Theater champion and educator Sheila Livingston, who touched thousands of lives, dies at 93

The curtain has fallen on a real-life theater hero who some have likened to an angel.

Sheila Livingston, a theater educator and humanitarian whose work for more than 50 years at the Guthrie Theater enabled hundreds of thousands of students to feel a sense of belonging, died Wednesday at home in Minneapolis. She was 93. She was recently hospitalized for a systemic infection, said daughter Franci Livingston.

"Without question, Sheila impacted more people than any other person who ever worked at the Guthrie," said former artistic director Joe Dowling. "Her influence cannot be overstated."

Officially, her titles at the Guthrie included head of the volunteer Stagehands organization, which helped with housing actors and planning parties, and education director and community affairs director. Livingston was hired by artistic director Michael Langham in 1971 to build the company's award-winning educational programs, bringing teachers and students to the theater from the five-state area on free or reduced-fare trips for a cultural education.

"Michael Langham asked me to join the staff after he kept hearing people say, we should hire someone like Sheila," Livingston said in her last interview with the Star Tribune in 2020.

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and raised in a small town in Saskatchewan with scant exposure to arts and culture, she attended her first professional play as a 20-year-old newlywed. It was "Richard III" at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, an institution co-founded in 1953 by Tyrone Guthrie and designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch.

The experience ignited her lifelong passion for theater not simply as engaging entertainment but as a tool with which to build community. She would get to practice that in full when she moved to the Twin Cities just as Guthrie and Moiseiwitsch were building a new theater.

The relocation was occasioned by husband Ken Livingston's taking over of the family business, the Northwest Corrugated Box Co. on Marshall Street in Minneapolis.

"Ken was passionate about theater," Livingston said, "and we partook of it."

Both also believed in the idea that theater belonged to everyone and that everyone should feel welcomed, especially at the celebrated Guthrie Theater.

"The memory that most people will have of Sheila is about her warmth, openness and friendliness," Dowling said, adding that her work sprung from a wellspring of seeing the best in people.

At the Guthrie's 40th anniversary, the theater established a fund to honor the Livingstons.

"I said to her, 'You decide what you want to do with this money,'" Dowling recalled. "And she said, 'I want to have a day where parents can bring children and introduce them to the words of Shakespeare.

"That was her way, always thinking about how to make theater more of a community-embracing organization."

Project Success, which has brought more than 200,000 students to shows over the past 29 years, was another of her projects. She joined the board and encouraged its founder, Adrienne Diercks, just as the organization was launching.

"Sheila was my mentor, my champion and my friend," Diercks said. "She was a champion for kids, theater and especially Shakespeare."

Actor and singer T. Mychael Rambo grew emotional as he recalled Livingston, who helped get him to sing the national anthem at presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign rally at Target Center in 2008. Rambo said his mother would tear up every time she recounted the event.

Livingston was kind to everybody, Rambo said. "She was blessed as an angel would be to transform people's lives."

Besides Franci, of Minneapolis, survivors include daughters Robin Livingston-Richter of Minneapolis, Sandy Friedman of Cleveland and several grandchildren. Services were held Sunday.

Donations may be made to the Kenneth and Sheila Livingston Education Fund at the Guthrie Theater.