Michael Maggio, a theater director known for his appetite for a wide range of works -- from Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett to Tom Stoppard and Stephen Sondheim -- but perhaps as much for his own personal drama, died on Saturday in Chicago, where he was born and lived most of his life. He was 49.
His wife, Rachel Kraft, said the cause was complications from lymphoma, which he developed as a result of extensive drug treatments following a successful double lung transplant in 1991.
An active and popular figure in the fertile Chicago theater community, Mr. Maggio had been associate artistic director of the Goodman Theater, the city's largest nonprofit theater, since 1987, and was recently appointed dean of the theater school at DePaul University, where he had been a professor since 1996. But long before that, he directed shows for a number of Chicago companies, becoming a leading contributor to a rising local theater scene that over the past quarter-century has made Chicago a rival to New York.
Equally at home with classics and with new plays, with dramas as well as with comedies and musicals, he directed productions that included Mr. Stoppard's ''Travesties'' and ''Arcadia''; Beckett's ''Endgame'' and ''Waiting for Godot''; Mr. Sondheim's ''Sunday in the Park with George'' and ''A Little Night Music''; and ''Romeo and Juliet.'' That production, set in Chicago's Little Italy at the turn of the 20th century, led Joseph Papp to ask him to direct ''Titus Andronicus'' for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in 1989.
His last work was a new play at the Goodman, ''Boy Meets Girl,'' by Rebecca Gilman, which he was expected to restage at the Manhattan Theater Club next season.
Perhaps his most striking work was on ''Wings,'' a musical by Jeffrey Lunden and Arthur Perlman, based on Arthur Kopit's play of the same title. The show, about a woman aviator who is debilitated by a stroke, was his first after his lung surgery and was transferred successfully from the Goodman to the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York in 1993.
The critic David Richards wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Maggio understood the central character ''intuitively, having journeyed over similar landscapes and conquered many of the same paralyzing fears.''
''This accounts for the scrupulous honesty of the evening,'' he wrote.
Mr. Maggio was an exception to the F. Scott Fitzgerald dictum about second acts in American life. Born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that progressively clogs the lungs with mucus, Mr. Maggio was by his mid-30's a wan, concave-chested man who weighed perhaps 100 pounds and took an oxygen tent to the theater with him when he had the strength to work at all. According to his doctor, he was six months from death when, in a 13-hour operation, he received the lungs of a teenager killed in an auto accident.
Miraculously provided with a vigor he had never had, he was robust within months, with the bounce of a soccer player. But it was rejuvenation with a price: the knowledge that his body might someday wither from the effort of maintaining the new organs. In the intervening years, he often spoke of this astonishing chapter of his life as a bonus.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his parents, Carlo and Genevieve; a sister, Dona Will, of White Bear, Minn.; and a son, Ben, from a previous marriage.
His wife, Rachel Kraft, said the cause was complications from lymphoma, which he developed as a result of extensive drug treatments following a successful double lung transplant in 1991.
An active and popular figure in the fertile Chicago theater community, Mr. Maggio had been associate artistic director of the Goodman Theater, the city's largest nonprofit theater, since 1987, and was recently appointed dean of the theater school at DePaul University, where he had been a professor since 1996. But long before that, he directed shows for a number of Chicago companies, becoming a leading contributor to a rising local theater scene that over the past quarter-century has made Chicago a rival to New York.
Equally at home with classics and with new plays, with dramas as well as with comedies and musicals, he directed productions that included Mr. Stoppard's ''Travesties'' and ''Arcadia''; Beckett's ''Endgame'' and ''Waiting for Godot''; Mr. Sondheim's ''Sunday in the Park with George'' and ''A Little Night Music''; and ''Romeo and Juliet.'' That production, set in Chicago's Little Italy at the turn of the 20th century, led Joseph Papp to ask him to direct ''Titus Andronicus'' for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in 1989.
His last work was a new play at the Goodman, ''Boy Meets Girl,'' by Rebecca Gilman, which he was expected to restage at the Manhattan Theater Club next season.
Perhaps his most striking work was on ''Wings,'' a musical by Jeffrey Lunden and Arthur Perlman, based on Arthur Kopit's play of the same title. The show, about a woman aviator who is debilitated by a stroke, was his first after his lung surgery and was transferred successfully from the Goodman to the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York in 1993.
The critic David Richards wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Maggio understood the central character ''intuitively, having journeyed over similar landscapes and conquered many of the same paralyzing fears.''
''This accounts for the scrupulous honesty of the evening,'' he wrote.
Mr. Maggio was an exception to the F. Scott Fitzgerald dictum about second acts in American life. Born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that progressively clogs the lungs with mucus, Mr. Maggio was by his mid-30's a wan, concave-chested man who weighed perhaps 100 pounds and took an oxygen tent to the theater with him when he had the strength to work at all. According to his doctor, he was six months from death when, in a 13-hour operation, he received the lungs of a teenager killed in an auto accident.
Miraculously provided with a vigor he had never had, he was robust within months, with the bounce of a soccer player. But it was rejuvenation with a price: the knowledge that his body might someday wither from the effort of maintaining the new organs. In the intervening years, he often spoke of this astonishing chapter of his life as a bonus.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his parents, Carlo and Genevieve; a sister, Dona Will, of White Bear, Minn.; and a son, Ben, from a previous marriage.
Michael Maggio, a theater director known for his appetite for a wide range of works -- from Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett to Tom Stoppard and Stephen Sondheim -- but perhaps as much for his own personal drama, died on Saturday in Chicago, where he was born and lived most of his life. He was 49.
His wife, Rachel Kraft, said the cause was complications from lymphoma, which he developed as a result of extensive drug treatments following a successful double lung transplant in 1991.
An active and popular figure in the fertile Chicago theater community, Mr. Maggio had been associate artistic director of the Goodman Theater, the city's largest nonprofit theater, since 1987, and was recently appointed dean of the theater school at DePaul University, where he had been a professor since 1996. But long before that, he directed shows for a number of Chicago companies, becoming a leading contributor to a rising local theater scene that over the past quarter-century has made Chicago a rival to New York.
Equally at home with classics and with new plays, with dramas as well as with comedies and musicals, he directed productions that included Mr. Stoppard's ''Travesties'' and ''Arcadia''; Beckett's ''Endgame'' and ''Waiting for Godot''; Mr. Sondheim's ''Sunday in the Park with George'' and ''A Little Night Music''; and ''Romeo and Juliet.'' That production, set in Chicago's Little Italy at the turn of the 20th century, led Joseph Papp to ask him to direct ''Titus Andronicus'' for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in 1989.
His last work was a new play at the Goodman, ''Boy Meets Girl,'' by Rebecca Gilman, which he was expected to restage at the Manhattan Theater Club next season.
Perhaps his most striking work was on ''Wings,'' a musical by Jeffrey Lunden and Arthur Perlman, based on Arthur Kopit's play of the same title. The show, about a woman aviator who is debilitated by a stroke, was his first after his lung surgery and was transferred successfully from the Goodman to the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York in 1993.
The critic David Richards wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Maggio understood the central character ''intuitively, having journeyed over similar landscapes and conquered many of the same paralyzing fears.''
''This accounts for the scrupulous honesty of the evening,'' he wrote.
Mr. Maggio was an exception to the F. Scott Fitzgerald dictum about second acts in American life. Born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that progressively clogs the lungs with mucus, Mr. Maggio was by his mid-30's a wan, concave-chested man who weighed perhaps 100 pounds and took an oxygen tent to the theater with him when he had the strength to work at all. According to his doctor, he was six months from death when, in a 13-hour operation, he received the lungs of a teenager killed in an auto accident.
Miraculously provided with a vigor he had never had, he was robust within months, with the bounce of a soccer player. But it was rejuvenation with a price: the knowledge that his body might someday wither from the effort of maintaining the new organs. In the intervening years, he often spoke of this astonishing chapter of his life as a bonus.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his parents, Carlo and Genevieve; a sister, Dona Will, of White Bear, Minn.; and a son, Ben, from a previous marriage.
His wife, Rachel Kraft, said the cause was complications from lymphoma, which he developed as a result of extensive drug treatments following a successful double lung transplant in 1991.
An active and popular figure in the fertile Chicago theater community, Mr. Maggio had been associate artistic director of the Goodman Theater, the city's largest nonprofit theater, since 1987, and was recently appointed dean of the theater school at DePaul University, where he had been a professor since 1996. But long before that, he directed shows for a number of Chicago companies, becoming a leading contributor to a rising local theater scene that over the past quarter-century has made Chicago a rival to New York.
Equally at home with classics and with new plays, with dramas as well as with comedies and musicals, he directed productions that included Mr. Stoppard's ''Travesties'' and ''Arcadia''; Beckett's ''Endgame'' and ''Waiting for Godot''; Mr. Sondheim's ''Sunday in the Park with George'' and ''A Little Night Music''; and ''Romeo and Juliet.'' That production, set in Chicago's Little Italy at the turn of the 20th century, led Joseph Papp to ask him to direct ''Titus Andronicus'' for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in 1989.
His last work was a new play at the Goodman, ''Boy Meets Girl,'' by Rebecca Gilman, which he was expected to restage at the Manhattan Theater Club next season.
Perhaps his most striking work was on ''Wings,'' a musical by Jeffrey Lunden and Arthur Perlman, based on Arthur Kopit's play of the same title. The show, about a woman aviator who is debilitated by a stroke, was his first after his lung surgery and was transferred successfully from the Goodman to the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York in 1993.
The critic David Richards wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Maggio understood the central character ''intuitively, having journeyed over similar landscapes and conquered many of the same paralyzing fears.''
''This accounts for the scrupulous honesty of the evening,'' he wrote.
Mr. Maggio was an exception to the F. Scott Fitzgerald dictum about second acts in American life. Born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that progressively clogs the lungs with mucus, Mr. Maggio was by his mid-30's a wan, concave-chested man who weighed perhaps 100 pounds and took an oxygen tent to the theater with him when he had the strength to work at all. According to his doctor, he was six months from death when, in a 13-hour operation, he received the lungs of a teenager killed in an auto accident.
Miraculously provided with a vigor he had never had, he was robust within months, with the bounce of a soccer player. But it was rejuvenation with a price: the knowledge that his body might someday wither from the effort of maintaining the new organs. In the intervening years, he often spoke of this astonishing chapter of his life as a bonus.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his parents, Carlo and Genevieve; a sister, Dona Will, of White Bear, Minn.; and a son, Ben, from a previous marriage.
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