You’ve probably seen Norman Rockwell’s painting “Freedom of Speech” used online as a meme: A blue-collar man in a plaid shirt, standing up in a crowded public meeting to speak, perhaps to make a point that challenges the conventional wisdom in the room.
As an actor, John Kishline had much in common with Rockwell’s figure. On the street, the longtime Milwaukeean could pass for a local everyman. But on stage, though he had the looks and carriage to play authority figures, Kishline could often be heard saying something questioning, challenging or contrarian.
Kishline died June 23 at age 78 from complications of lung cancer, according to his wife, actor Deborah Clifton.
During more than 30 years as a core ensemble member of the experimental group Theatre X, and then with Next Act Theatre, Theatre Gigante and other groups, Kishline acted in seemingly countless productions in Milwaukee, around the United States and in other countries. He wrote and directed, too.
“He described himself not as an actor, but as a theatrical anthropologist, creating pieces that reflected the times he lived through,” his family wrote in an obituary of the man universally known, even to his wife, as Kish.
His signature works included “Success,” a play he wrote that Theatre X premiered in 1990. For research, he interviewed business leader Sheldon Lubar, former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist and late advertising executive Dennis Frankenberry, among others, about success and its costs in our culture. His play’s protagonist was an advertising executive who has helped elect a conservative president of the United States. Then a leftist candidate from another country wants to hire the ad man for her campaign.
“I put some of Mayor Norquist’s words from our interview into the mouth of” the female candidate, Kishline told the Journal Sentinel’s Damien Jaques in a 1990 interview.
He also told Jaques he was not making a moral judgment about the decisions the ad executive makes. “It is my job to raise the issues. The audience can make the judgments. I don’t have to do it for them.”
Somewhat presciently, given what phones have become in our culture, Kishline said in 1990 that the executive’s phone, constantly in use, was itself a character in the play.
In 2011, Kishline was invited to propose a production for a theater festival in India seeking new American works with small casts. Clifton turned to him said, “Kish, what about ‘Success’?” That led to interviewing Indian actors by Skype, and productions, with both Kishline and Clifton in the cast, in India and Milwaukee.
Humorously, Kishline and Clifton, who had been stalwarts of the daring Theatre X, had to prove to that Indian festival’s organizers that they were experimental enough. “Theatre X is pre-Google,” Clifton said with amusement in a 2011 interview.
Dating back to 1976, when Clifton joined Theatre X, she and Kishline acted in many shows together. Responding to questions for a 2005 Journal Sentinel article about theater couples in Milwaukee, they said they were on again, off again until they “happily got together” in 1986. They were married on Valentine’s Day of 1989.
To the question of whether they ever had a romantic moment onstage together, Kishline responded this way:
“Yes, when I attacked her every night as a werewolf before she shot me with a silver bullet,” he wrote, referring to the Theatre X production “My Werewolf.” “Also, a reconciliation scene as husband and wife in Wilde’s ‘An Ideal Husband.’ It was strange getting notes from someone else [the director] on how to be romantic with each other.”
“He was a fierce friend, a wise sage, a loving husband, an excellent father, a jack-of-all-trades who could fix anything or build any of his wife’s ‘great ideas,’ and a better-than-average golfer who managed to win an exceptionally gaudy trophy twice and go out undefeated,” his family wrote in their obit of Kish.
Born and raised in Kenosha, Kishline is a Tremper High School alumnus. He also graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but there’s an entertaining asterisk to that bare fact.
He finished his UWM studies in 1975, but the university withheld his diploma because he owed $11 in parking fines. “By the time I finished my classes, I had been a professional actor for four years, and whether or not I had a diploma didn’t loom too large in my future,” he told the Milwaukee Journal’s Meg Kissinger in 1992.
But when Kishline returned to UWM in 1992 to direct a production of “Gilgamesh” for the Professional Theatre Training Program, his students paid the $11 fine and presented him with the framed receipt and his diploma.
However he felt about parking regulations, Kishline took the craft of theater seriously.
“One of my favorite stories about working with Kish was when I directed him in Beckett’s ‘A Piece of Monologue’ for Theatre X,” theater artist Isabelle Kralj wrote in an email.
“The piece was about 25-30 minutes long, and I asked him if he would be willing to stand absolutely still the entire time – to speak the text, but not move anything – and he was game,” Kralj wrote.
“When the show closed, he said it was one of the hardest things he had ever done – it’s incredibly difficult and painful to stand still for that long a time. But, he, being the marvel that he is, did it – and his delivery was incredibly and absolutely beautiful.”
In addition to Clifton, Kishline is survived by their son, Sam, and Kish’s dog, Nash. A memorial service will take place at Next Act Theatre at a date to be announced later.
Clifton suggested memorial contributions to Next Act Theatre. “He loved working there,” she wrote in an email message.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee actor John Kishline was committed to raising questions
Reporting by Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
