Ellie was the odd little woman who saw every production in Chicago theatre. She would take off from work and take public transportation from her northside home no matter how far away the theatre was.
Ellie was the audience member who laughed too loud during our performances, and if you looked out at the first row on a Wednesday afternoon, sometimes she was asleep. Then she would awaken with a start and laugh at something that wasn't meant to be funny and it would test our powers of concentration to keep from cracking up.
At Northlight Ellie would come to our Backstage with BJ events on Friday afternoons, listen to the talk with the designers and directors or actors, and then would astonish us by referencing everything with a catalogic knowledge of the Chicago theatre scene.
She knew all of us, what roles we did, what the plays were about, who designed them, directed them or choreographed them. She was astonishing. It was humbling to know that our little lives were being noted and followed by someone with such passion and diligence.
We are diminished by this, all of us. Ellie was as much a part of the theatre community as any of us. If you are reading this you are clearly a member of our little world. And today we are one family member less. Joe Van Slyke, Gene Jansen, Ellie Punkay... little by little we lose those of us who helped keep the foundation firm. Without the Ellie Punkays of the world, we strut and fret our little lives for fewer friends who watched us grow up, hone our craft, and witness our work written in water.
I will miss Ellie. She never actually addressed me as BJ or Beej or anything really. But she showed up on the bus, even in the snow, every Friday for Backstage with BJ. I don't know if you know what that meant to me personally, but it meant the world to me.
Ellie died alone in her apartment and was found days later. And I am in Louisville directing a play and won't be able to get to the funeral Mass which may have already taken place. But this play that I am directing will be for her. And I will miss all of her laughs in the wrong places. I'll hear them in my head, and I will feel the loss.
I wanted to enclose a portion of the e-mail I received:
She didn't keep a lot of close associations, so I don't know that the news has spread, but she is a woman who effected every one of us in the theater community of Chicago. She will now be watching us from a little bit farther from the third row, maybe the third light, I don't know.
Take a moment or two, if you will, and if you feel comfortable, to just remember her.
-From La Paz
David Heimann
