Marie J. Kilker | Longtime ATCA member dies at 92
For about 40 years for multiple print and online publications, Marie J. Kilker didn’t hesitate to share her opinions about the latest theater productions in Sarasota, FL, or the shows she saw on her many national and international travels with the American Theatre Critics Association. And she certainly wasn’t shy about expressing her thoughts about what was happening in the world with friends and colleagues.
Dave Lefkowitz, Marie’s editor at TotalTheater.com, said that for years, she produced “succinct, pointed but never snarky reviews.” She was a regular on opening nights in the Sarasota area until February, when a variety of health challenges made it impossible to continue. She passed away on June 2, a little more than a month before her 93rd birthday.
For most of her time in Sarasota, she was rarely without an outlet, from the monthly West Coast Woman newspaper, to working with Lefkowitz and such other review sites as Don411.com and AisleSay.com, which made her reviews accessible to a national readership. Reviewing allowed her to combine her love of language, writing, theater and learning.
Theater criticism was part of a new chapter in her life after she moved to Sarasota with her husband, James, a professor emeritus of French Studies at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, and she was particularly opinionated about productions that had any ties to French theatrical traditions and history.
Dr. Marie Jeanne Petrone Kilker was born July 26, 1933, in Chicago. In an obituary, her daughters Ondine and Kristin, wrote that she “lived a rich and accomplished life that spanned nearly 93 years and touched countless students, colleagues, artists and readers. A distinguished educator, scholar, writer, editor, theater critic and lifelong advocate for the arts, her career spanned more than seven decades.”
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa in 1954, winning a national magazine writing contest for the short story “The Pink Shirt.” She later earned a masters at Loyola University Chicago, while teaching second grade at Holy Rosary School and working as a correspondent for the Container Corporation of America. She later taught English, journalism and drama at Mount Aloysius Junior College in Pennsylvania and joined the Department of English at St. Xavier College in Chicago in 1958. In 1972, she earned her PhD from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale with a degree combining speech, theater and English.
Marie and Jim were a familiar presence at many ATCA national conferences until his passing in 2012. Together, they coordinated a theater trip to Paris for ATCA members.
Lefkowitz said Marie earned her “ATCA travel beret” on that trip by “wrangling a passel of sleep-deprived, grumpy critics around a foreign country in often lousy weather” and worked magic apologizing to a frustrated artistic director who saw many of them sleeping through a production on their first day in the city. He assumed they hated his show, but Lefkowitz said Marie helped him understand they were just exhausted from traveling overnight.
That trip was an extension of Marie’s deep commitment to ATCA and her work to broaden the organization’s connection to the rest of the world.
“Marie was always a vocal advocate for international engagement and worked hard to promote building bridges between global cultures,” recalled Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, the IATC president, who worked with her on the ATCA international committee for years. “For her, there were never enough opportunities for international exchange and she pushed ATCA to enhance our international connections.”
Jenkins said she was “one of our excellent delegates,” along with Michael Howley, to the 2016 International Association of Theatre Critics World Congress in Belgrade.
Over the years, Marie built a large group of friends among ATCA members, and she was respected by her fellow Sarasota critics and the arts organizations she reviewed. She also worked with some of them as a grants writer in the last few years of her life.
The family said memorial donations may be made to “organizations supporting theater or arts,” including https://www.floridastudiotheatre.org/support-us
A funeral will be held June 13, 2026 in Sarasota and another mass will be held later in the summer in Chicago.
– Submitted by Jay Handelman
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.