William J. Burghardt was a playwright and author who spent a dozen years as a theater critic and entertainment editor for local newspapers before returning to college at age 45 to pick up a teaching certificate and spending the rest of his career teaching high school English, drama and American studies in Naperville.
“I go back to this Michael Jordan quote, which is to develop the love of the game first and then learn it and pursue it and do that, and Burghardt was that person for me to develop the love of acting, and I know that that was (the case) for countless students,” said Los Angeles-based actor Nick Bender, a 2004 graduate of Naperville North High School in Naperville, where Burghardt taught.
Burghardt, 72, died of respiratory failure on June 28 at AccentCare Inpatient Hospice Center in Naperville, said his wife of 49 years, Maggie Fredricks. He had lived in Glen Ellyn since 1979.
Born in Berwyn, Burghardt grew up in Park Forest and graduated from the now-shuttered Rich East High School in 1971. He received a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric and composition in 1975 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Burghardt worked for Chicago-based encyclopedia publisher World Book Encyclopedia from 1975 until 1988, first as an editor of various publications and then, starting in 1984, as director of public relations and advertising.
In 1986, Burghardt began writing freelance theater reviews about local productions for the now-defunct Wheaton Daily Journal newspaper. After leaving World Book, he continued freelancing, and in 1990, he became the editor of the Wheaton Daily Journal’s DuPage Weekend entertainment section, which was published each Thursday, while continuing to review plays and musicals.
After the Wheaton Daily Journal merged with the Naperville Sun in 1992, Burghardt became an entertainment editor for the Sun. He also reviewed theater for College of DuPage’s WDCB-FM radio, and from 1998 until 2000, he reviewed local plays for the Daily Herald newspaper.
“What he really wanted to do was theater,” Burghardt’s wife said. “He worked hard to figure out how to combine his love of theater with journalism, so he started doing theater reviews.”
In the late 1990s, Burghardt enrolled at Elmhurst College to earn a certificate to teach high school. In 1999, Burghardt was hired by Naperville North, where he taught theater and began overseeing plays at the high school.
“He definitely brought that avuncular spirit — that family spirit — in teaching theater,” Bender said. “He taught us all about life and not just what was in the classroom. He always had the advice that you didn’t even think you were going to need.”
Among the plays Burghardt directed for the school’s theater group were “12 Angry Jurors” and “Angels Fall,” both of which won invitations to the Illinois High School Theater Festival downstate.
Burghardt also co-taught American Studies with history teacher Dan Iverson.
“He was really passionate with respect to his desire to help students really … understand the soul of what the arts could be, including literature and drama. Specifically, he was passionate about the work of J.D. Salinger,” Iverson said. “I had not had any prior appreciation for the theater, and we were able to integrate that into our classroom through the use of plays like ‘The Crucible’ as a way of teaching American history.”
One of the bolder productions that Burghardt staged at Naperville North, Iverson recalled, was Moises Kaufman’s 2000 three-act play “The Laramie Project,” about Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student in Wyoming who in 1998 was brutalized for his identity, tied to a fence and left to die. Burghardt staged and directed the play in the fall of 2002, and it won rave reviews and was presented later at the state theater festival.
“He was ahead of his time that way,” Iverson said. “He saw the importance of doing that — it hit a lot of kids in the theater community, and the fact that he was willing to do that and push that early was a really big contribution to the North community, I think. And it was wildly successful and it was an excellent performance but it (also) did really well statewide.”
In 2008, while staging and directing Ira Levin’s play “Deathtrap” at Naperville North, his lead actor had to leave the show for personal reasons with eight days to go. He tapped Bender, by then four years removed from high school and a professional actor who had majored in film and theater at the University of Southern California, to learn 60 pages of dialogue and take on the role of lead character Sidney Bruhl, a scheming playwright.
After that, Burghardt gave Bender some assistant directing opportunities at Naperville North as well.
“He gave me every opportunity and opened every door,” Bender said.
Burghardt retired from Naperville North in 2012.
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Burghardt also wrote and directed his own plays, and in 1977 he began a long association with the Village Theatre Guild, a small theater in Glen Ellyn where he once served as board president. He also acted in 24 of the theater’s plays and directed 14 of them.
The Village Theatre in 1991 staged the first play that Burghardt wrote, “Just Before the Snow Melts,” a semi-autobiographical work about college students in a bar pondering imminent graduation. The play was the first original premiere staged by the Village Theatre.
Although Burghardt, a longtime fan of playwright and filmmaker David Mamet, acknowledged that there were some similarities between his play and Mamet’s slice-of-life dramas, he told the Tribune in 1991 that “Mamet writes more about the seedy side of life than I do.”
A second play that Burghardt wrote, “Shadow Stock,” was staged in 1995 at the Village Theatre.
“He was very passionate, and very committed to the work and knew so much about drama and theater and again, he was committed to getting it right and bringing the truth,” said Village Theatre Board President Lisa Dolnics.
In recent years, Burghardt wrote the Village Theatre’s playbill copy and publicity copy, Dolnics said.
Burghardt also wrote a semi-autobiographical book, “When Mongrel Dogs Teach,” as well as “Walking Backward in My Father’s Footsteps,” an account of Burghardt’s father’s military service.
Burghardt served on Glen Ellyn’s library board in the early 1990s.
Burghardt also is survived by two daughters, Jordan and Michelle Lemos; a son, Zachary; two sisters, Barbara and Ginni; and three grandchildren.
Services were held.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.