Shami Chaikin of Famed Chaikin Family, Gets Critically Injured in Motor Accident

According to a report in the New York Post, off-Broadway star Shami Chaikin, sister of the late, famed director Joseph Chaikin, was critically injured in Greenwich Village by Bleeker Street and 8th Avenue yesterday morning when a garbage truck hit her on her mobility scooter. Chaikin, 78, who had been riding in the bicycle lane underwent surgery at St. Vincent's hospital and remains in critical condition. 

Sadly, this incident is not unusual, as vehicle, trucks in particular, frequently violate traffic lines and merge into bike lanes. Still, according to the Post, the Parks Department driver operating the garbage truck will not be charged. 

To read the New York Post report in its entirety, click here.

Stage and screen actress Shami Chaikin has worked with some of the most important directors in the industry, including her brother Joseph Chaikin, Andrei Serban, Elinor Renfield, Dorothy Lyman, Meredith Monk, Elizabeth Swados, Jacques Levy, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Ed Emshwiller.  She appeared in Uncle Vanya at La Mama; Bag Lady for Theatre for the New City and Manhattan Theatre Club; Loving Reno for the New York Theatre Studio; The Antigone, Specimen Days, Electra, and The Haggadah at The Public Theatre; America Hurrah at Pocket Theatre; and Mystery Play at the Cherry Lane Theatre among others off-Broadway.  She toured nationally and internationally with Viet Rock, The Serpent, Terminal, Mutation Show, and Nightwalk with Open Theater Company, founded by her brother.  She also appeared in the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, and the 1970 counterculture movie Zabriskie Point. 

Joesph Chaikin began his career at the Metropolitan Opera, going on to work for The Living Theatre before founding The Open Theater in 1963, a theater co-operative that progressed from a closed experimental laboratory to a performance ensemble.  The Open Theatre's credits include the celebrated The Serpent, Beckett's Endgame, and Terminal and its international tour. In the mid-1970s, Chaikin formed The Winter Project, whose members included Ronnie Gilbert and Will Patton, as well as core members of the previous Open Theatre. Chaikin had a close working relationship with Sam Shepard and together they wrote Tongues and Savage/Love, When The World Was Green, and War in Heaven. Chaikin received six Obie Awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement, and two Guggenheim Fellowships.