EST mourns the passing of William Wise – a classic EST actor, a writer, and for many years a great and garrulous part of the theatre’s life onstage and off. Bill died in September. He was 84.
We got a letter in the mail from Bill's wife, Arleigh Richards Wise. Arleigh wrote: “As you may know, Bill battled three strokes over the past 16+ years. Despite various physical problems, he retained full mental capacity and his sense of humor and joy of life. He was a proud member of EST.”
Bill was born in Chicago. “Wherever he went afterward, he stayed a Chicago actor,” Arleigh said. “He had that honesty.” Early New York breaks included plays by Elaine May and Lanford Wilson, which led to his joining Circle Rep.
He first met Arleigh in 1982, in a New Jersey production of Wilson’s play Talley’s Folley. They were noted together in the New York Times review: “In the actors' charmingly gruff, evasive and gradually foursquare performances, the colors of the play deepen noticeably…a plea for the kind of professional craftsmanship that is not always easy to find in today's theater.”
“We were friends at first,” Arleigh said, “but it was meant to be for both of us.”
Bill’s earliest work at EST included playwriting – his Marathon entry from 1983, Two Hotdogs With Everything, is featured in the book The Great Monologues from the EST Marathon, alongside Christopher Durang, Romulus Linney, Shirley Lauro, and Arthur Miller. A picture of that play (featuring Garrett Brown and Richmond Hoxie) hung in the EST lobby for many years.
Pam Berlin worked with him during those years at EST and in Philadelphia too. “He was avuncular and outgoing,” remembered Pam. “Dear and kind, and fun and funny, and oh so private.”
Chris Ceraso acted with Bill many times at EST, including Moving Bodies by Arthur Giron, Summer Cyclone by Amy Fox, and Bill’s last play at the theatre, Klonsky & Schwartz by Romulus Linney. He agreed: “Bill was not the type to stick around and glad-hand. But he was a great storyteller; a natural comedian-tragedian. He loved acting when he was acting, but I always wondered if he loved other actors even more.”
Polly Adams was in Moving Bodies and many other plays with Bill; she remembered, “We all had so much fun. If rehearsal wasn’t going well, he’d whisper ‘it’s okay, I have a cab waiting!’ and we’d break up laughing. I’d never heard that one before!”
Bill figured often in shows during the early days of the 52nd Street Project, when the Project’s shows were staged at EST. All this time later, Project founder Willie Reale remembered a piece of Bill’s writing verbatim:
“He had a wonderful perspective and a hilarious disdain of show business. There was a line he wrote that I think about. It was a play where the kid played an actor whose career had hit the skids and was trying to launch a comeback. He is talking to an agent.
Agent: What have you done lately?
Actor: I just made a feature.
Agent: Really?
Actor: Yeah, I had the fourth lead in Three Men on a Jackass.”
When he started at EST, Bill made good money from commercials, but felt he couldn’t continue that way and dedicated himself to theatre. Eventually an open call led to a part in the Steppenwolf production of Orphans by Lyle Kessler, directed by Gary Sinise.
That performance led to film director John Milius casting him opposite Nick Nolte in Farewell To The King, and a screen career that eventually blossomed in the 2000s with In The Bedroom opposite Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson; and 13 Conversations About One Thing, opposite Alan Arkin.
Bill had his first stroke in 2008. When he showed up at EST a year later to see a play, it was a wonderful surprise. Christmas before last, he sent a personal email wishing us happy holidays, kidding and talking about movies like he always had. Again it was a wonderful surprise.
All these years since he was onstage here, so many people remember Bill’s singular talent, his sense of fun, and his generous spirit. We’re sending sympathy to Arleigh, his first wife Jane, their children Julie and John, and all Bill’s friends and castmates – and our gratitude, for the bright memories we have of him.
“When I think of Bill,” Chris wrote, “I always hear him making the same joke he would make at every reading and first rehearsal, seriously getting the entire company's attention as if he were about to say something very important, and then announcing with utter sincerity ‘I want to warn you all that there may be applause on my entrance.’
“Being with him in rehearsal was like working with a baggy pants vaudevillian who had been studying Stanislavsky and Chekhov. I miss him.”
