieved similar results in their final productions but had different methods for getting there.

“He got stuff done by not moving a muscle in a way that annoyed the hell out of me,” Amster said. “Just by sitting there waiting for the actors to figure it out. I would jump on stage and help them. I expended all this energy and he just waved this magic wand.” Amster said he came from the world of choreography that required demonstrating, while Galati’s background was theater, which is “more about reaching deep inside and finding the truth of the character inside yourself. He knew how to do that magically.”

Edwards said it was “really wonderful to know that someone so loving, so decent, so good, can rise to the top of our profession. He affected so many people as a teacher, a director, a prophet in a way.”

It was that spirit that allowed him to “work with the biggest stars in the business and beginners and make them feel they were the most exciting thing ever,” Edwards said. “He didn’t fake it. He was almost like a spiritual figure. He made everyone feel that the theater is a calling.”

A productive retirement in Sarasota

The COVID pandemic caused a two-year delay in the opening of his last production, “Knoxville,” which he adapted from James Agee’s novel “A Death in the Family.” The show, which was commissioned and produced by Asolo Rep, reunited Galati with Ahrens and Flaherty, whose score was captured in a cast recording released in the fall.

In a joint statement on Facebook, Ahrens and Flaherty described Galati as “our joyous, brilliant, inspiring, open-hearted, loving, visionary, poetic friend and collaborator.”

Among Galati’s other Asolo Rep productions were “My Fair Lady,” “Both Your Houses,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “Rhinoceros,” and “The Little Foxes.” His production of Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia, Here I Come” stirred national controversy after the playwright’s agent complained about Galati’s staging, which eliminated some characters and two intermissions. The production was briefly shut down and the cuts were restored.

He helped introduce to Asolo Rep audiences to a number of Chicago actors who became company regulars, returning season after season until the pandemic. Edwards said he got the idea for the theater’s five-year American Character exploration as a result of Galati’s “12 Angry Men.”

“I can’t imagine the course the Asolo would have taken without him and I feel I am a better man and a better artist because of him,” Edwards said.

In Chicago, Galati received acclaim for a range of productions from his adaptation of Doctorow’s “The March” to the world premiere of the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical “The Visit.”

But Edwards and others said his most lasting impact may be on the many actors and directors who studied with him and built their own acclaimed careers, among them Mary Zimmerman and Daniel Fish.

Many of his former students and actors posted social media messages testifying to the effect he had on them.

“I feel so lucky to have been directed by Frank twice,” wrote Denise Cormier, who appeared in several shows at Asolo Rep in recent years. “His rehearsal room was a revelation. He brought out the best in everyone, certainly me. He made me feel like an artist and I did some of my best work guided by his gentle loving trusting hand.”

And Andrew Sellon, who appeared in “Philadelphia, Here I Come,” wrote on Facebook, “In the rehearsal room with Frank, every word, every silence, every image, and everyone’s input mattered. He wept a lot. We laughed a lot. I learned a lot.”

Amster said Galati only recently began working on his memoirs – “unfortunately he didn’t get very far” – but he “was also a wonderful artist. He worked in line drawing and colored pencils. He was very content to be by himself with a set of colored pencils or a pen and paper to start writing a story. During the pandemic, he wrote two plays, and I was just going to a therapist trying to figure out who I was because I couldn’t direct anymore. He knew who he was and he had a good time doing whatever he wanted to do at the time.”

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Frank Galati, a major force in Chicago, Sarasota theater, dies at 79