In Memoriam: Jonathan Smoots, 1954 - 2025

Michael Muckian, Shepherd Express

Milwaukee actor Jonathan Smoots had a gift for reading aloud when he was growing up in the Chicago suburb of Elmwood Park in the 1950s. That talent pleased his mother, the daughter of a Lutheran minister.

“My mother always thought I was going to be a minister,” said Smoots in a 2008 interview. “Of course, there are a lot of parallels between acting and preaching.”

Smoots, the husband of fellow actor/director Laura Gordon, died on Friday, March 21, at age 71, after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. The couple had traveled to Portland, Oregon, to take advantage of the state’s Death With Dignity Act, allowing him to face his final days on his own terms.

The gifted actor with the stentorian voice was a well-known fixture in Milwaukee’s theater scene, performing with the Milwaukee Rep, Next Act Theatre, and other troupes. He also was one of the longest lasting core cast company members of American Players Theatre, the classical performance company in Spring Green. Smoots, a graduate of Northwestern University graduate, won the only slot awarded to one of hundreds of Chicago-area actors auditioning for the company when it first formed in 1980.

In fact, as Thesus, Smoots spoke the first lines of the first play – Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – ever performed by APT on its Hill Theatre stage that year: “Now fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws apace. Four days brings in another moon and we will marry.”

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