What PJ Paparelli knew, and why he mattered

Doreen Ambrose-Van Lee was born in 1969 in the Cabrini-Green housing project. She became a poet and, sometime later, found publishers and an audience. Her story is central to “The Project(s),” the masterful American Theater Company exploration of the historical complexities of public housing in Chicago. Fate determined that “The Project(s),” which is playing through June 21, would be the final project for PJ Paparelli, who was killed in an automobile accident in Scotland last week, leaving a hole in cultural Chicago as wide as the Atlantic Ocean he’d crossed for his vacation.

The loss of the 40-year-old director, whom I thought a creative genius, hit very hard for many who follow the arts in Chicago. Scores of emails have flooded into my inbox in the last few days, including a note from former Boy Scout who said he was earned the theater merit badge by Paparelli at the Goose Pond Boy Scout camp in Pennsylvania. “He made me believe that anything is possible,” Tom Salitsky wrote, recalling a summer of 23 years ago.

Nonetheless, one group of tributes from a particular category of person has stood out. These are the notes from the people whose stories Paparelli told in the theater, and who felt that he had uniquely honored the subject.

There were two pieces where this was particularly true. One was “Columbinus,” a remarkably complex look at the fallout from one of the darkest days in American history — the killings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. It was an event that was claimed to be symptomatic of many different things by people with agendas. But alongside his friend Stephen Karam, Paparelli revealed all the sides of that particularly violent prism.

In 2013, he revisited “Columbinus” at ATC, updating the piece and including new recollections and revelations about its cause. On opening night, some of those who were there or had lost loved ones were present in the audience. I talked with a few of them; they felt that Paparelli had been fair, honest, unstinting and, most important of all, primarily interested in the point of view of those who lived that day in real time, in personal experience. One such Colorado couple, Randy and Judy Brown, sent a note both sad and thankful: “We loved him, as a friend and as another son,” they wrote, repeating that his work had been true.

Ambrose-Van Lee, being a poet, wrote a poem for Paparelli, even though, she said, they were from “two different galaxies.” Here’s a small part of what she wrote:

“I will always remember how you stopped in the park to pitch a tent for the members of a Cabrini-Green reunion,” she wrote. “I will always remember seeing the intense ‘Project(s)’ rehearsal. I will always remember how you approached the residents of Cabrini with such humility and not like inanimate objects. I will always remember the way you looked on the opening night of ‘The Project(s).’ I will always remember you, PJ.”

Paparelli was an artist with eclectic tastes and an uncanny sense of what was right for the moment. In my typical working week, I frequently find myself wondering why a particular theater has done a particular show at a particular moment. But I never had any of those thoughts at a Paparelli production. He always seemed to know how to fit his artistic interests to the needs of the moment. In journalism, they usually call this the “hook,” the reason to write what you are reading right now. Art has a complex relationship with the present; many of its practitioners think long term, and some consider themselves above the quotidian needs of the present. But not Paparelli. He had a knack for programming what you needed to see. Tonight. No wonder he was always so interested in primary sources. He wanted to make news as well as art.