Ruth Schudson, who co-founded the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in the 1970s and spent decades as a regular player at local theater venues, died peacefully on Dec. 19. She was 98.
In an interview conducted by Linda Marcus in May of 2005 for the Jewish Museum Milwaukee Archive’s video oral history project, Schudson said she couldn’t come up with a single regret in life. She told Marcus that she felt “pretty lucky” when she reflected on her life, having been able to realize her professional ambitions in acting as well as start a family: “To have had both. And to have enjoyed both so.”
Schudson, who was born in Milwaukee in 1926, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago (now The Theatre School at DePaul University) before returning home to take the stage at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Next Act Theatre, Windfall Theatre, and The Robert G. Pitman Theatre at Alverno College, among others. She founded the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre in 1993 alongside her best friend Monty Davis. The theater continues to operate as a nonprofit with a mission of “employing and nurturing principally local theatre artists.”
“All I ever wanted to do in my professional life was work with good people,” Schudson said. “And it was not necessary that everybody in the world know I was doing it.”
Schudson told Marcus that during her high school years, she “always did plays at the Jewish Center.” She considered that her passion for acting may have originated with her father, who was an actor and director in Russia before her parents immigrated to the U.S. When asked when she chose to be an actor, Schudson said that it chose her: “I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision,” she said. “It was like being Jewish. That’s who I was.”
When Marcus posed the question of how being Jewish may have impacted her acting, Schudson said that there is “a sensitivity, an access to emotion, that seemed to come to the fore more readily in Jewish people,” attributing this quality to the struggles of Jewish history.
“There’s something so special about the Jewish personality,” Schudson added in her interview. “I think that will survive. I cannot believe that that will fade away.”
Schudson is survived by her children, David and Nia, as well as her grandchild Deya, among other family members. When Marcus asked Schudson about her proudest accomplishment, she did not skip a beat before saying that it was, “without question,” her children.
“I could not have wished for better people,” she said. “I’m unspeakably proud of them.”
When asked how she would like to be remembered in her Jewish Museum Milwaukee interview, Schudson said, “With a smile.”
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