Remembering Jim Rinnert 1944–2025 - Chicago Reader

A slightly different version of this article originally ran in Windy City Times on July 23 and is republished here with permission of Windy City Times and the author.

Jim Rinnert—a writer, artist, philanthropist, AIDS activist, and longtime art director of In These Times magazine, active for many years in Chicago’s theater and LGBT communities—passed away early Saturday morning, July 19, 2025, at Beacon Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana. The cause of death was complications from a stroke suffered while he was hospitalized for heart problems. He was 80 years old. At the time of his death, he was living in New Carlisle, Indiana, with his husband, Brent Fisher, retired Lyric Opera director of finance. The couple, who were together for 45 years, were married in 2015.

Born in Flora, Illinois, in 1944, James Hubert Rinnert came to Chicago in the early 1970s after graduating from Eastern Illinois University with a degree in English following a stint in the U.S. Army serving as a personnel specialist during the Vietnam War. In 1976, he joined the staff of In These Times, a Chicago-based, nationally distributed, politically progressive magazine of news and opinion.

In July 2005, following the death of ITTʼs founding publisher James Weinstein, Rinnert wrote: “I met [Jim Weinstein] in October 1976, . . . a time of national amnesia after the divisive years of Vietnam and Watergate. In the midst of a general political malaise (we were facing a tepid presidential election that offered a choice between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter), I felt a deep yearning for a positive, progressive direction in American politics, but had no idea where to look for signs of it. The search led me to answer a help-wanted ad for a typesetter with a start-up socialist tabloid to be called In These Times. I got the job, and by the time we’d finished the prototype issue and were preparing the first edition, I knew I’d found something—and someone—with a mission and a vision I could believe in and wanted to be part of.”

An accomplished visual artist, Rinnert rose to the position of art director at In These Times and worked there for some 30 years, frequently contributing articles in addition to his art director duties. During Rinnert’s tenure at ITT, the magazine published articles by such writers as Kurt Vonnegut, Noam Chomsky, David Moberg, Salim Muwakkil, Joan Walsh, Laura S. Washington, Alexander Cockburn, and Garrison Keillor, as well as Rinnert himself.

But before joining the staff of In These Times, as well as throughout his tenure there, Rinnert was involved in Chicago’s grassroots theater scene beginning in the early 1970s. As a student at Eastern Illinois University, he had been active in the school’s theater program, and when his classmate J. Pat Miller, whom he later called “my closest friend since early days at college,” embarked on an acting career in Chicago, Rinnert was drawn into the off-Loop scene that was just beginning to flourish. Through Miller, Rinnert met his lover of 12 years, Tommy Biscotto, who went on to a career as a stage manager at the Organic and Goodman theaters. Rinnert and Biscotto also helped establish an artists’ colony on Chicago’s near west side when they settled into a house at 1120 W. Fry Street.

In 1979-1980, Rinnert collaborated with Miller and Biscotto on a highly acclaimed multimedia theatrical work, The Artaud Project, which played at Victory Gardens Theater in its original space in the Northside Auditorium Building, now home to the Metro rock club. With a text by Rinnert based on the writings of avant-garde theatre and cinema artist Antonin Artaud, the innovative show combined live performance with video. Miller starred as Artaud under the direction of Rinnert and Victory Gardens’ artistic director Dennis Začek, who also appeared in the production’s video sequences; Biscotto was the stage manager. The Artaud Project won a special Joseph Jefferson (or Jeff) award, Chicago theater’s top prize, in 1980, and Miller was also nominated for a Jeff Award for his mesmerizing performance.

“Using sound effects, lighting shifts, and an interplay between the live portrayal of Artaud by actor J. Pat Miller and taped scenes shown on four television sets, the 75-minute, intermissionless work puts the performer and the audience through the wringer,” wrote Chicago Tribune theater critic Richard Christiansen in his review of the innovative show. “The project, shepherded into life over the last few years by director Jim Rinnert, is a complex . . . compulsively watchable work that offers interested theater audiences the opportunity to experience a genuinely experimental piece.”

In 1982, Tommy Biscotto was diagnosed with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare cancer associated with a mysterious new health crisis facing the gay community. At the time of Biscotto’s diagnosis, the term AIDS—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome—had not yet been designated by federal health officials. “Tommy was one of the earlier diagnoses with AIDS—though it wasn’t called AIDS yet,” Rinnert later recalled. “It was still a mystery disease, and over the following months a lot of potential cures were tried out on him, and each failed. Through that time, Tommy was a spokesman for those who had this illness, especially when it was designated a gay disease, advocating for care and research.” Biscotto passed away in October 1984 with Rinnert at his bedside. The following April, after J. Pat Miller also died of AIDS-related illness, Rinnert helped create the Biscotto-Miller Fund to provide financial support to members of the Chicago theater community impacted by AIDS.

“The criterion was that people with AIDS who had any theater connection could apply for a grant,” Rinnert recalled in Mark Larson’s 2019 book Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater. “We set a limit at $500 a month. . . . There were no stipulations on what that money was for. We knew we couldn’t cover medical expenses or major expenses for them, but we wanted to cover things that they felt they needed in their lives. A trip home or a TV. Whatever they needed.” Rinnert was part of the committee that organized and produced Arts Against AIDS, a benefit variety show held May 13, 1985, at Chicago’s Second City comedy theater that raised some $10,000 for the Biscotto-Miller Fund.

In 1987, Rinnert was instrumental in the establishment of the nonprofit organization Season of Concern Chicago, which took over management of the Biscotto-Miller Fund. Originally formed to assist people with AIDS-related illnesses, SOC today provides financial assistance to Chicagoland theater practitioners impacted by illness, injury, or circumstance that prevents them from working.

“One of my proudest moments, years later, when a diagnosis of AIDS was no longer a certain death sentence, was when Season of Concern expanded the Fund’s mission . . . to encompass broader health and emergency needs within the community,” Rinnert recalled in comments prepared for a Season of Concern event held on June 3, 2025, to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the Biscotto-Miller Fund.

“Jim Rinnert played a seminal role in shaping the theater community’s response to the AIDS epidemic,” says Marcie McVay, former managing director of Victory Gardens Theater and former head of the theatre management program at the Theatre School of DePaul University. “Shortly after Season of Concern was founded in 1987, Jim joined the SOC board of directors and later served as its president. When the mission of Season of Concern was expanded to serve anyone in the theater community suffering from debilitating illness, Jim was the president of the organization. Jim had a lifelong commitment to the well-being of the theater community. He will be greatly missed.”

At the time of his death, Rinnert was working on a book project—a history of the Organic Theater, one of the cutting-edge ensembles that launched the Chicago off-Loop theater movement of which Rinnert was an instrumental part. “We have been working on Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes: Stuart Gordon and Chicago’s Organic Theater Company for over eight years,” said the book’s coauthors Cordis Heard, Mike Saad, and Mary Griswold in a statement. “It was like old times, giving and taking, coming up with something wonderfully collaborative between us—truly Organic. With Jim’s editing and writing skills, and his smarts and sense of humor guiding us to the finish line, we’ll see the book in print from the University of Chicago Press within the next year. We couldn’t have done it without him.”

In addition to his husband, Brent Fisher, Jim Rinnert is survived by his brother, Max Rinnert, and nephews Randall Newsome and Chris Newsome.Donations in Jim Rinnert’s memory may be made to Season of Concern for the Biscotto-Miller Fund c/o Season of Concern Chicago, 8 S. Michigan, Suite 2700, Chicago, IL 60603; email info@seasonofconcern.org; seasonofconcern.org/donate.