Celebrating Studs Terkel

The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago will host “Let’s Get Working,” a three-day festival honoring the life and work of Louis “Studs” Terkel, a Chicago legend and UChicago alumnus.

The May 9-11 festival will introduce Terkel’s legacy to new and younger audiences while highlighting individuals and groups, both local and national, who have been impacted, influenced and inspired by his work as a broadcaster, historian, actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

In addition to new works and original programming, the festival will include videos of Terkel and listening stations for people to more deeply engage his radio archive. There also will be screenings of Terkel’s early work in television and industrial, educational, and documentary films from the Media Burn Independent Video Archive.

In anticipation of the festival, a sampling of festival participants, Studs collaborators and admirers, tell us who Studs was…

“Studs was the lovable, humorous, feisty dowsing diviner of humanity in the 20th century.”

– Sydney Lewis, Terkel’s longtime collaborator on radio and books

“Studs Terkel was a master interviewer because he knew how to listen. Whether famous, or not so, Studs drew the extraordinary out of ordinary conversations which helped us all better understand our neighborhood, city, country and our world.”

– Tom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop

“Studs was a friend to the friendless.”

– Rick Perlstein, author, historian and journalist

“Studs was an adventure every day, both on the radio and in ‘real life.’ He loved doing shtick with everyone he encountered...and so did all of us who were lucky enough to be with him.”

– Tom Weinberg, Founder, Media Burn Independent Video Archive

“Studs was a righteous interviewer. He had all the right capacities: empathy, attention, good humor, charm, and most of all, an enduring interest in the ‘quintessential truths’ to be found in each and every one of us.”

– Alison Cuddy, Arts and Cultural Reporter, WBEZ

“Studs was dedicated to the common man. And because of him, we have access to knowing Chicago in a way that people near and far would never have had without him.”

– Leigh Fagin, Assistant Director of Collaborative Programming, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts

“Studs was in the middle of it all; no matter who we were— rich or poor; young or old; white or black; man or woman— he kept us all connected by constantly reminding us of our shared humanity. “

– Thomas Dyja, author, Third Coast

“Studs’ justly renowned empathy, generosity, and endless curiosity were matched by an intellect and a memory that in themselves were unmatched. And somehow, on top of all of his skills, commitments, and attributes, he also had impeccable taste in literature, music—both classical and popular, theatre, and film, and a perfect style as radio presenter, public speaker, and writer.”

-- Andrew Patner, author and Critic-at-Large, WFMT

“Studs was wide awake to the worlds around him.”

– Audrey Petty, author, High Rise Stories

“It’s not possible for me to speak about Studs in the past tense. With the words that are his legacy, Studs IS a voice of truth and reason that lives in me and many others.”

– Haskell Wexler, two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer, film producer, and director

“Studs is the guy on the bus going to work. He’s wearing a red checked shirt with blue blazer, has a half-smoked cigar in his hand, a rubber band on his wrist, likes to have a scotch at Riccardo’s, talk with people, is hopeful, and has a twinkle in his eyes.”

– Judy Hoffman, Professor of Practice in Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago