You may not have known Linsey Falls’s name, but if you spent much time in the audience at Chicago non-Equity and storefront theaters over the years, you almost certainly knew his face and his voice. His expressive features, big eyes, and mischievous grin lit up the stage in comic roles, and his malleable voice and physical presence gave resonance to characters in everything from kids’ shows to Shakespeare.
Falls, 50, died of natural causes at his home in Chicago on November 5, leading to an overwhelming outpouring of grief and a bounty of tributes on social media from those who had worked with him and loved him. And it seems obvious that if you worked with him—you loved him.
Lifeline Theatre, where Falls most recently appeared as Inspector Lestrade in Christopher M. Walsh’s Miss Holmes Returns last fall, posted a Facebook statement praising that performance, as well as his roles in Middle Passage, The Man Who Was Thursday, and the Lifeline KidSeries production of Lyle Finds His Mother. “His passion for the stage brought big stories to life and touched the souls of all who had the privilege of witnessing his work. Linsey Falls, you will forever remain a treasured chapter in the story of Chicago theatre.”
Factory Theater also posted a tribute to their longtime collaborator, noting his wide range of roles for the company, including Hotel Aphrodite (“where he played the lascivious Councilman Allton, crashing a dinner party in a toga”); ‘Namosaur!, where he played “Stan ‘Tiger-Ass’ Hudson, the foul-mouthed marksman serving in Vietnam alongside Bigfoot and eaten by a dinosaur”; and Fight City, where his character “fought for change as an activist in a dystopian matriarchal society.”
The tribute also said, “As a friend, there was none better: generous, supportive, and funny as they come. . . . Each of us hopes to strive for the happiness that he so easily inspired and share that with others. Through that legacy, we’ll remember Linsey and the world will shine a little brighter. We lost Linsey on the 5th of November, and while he wasn’t part of Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder treason and plot, the city still shook that day.”
A partial list of the other companies that Falls worked with onstage: City Lit, Prop, Idle Muse, Akvavit, Eclectic Full Contact, Babes With Blades, Manual Cinema, and UrbanTheater Company. He also performed regularly with the competitive live lit show, Write Club.
As my email inbox and DMs filled up with tributes to Falls, it became clear to me that he represented the epitome of the Chicago storefront actor. Corrbette Pasko, producer and host of Write Club, wrote on Facebook, “There isn’t a corner of Chicago theater untouched and free from hurting. He’d cheer every single one of us up if he could, and if he couldn’t, he’d sit with us and our drink of choice.”
Falls didn’t make his living on the stage. (His most recent day job was as a senior CX administrator with Blueair India, and he held many positions in that field over the years, according to his LinkedIn profile.) But he definitely made his life in the theater. And as so many people noted, it wasn’t just because Falls was such a great and giving talent onstage. It was because he knew how to connect with people offstage, too.
Falls was born in Hinsdale Hospital while his parents, Howard Edward Falls and Ronnie Falls, were living in suburban Downers Grove. The family lived in Darien until around 1984, when they moved to Troy, Michigan. Falls’s father was an engineer for EDS, a division of General Motors.
In talking to his younger brother, Bill Falls (Linsey was the second of three children, including sister Mia), it seems clear that the performing bug hit at an early age. But Bill Falls says that singing was his older brother’s earliest passion. “His early influence was like New Edition and kind of that New Jack R&B.”
“He sang in our church choir. And he was always participating in talent shows and at school doing choreography and things like that. Comic books and literature in general were kind of his biggest passions in hindsight.”
Falls, who lives on the east coast and didn’t get to see his brother perform in Chicago very often, says, “He was just this very lively spirited person, kind of like a Peter Pan or Pied Piper type of personality, if that makes sense.”
Linsey Falls attended Morehouse College as an English major (Bill Falls notes that their mother’s side of the family is from Atlanta, so it was a “second home” for them), and then went into Web development, working for a few years in the Philippines. He arrived in Chicago in the mid-aughts (no one seems entirely sure of the year), and quickly began making a name for himself in the comedy and theater scene.
His longtime friend Christopher Donaldson, with whom Falls performed as one half of “The Gentlemen Follies,” a pair of “time-traveling vaudevillians,” noted in an email: “We met in a Level A class at Second City. I was a gawky, dorky outsized man-baby in a Spider-Man hockey jersey. Linsey took one look at me and said, ‘That motherfucker is going to be my friend.’ (He loved telling people that story. There’s a lesson I should have learned; it was quick, to the point, and told the whole story.) And it was true. That’s how I got lucky.”
Donaldson also wryly noted that Falls’s popularity with his theatrical peers sometimes led to scheduling difficulties. “Linsey loved a sidebar. The man never once told a story; he told ten at once. So, sidebar: Raise your hand if you ever had something set up to meet with Lins only to find out that he, again, had double-booked his time? Oh, that’s a lot of hands I see. Now, further: Raise your other hand if he later told you he got so tired that he fell asleep and missed both things? Oh, yeah—same amount of hands.”
Falls also worked with PlayMakers Laboratory (formerly known as Barrel of Monkeys). The company conducts writing workshops with CPS students ages 7 to 13 and performs short plays derived from those workshops (most famously through their long-running show, That’s Weird, Grandma!). Brandon Cloyd, PlayMakers’s executive artistic director, also reached out to talk about his friend, who joined the company in 2009.
“I think what was so unique about him was he did this work with us for 14 years. Even though he was working in theaters across the city, he still found it important and found our work valuable to give back to young people. Beyond that, he was also a teaching artist with us. So in his day job, he would always make sure that he was able to take six Fridays or six Tuesdays off in a row so that he could go to our schools and teach young people, teach Black and Brown kids who look like him and show them that there was a career in the arts, that students’ voices are powerful, that representation matters.”
Bill Falls notes that he and his brother come from a family of leaders. In addition to their father, who helped design some of the engines used in the Apollo missions, Bill cites their grandfather, William Falls, who died when Linsey was just a few months old.
“He lived in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He was a shop teacher and a basketball coach back when it was very much segregated. He was a big figure in the Black community in Hopkinsville at that time and was coach of the basketball team. They ended up winning a couple of state championships.” William Falls died in 1973 when his car was struck by a freight train while driving students home. He was inducted into the Kentucky Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019. In a 2003 article about Hopkinsville High School renaming a study room in honor of William Falls, a colleague noted, “He’d do anything to help young people.” His grandson clearly inherited that trait.
Another PlayMakers colleague, Jon Schneidman, told me in an email, “I’ve never met anybody who loved making other people laugh as much as Linsey Falls. Linsey was a kind, gentle man who was generous with his time, support, and attention. He was also the absolute best collaborator, who was quick to celebrate the talents of others while putting his full heart into every moment he was on stage.”
Falls’s informal role as offstage social director for the shows he worked on was also noted by several of his friends. Bradford Stevens of PlayMakers wrote in an email, “He was an all-around awesome dude. He was a pleasure to work with on stage, and in the classroom, and a great friend to grab a beer with after rehearsal. I’m saddened that I never said it while he was here, but I’ll say it now. I love ya, man.”
Donaldson notes, “If you ever shared a ‘beerface,’ you laughed. And laughed. And laughed. (‘Beerface’—his term for meeting for a drink; he had terms for everything. Except people.)”
Wm. Bullion, who worked with Falls in a number of shows, including Hotel Aphrodite at Factory and in Blue Planet at Akvavit, wrote on Facebook, “My nickname for Linsey Falls was Secret Weapon. Every show has one performer who just makes the production erupt to another level. That was always Linsey. If I congratulated him on being cast, he’d text back, ‘Weapon deployed.’”
One of the markers of a great ensemble player is that they desire to make everyone else better onstage, and by that measurement alone, even in a town full of people who pride themselves on their ensemble spirit, Falls was outstanding.
Donaldson says, “For a long time, in my actor’s bio that you put into a program that nobody ever reads until they realize that it’s still ten minutes to curtain, I used a line, ‘Donaldson is the taller, less-funny half of the Gentlemen Follies.’ Lins hated that and made me stop saying it. I finally figured it out, my old friend: People liked watching two people who loved each other. The Follies was about friendship. And bowties and funny hats. Ivan is going to miss you, Edgar.”
A Chicago memorial for Falls, who is survived by his mother as well as his two siblings, will be announced at a later date. Meantime, it seems pretty clear that the best way to honor his memory is to go to a storefront show, and maybe hang out for a beer and some laughs afterward.