{"id":171902,"date":"2026-02-12T12:56:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T17:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=171902"},"modified":"2026-02-12T15:25:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:25:03","slug":"beloved-and-brilliant-martin-andrucki-dana-professor-emeritus-of-theater-dies-at-age-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2026\/02\/12\/beloved-and-brilliant-martin-andrucki-dana-professor-emeritus-of-theater-dies-at-age-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Beloved and brilliant Martin Andrucki, Dana Professor Emeritus of Theater at Bates, dies at age 80"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Theater Martin E. Andrucki, a beloved and brilliant teacher and scholar who secured a seat at the liberal arts table for Bates theater, died Feb. 8, 2026, at age 80. A faculty member for 47 years, Andrucki was among the longest-serving Bates professors in the college\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin Andrucki was a Bates professor for 47 years, among the longest service by a Bates faculty member, from 1974 to 2021, when he retired as the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Theater. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Raised in the Bronx, N.Y., Andrucki earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in English, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Columbia University and a doctoral degree in English from Harvard University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrucki\u2019s arrival at Bates for the 1974\u201375 academic year coincided with theater becoming a major for the first time. Yet the department, which at the time housed both theater and rhetoric, was at a low point due to retirements and departures. \u201cIt was on the verge of expiring,\u201d recalled Andrucki in 2021. Some at the college were openly questioning the legitimacy of theater as a liberal arts discipline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Martin Andrucki Service and Memorial Gifts<\/strong>
Martin Andrucki\u2019s obituary includes<\/a> information about his funeral service in Lewiston on Friday, Feb. 13; family and survivors; and a memorial gift designation to Bates. The service will be available via livestream<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

As with other young professors who joined Bates in the 1970s and 1980s and helped to build academic programs, Andrucki arrived brimming with gusto; an early student described him as bringing \u201ca fierce intellect and a wise-ass New York City sense of humor\u201d to Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The task before him 50 years ago, Andrucki recalled, was to \u201ccreate a curriculum that emphasized literature and theory and producing serious drama on our stages. We wanted our majors to be broadly educated in theater and drama and to see theater as one of the liberal arts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Martin Andrucki gazes at the Schaeffer Theatre stage in this circa 1980 photograph. Andrucki devoted his 47-year career to giving theater a place at the liberal arts table. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During retirement events in 2021, proof of his success resounded in the words of theater alumni. Theater at Bates \u201cequipped me with hands-on experiences I apply nearly every day in life,\u201d recalled Bobbi Bell Birkemeier \u201978. \u201cTime management and making deadlines, thinking quickly on one\u2019s feet, improvisation, how to take criticism and direction in a positive fashion, how to direct and delegate, and how to \u2018play nicely with others\u2019 in working collaboratively.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And from his first days on campus, his students felt Andrucki\u2019s intellect and generosity, his lofty standards coupled with a belief in their potential for success. \u201cMarty was completely invested in our work in the classroom and onstage,\u201d Sarah Pearson \u201975 said in 2021. \u201cMarty made me believe that anything was possible, and his confidence in me \u2014 in all of us \u2014 was invaluable and gave me the boost I needed to face the next stage of life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Recently
In this clipping from the The Daily Argus <\/em>of Mount Vernon, N.Y., teenaged Martin Andrucki (center), who had recently graduated from Mount Saint Michael Academy in the Bronx, practices swordplay to prepare for his role as Hamlet in a Croton-on-Hudson production of the play in July 1963. (The Daily Argus\/Newspapers.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe always seemed to focus on the big picture, the big idea, if you will. Plot. Character. Thought. Diction. Music and spectacle,\u201d said James Lapan \u201986. For Amanda San Roman \u201917, Andrucki was a \u201csteady and grounding force in my Bates experience. His subtle humor, wealth of intelligence, and supportive nature never went unnoticed by anyone he interacted with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrucki rose swiftly through the academic ranks. In 1975, he was promoted to assistant professor and that year began his decades-long service as department chair. He earned tenure in 1983, was promoted to full professor in 1990, and in 2001 was appointed to a Dana Professorship, one of the most prestigious faculty honors at Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
With stage manager Ben Cuba \u201916 at the ready, Martin Andrucki directs a rehearsal of Little Egypt<\/em> in Schaeffer Theatre in 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Though Bates theater was ripe for renewal in the mid-1970s, Andrucki was building on a firm foundation. Two years before his arrival, Bates had named its theater on College Street in honor of Lavinia Miriam Schaeffer, who retired in 1972 after leading the Bates theater program since 1938.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Andrucki noted in 2021, Schaeffer was a champion of the Little Theater Movement that emerged in the early 1900s in the U.S., which emphasized authenticity over grandiosity, \u201caiming to produce challenging drama in an intimate atmosphere,\u201d he said. The vibe always resonated with Andrucki. \u201cLet\u2019s remember Lavinia and those values as we move ahead,\u201d he said in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Students
Students of Martin Andrucki, seen teaching circa 1985, felt both his intellect and generosity, his lofty standards coupled with a belief in their potential for success. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At Bates, he taught courses on theater history, dramatic literature, directing, and playwriting. He directed more than 50 theatrical productions at Bates, in the U.S., and abroad. His directing ranged widely: classical and Shakespearean works such as Antigone<\/em>, Hamlet<\/em>, and A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>; European modern and political theater including Three Sisters<\/em>, Endgame<\/em>, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle<\/em>; American and contemporary plays such as Bus Stop<\/em>, The Skin of Our Teeth<\/em>, Eurydice<\/em>, and Love\/Sick<\/em>; as well as original and experimental projects including his own Marie and the Nutcracker<\/em> and the radio-play production Radio Waves<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sukanya
Cael Schwartz \u201919 (left) as Lord of the Underworld and Sukanya Shukla \u201920 (right) as Eurydice in Martin Andrucki’s 2018 production of Eurydice. “It\u2019s a wonderful synthesis of the traditional and the new, and therefore a great vehicle for doing theater in the liberal arts context,” said Andrucki. “Since our students\u2019 default mode is realism, this is a good opportunity to jog them out of their aesthetic habits.” (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

His can-do spirit inspired his students. In 1981, he scoured local junkyards to find the right prop for a production of Sam Shepard\u2019s The Unseen Hand<\/em>: a busted-up 1957 Ford sedan, hauled straight into the Schaeffer Theatre carpentry shop, where Andrucki chose to stage the avant-garde play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every other Short Term from 1999 to 2019, Andrucki and Kati Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater, led students to Budapest and Prague for the course \u201cCentral European Theater and Film,\u201d the college\u2019s longest-running off-campus Short Term program. \u201cAnd yes, Marty learned to speak and read Hungarian,\u201d said Vecsey, a Hungarian herself, noting the difficulty that English speakers have with the language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Martin Andrucki (top left) and Kati Vecsey (second row, second from right) pose with their students in Budapest during the two faculty member’s long-running Short Term course, “Central European Theater and Film.” (Courtesy of Kati Vecsey)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMarty and I watched many great, and many boring, theater productions together over the years,\u201d Vecsey said. \u201cWhen we would go to the theater, Marty always made sure to get an aisle seat, to make sure he had a quick way to escape if the show was unbearable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning Hungarian was just another example of Andrucki\u2019s smarts, streetwise and otherwise. \u201cThere was this mysterious skill that fired his intellectual life,\u201d Vecsey said, \u201ca capacity to explore new territories without forgetting the old ones.\u201d Andrucki brought \u201cprofound knowledge, wisdom, and humor into every room [he] entered, both as a director and as a professor,\u201d said Maddy Shmalo \u201919. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Colin
Marie and the Nutcracker<\/em>, Martin Andrucki’s new take on the old story, staged at Schaeffer Theatre in November 2015, included Colin McIntire \u201916 (left) as Drosselmeier and Brennen Malone \u201917 (right) as the royal. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While he could be the smartest person in the room, Andrucki was often the most welcoming. \u201cHe seemed an untouchable mad genius to me at times, but at the same time a friend to sit and shoot the breeze with,\u201d Chuck Richardson \u201986 said during the 2021 retirement celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A course with Andrucki, recalled writer Elizabeth Strout \u201977 during a 2019 visit to campus, was not only one of her favorites, but also influenced her writing as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of fiction. In the course, Andrucki guided his students through plays by classic American playwrights like Eugene O\u2019Neill and Tennessee Williams. <\/em>\u201cHe loved those people so much that I loved them,\u201d Strout said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From reading the plays, Strout learned a valuable lesson about writing authentic dialogue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bestselling
Elizabeth Strout \u201977 greets Dana Professor of Theater Martin Andrucki, one of her formative Bates professors, following her talk in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall in 2019. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you write dialogue in a story or a novel, there has to be a translation between what people are actually saying to the page. You can\u2019t write what people are actually saying, because it\u2019s too boring. You\u2019ve got to translate it to the page in a way that sounds authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1979, Andrucki was named a Mellon Fellow to conduct research into the teaching of theater. In 1987 he joined a directors\u2019 forum at Columbia University, doing advanced studies with Liviu Ciulei, Lee Breuer, Adrian Hall, and others. He was a professor of English at the Harvard Summer School from 1993 to 1996. In 2002, he earned a Fulbright Scholar award for research in Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote four plays, including Manny\u2019s War<\/em>. Staged at Bates in 2000 in collaboration with The Public Theatre of Lewiston, the play helped a local man, Murray Schwartz, reconcile his feelings of failure as a World War II soldier.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"In
In fall 2000, Martin Andrucki posed with Murray Schwartz at his Mechanic Falls farm. Andrucki’s play Manny\u2019s War,<\/em> staged at Bates in October 2000, helped Schwartz reconcile his feelings of failure as a World War II prisoner of war. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Schwartz, like Andrucki, was a New Yorker transplanted to Maine. He had headed to war with pride as an avenging Jew, and earned a Combat Infantry Badge, a Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts, but then felt shame when, as a prisoner of war captured during the Battle of the Bulge, he resorted to stealing a fellow prisoner\u2019s bread. \u201cThe play caught the inner struggle,\u201d Schwartz said. \u201cNot the generals\u2019 strategies, but the betrayal of the will.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Andrucki wrote in Bates Magazine<\/em><\/a>, the play\u2019s opening night at Schaeffer Theatre saw Murray Schwartz \u201cwatching his wartime pain, psychological and physical, played out on stage. He was surrounded by family and friends, Bates people and Lewiston\u2013Auburn citizens, a full house serving witness to a fellow American\u2019s story.\u201d The play was nominated for the New Play Award of the American Theatre Critics Association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
In Ladd Library in March 2017, ahead of his fantastical production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/em>, Martin Andrucki quotes English writer Nicholas Rowe, who said that Shakespeare\u2019s greatness is most apparent when \u201che gives his imagination an entire loose, and raises his fancy to a flight above mankind.\u201d (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Andrucki was a prolific writer. He wrote a series of 15 critical essays published by the Portland Stage Company on topics ranging from love and lying in Sam Shepard\u2019s Fool for Love<\/em> to the handicap of virtue in Ted Tally\u2019s Terra Nova<\/em>. Among his hundreds of essays were 108 audience guides as a humanities scholar and dramaturge for two of Maine\u2019s professional theaters, Portland Stage Company and The Public Theatre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His writing appeared in Modern Philology, Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, <\/em>and The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. <\/em>In the early 1990s, he was host and writer of Wide Angle<\/em>, a weekly television show on Maine Public focused on Maine filmmakers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all his writing was theater-focused. In January 1981, he wrote a nostalgic essay recalling his childhood in the Bronx, and the memories of heating a home with coal, a fuel that made a resurgence during that historically cold winter. \u201cIt\u2019s the childhood I really had,\u201d he wrote. \u201cFor me, the rattling chute and dusty bin, the gritty ashcans and the pungent smell, are all redolent of New York in the last days of its unruffled pre-eminence, when televisions had round screens and no one had heard of the Sun Belt.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
In 2017, Martin Andrucki decided to set A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream <\/em>in 1930s America, with Fairyland a fantastical world of Hollywood\u2019s golden age because, he said, the play was was too often staged with \u201cactors covered in bark or in tutus, wearing mosquito wings.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Heating with coal in his Maine home created a connection with his son, Max, then 3 years old, the young boy being dazzled by the heat that poured forth from a pile of black rocks, \u201ca moment of connection between my childhood and his, a New York memory for my son from Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he retired in 2021, Andrucki had served Bates for 47 years, a tenure matched only by the late Karl Woodcock, professor of physics. To honor his career, the college\u2019s black box theater was then named the Martin Andrucki Black Box Theater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"LOVE\/
Emily Diaz \u201923, as Sarah, confronts Rishi Madnani \u201923, as Bill, in Martin Andrucki’s 2019 production of John Cariani’s Love\/Sick<\/em>. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Andrucki treated theater, and his teaching of theater, as both an intellectual discipline and a lived experience. \u201cI teach because I like working in a profession and at a place where intellectual and aesthetic values prevail, where telling the truth, as one understands it, is the objective,\u201d he said, during a retirement event. Drawing on the thinking of the late Princeton scholar and poet Michael Goldman, he went on to explain theater\u2019s power to deliver \u201ctotal education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For students, that meant discovering their \u201centire being rather than the intellect alone.\u201d Theater, Andrucki said, \u201cengages the whole self,\u201d whether as actor, director, designer, or playwright, in the deepest sense of education: the Latin educare<\/em>, to lead forth, to draw out what is already present and waiting to be revealed. \u201cWhich is what college is supposed to be all about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"LOVE\/
Martin Andrucki gives his actors notes after a dress rehearsal prior to the 2019 production of John Cariani’s Love\/Sick<\/em>. In a sense, said Andrucki, the play \u201cis about disposability in relationships \u2014 there\u2019s this sense of, you pick them up and you drop them. Everything is always on the verge of coming apart and ending.\u201d (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A beloved and brilliant teacher and scholar who secured a seat at the liberal arts table for Bates theater, Andrucki died Feb. 8, 2026, at age 80. A faculty member for 47 years, he was among the longest-serving Bates professors in the college\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":171926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11010,14,11009],"tags":[5702],"class_list":["post-171902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","category-faculty-staff","category-the-college","tag-martin-andrucki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171902"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171978,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171902\/revisions\/171978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}