Tim Fried-Fiori (1960-2025)
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Director, actor, playwright, producer, entrepreneur and prominent voice in Chicago theater for over 20 years Tim Fried-Fiori passed away at the age of 65. In addition to his work in Chicago, Tim was the Executive Director of the Express Children’s Theatre in Houston, a post he had held for more than a decade at the time of his death.
Tim’s career was multi-faceted. From 1986 to 1999, he served as the Artistic Director of Pilsen’s innovative Blue Rider Theater, overseeing significant expansions in the theater’s programming and income. During Tim’s tenure, Blue Rider went from producing one original play annually to offering year-round, multi-arts productions in music, theater, dance, art exhibitions, children’s programs and multicultural/multidisciplinary performance festivals. He quadrupled the Blue Rider budget by securing grants, corporate sponsorships, and individual donations in addition to managing Blue Rider staff and volunteers. Artists flocked to Blue Rider for the annual Nights of the Blue Rider festival, including puppet/spectacle creators from Redmoon, avant-garde absurdists from Theater Oobleck and acclaimed solo artist and Blue Rider founder Donna Blue Lachman among them. On a Sept. 12 Facebook post, Jonathan Pitts recalled seeing Tim in Blue Rider’s “The Demon Show”, where he played “a food demon who lived in a fridge” in the devised piece. Tim’s passion for children’s theater was evident in Pitts’ “Kidz Writes” program, where local students wrote pieces for adults to produce and perform. “Tim so liked the Kidz Writes project that years later he was in the cast when we did a different version written by blind and visually disabled kids that we performed outdoors in the round,” Pitts recalled. “Tim was a great guy. Very talented. So smart. So funny. Sly and subversive and occasionally dark. He was a friend, a mensch, a mentor, and a collaborator to so many theatre people both in Chicago and in Houston.” The Chicago Tribune quoted Fried-Fiori in a 1999 piece on Blue Rider’s closure after a 14-year run. “I think with me, (Blue Rider) turned more into a multidisciplinary space. I had discovered this vast world of performance in Chicago, in experimental music, dance and poetry, and I had a voracious hunger for it.” In 2012, Tim and his wife Sari Fried-Fiori founded Fried-Fiori Enterprises, which provided services including talent acquisition, performance management, development and human resources strategy. In 2014, Tim became Executive Director of Express Children’s Theatre. For 10 years in the post, he oversaw roughly 250 yearly performances for some 75,000 Houston-area children and their families. In announcing Tim’s passing, Express summed up his legacy: “His spirit lives on in every play, performance and residency that brings joy and meaning to children for generations to come.” |