American theater director and playwright.

William Robert (Bob) Sickinger was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 7, 1926 to Frank P. Sickinger and Mary Raimondo. After serving in the US Army near the end of the World War II, Sickinger attended Bloomsburg State Teacher College (now Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania) and Temple University where he studied English and speech. In the 1950s, while working as a public-school teacher, he started staging productions around Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, eventually working out of the Circle in the City as well as mounting works at the Cricket Playhouse, Abbey Playhouse and the Philadelphia Civic Theatre. In 1963, the new executive director of the Hull House Association, Paul Jans, convinced Sickinger to move to Chicago to run the Association’s theater program.

Due to his efforts at Hull House Theater, Sickinger is widely considered the father of Chicago’s Off Loop Theater. A staunch believer in the power of the community in theater, Sickinger drew his casts and crews from amateur actors and non-theater people. Sickinger’s debut effort, “Who’ll Save the Plowboy?” was met with critical and popular acclaim. Over the next six years, Sickinger often chose provocative and challenging contemporary plays, including the works of writers like Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, Athol Fugard and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). Amidst the Association’s financial troubles and without Jans’ support, who resigned as director in April 1969, conflicts between Sickinger and the Board escalated; the Board announced Sickinger’s resignation in May 1969. Sickinger left Chicago for New York, where he wrote and directed a few shows Off Broadway which met with limited success.

Married three times, his first two marriages ended in divorce. Sickinger died at his home in Delray Beach, Florida, of congestive heart failure on May 9, 2013.