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 Charles R. Portz, 73
 March 16, 2011
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Charles Robert Portz, 73, of New Ashford Road, died Wednesday, March 16, 2011, at home after a long illness. Mr. Portz was a professor of sociology as well as a playwright, actor and film producer.
The son and grandson of rubber workers, he was born in Akron, Ohio, on Jan. 25, 1938, the only child of Charles L. and Agnes Costick Portz. He graduated from Ellet High School in Akron and Stetson University in Deland, Fla. He later earned his doctorate in sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Most people called him "Chuck," although he spent some time as C.R. during his days as a certified life underwriter and group plan representative in the insurance industry.
An Army veteran, he served in Germany and worked hard to make the football team to get release time from his regular duties as a medic.
Mr. Portz had a varied career, most recently teaching sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams. Always eager for a new adventure, he worked as a cook and crew member on a salmon boat in Alaska, as a repo agent in Florida, and as a NABET lighting technician on TV commercials and movies before his ultimate adventure of going back to school at the age of 52 to earn his doctorate.
His first full-time teaching job was at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, S.D. He also taught at Montclair State University, Fordham University and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He taught under the auspices of the Civic Education Project in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1996-97 and as a Fulbright Fellow in Moldova in 1999-2000.
The theatrical energy that sometimes brought his students to their feet was developed during his 20-plus years devoted to theater and filmmaking. When he moved to New York City, he discovered a vocation for theater in Lee Strasberg's acting class at Carnegie Hall, which he used to attend during his lunch hours while he was still working in insurance. In 1973, Mr. Portz and Bette Craig (whom he met in Strasberg's class) founded the nonprofit Labor Theater to bring theater to working-class audiences in community centers and union halls in the New York City area and across the country.
He spent six months in London in 1978 as a recipient of a U.S./U.K. Bicentennial Exchange Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the British Council, where he wrote a one-man play about Jack London, which he later performed in New York City and on tour. The play was filmed by Detroit public television and broadcast nationally on PBS.
In addition to the many plays he wrote and directed for the Labor Theater, including "Railroad Bill" and "The Bayside Boys," Mr. Portz wrote several screenplays during two years he spent in Hollywood, including one on the Flint, Mich., sit-down strike and another on a Hollywood director's adventures in filming Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution.
Several Berkshire County residents formed part of the cast and crew of "A Mistaken Charity," the film that Mr. Portz co-wrote and directed for PBS' American Playhouse series broadcast in 1987. He was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for the script adapted from Mary Wilkins Freeman's short story of the same name.
In 2001, returned to Moldova to make the film "Bucharest Express," which has won several prizes at film festivals and will be broadcast locally on Pittsfield Community Television.
He leaves his wife of 30 years, Bette Craig, and a host of sociology students who occasionally gave him a standing ovation after a particularly trenchant analysis of collective behavior and the forces opposing it.
FUNERAL NOTICE — Services for Mr. Portz will be private. Flynn & Dagnoli-Montagna Home for Funerals, West Chapels, is in charge of arrangements.
| Bette, You guys are a special memory in my life. My thoughts are of you this moment. P.S. Chuck is in heaven, standing with a sign in a picket line, where he belongs. | | from: Bill Schilling | on: 05-28-2011 |
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