Will Stackman, 66; helped bring city's theater, arts to life

With a reputation for untangling the knots in performances, Will Stackman was beside himself one day in the mid-1980s when, as technical director of the Cambridge River Festival, he faced a problem he couldn't remedy. The weather wouldn't cooperate.

"He was running down the street madly, mumbling to himself," said Marianne Donnelley, a performer who met him that day. "I said, 'Why are you so upset?' And he said, 'The rain,' and he wheeled away. I caught up with him and said, 'Mister, it's not your fault that it's raining.' And he said, 'No, it's not my fault, but I have to fix it.' "

At once cantankerous and generous, Mr. Stackman was as conspicuous for his tousled appearance as he was for the flashes of brilliance in his pronouncements about theater in Boston. He died in his Somerville apartment, where Donnelley, his longtime companion, found him near midnight on June 3. Mr. Stackman was 66 and was being treated for pancreatic cancer.

During the past few decades in Boston's theater and performing arts scene, he did everything from teaching to handling the technical aspects of First Night in its early years. As a reviewer on websites, his words and opinions became nearly as ubiquitous as his presence behind the lights.

"Once he started reviewing, he made it his particular job to see all the alternative theater," said his friend Geralyn Horton of Newton. "No matter that he was one of the three people sitting in a basement somewhere, if they let him know it was happening, he made it his business to go. Will, at the peak of his physical and professional capacities, was seeing theater every single night -- and matinees."

As technical director of the Cambridge River Festival for most of its 27-year history, "he was critically important" to the festival surviving, said Jane Beal, director of community arts for the Cambridge Arts Council.

Mustering regiments of volunteers each year, he helped "make an event suddenly mushroom on the banks of the Charles River," she said, and could always find "two dozen ways to solve a problem."

"Some people can only dream an idea and can't make it happen. He had both capacites," Beal said.

Mr. Stackman first became involved with theater while growing up in Madison, Conn., and directed and performed in productions at DePauw University in Indiana, from which he graduated in 1962. He studied psychology at Yale University for a year, then moved to Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he graduated in 1965 with a master's degree in theater production.

At Cornell University, he pursued a doctorate, but did not complete a dissertation, friends said. After leaving, he taught at colleges in California and New Jersey before moving to Boston. Although he continued to teach at various educational levels, Mr. Stackman immersed himself in the performing arts scene, directing and building sets and scenery.

"He just much more enjoyed the notion of following wherever his whims went," said Gordon Talley of Cambridge, who met Mr. Stackman in the 1960s.

In the 1970s, he lent his technical expertise to staging Boston's First Night celebrations and soon became technical director for the Cambridge River Festival. For Mr. Stackman, the festival was more than just entertainment, however. In 1989, the celebration featured a beauty contest for ducks, an all-harmonica orchestra, and a festival of puppets from different countries.

"Off-the-wall is one way to put it," he said, describing the festival in an interview with the Globe that year. "But a more accurate way would be about cultural diversity, about the ability to tolerate and appreciate a lot of different artists.

"Look at the demographics of Cambridge. We have some of the poorest neighborhoods in Massachusetts, right next to some of the richest. So we all have to learn to put up with each other, and the festival is a great example of that."

Puppets, such as the ones in the 1989 festival, were a particular passion for Mr. Stackman, who billed himself as Prof Will, Boston's senior Punch & Judy professor. Last year, the river festival's area for children was dominated by Mr. Stackman's puppetry activities.

Stage materials often were drawn from his personal collection of items that waited for the right production.

"He was a collector of everything in the world," Donnelley said. "His only flaw was his extremely alternative housekeeping. If you didn't know him, that doesn't sound too bad. If you did know him, you really know what that means."

Friends, she said, came to realize that Mr. Stackman surmounted that character quirk by essentially living in more than one place: keeping his collection in his Somerville apartment, staying sometimes with Donnelley, writing theater reviews at Horton's home.

His appearance was in keeping with his haphazard approach to accommodations, which was helpful, given that a favorite pastime was hunting mushrooms in the woods.

"He was an aging hippie, but of the sturdy, salt-of-the-earth sort," Horton said. "He habitually wore a Greek fisherman's cap, summer and winter. Jeans or chinos. T-shirts from arts festivals had sentimental associations. And over them a broadcloth shirt of some sort, which he could button up if he needed to keep his T-shirt obscure. And always sneakers. Will bought most of his clothes from church rummage sales or yard sales, where he went to find things for sets."

Several years ago Mr. Stackman began reviewing theater online, bringing his years of experience and sharp opinions to bear on plays, playwrights, actors, and other critics. In one posting, he dismissed the notion of critics listing the worst plays of a season or the best.

"Perhaps summarizing the overall state of live theater and spotting trends rather than simply mentioning selected winners and non-winners would be more useful," he wrote. "As we head into the national awards season, everyone needs to remember, it's really only a matter of opinion."

Mr. Stackman leaves a brother, Harvey A. of Cottondale, Ala., and a sister, Maryann Baldwin of Tampa.

He will be celebrated at the Cambridge River Festival during a parade at 5 p.m. tomorrow. Organizers have also tentatively planned readings of 10-minute plays that Mr. Stackman wrote.

A memorial service will also be held at 6 p.m. July 27 at the Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline Village.