would be fundamentally and culturally different from cosmopolitan audiences. In 1970-71 Open Theatre performed Terminal by Susan Yankowitz, touring the production internationally—including at the Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran (1971)--as well as to many maximum and minimum security prisons in the eastern U.S. and Canada. The Open Theater operated for about ten years. Chaikin closed the Open Theatre in 1973 because he said it was in danger of becoming an institution. Although it achieved much critical success, Chaikin said: "I have rarely known a case where a critic's response to actors, directors or writers has expanded or encouraged their talent- I have known cases where by panning or praising, the critic has crushed or discouraged creative inspiration". In 1977, Chaikin formed an experimental workshop company called The Winter Project, whose members included Ronnie Gilbert, Corey Fischer, Robbie McCauley, Mark Samuels, Robert Montgomery, Christopher McCann and Will Patton, as well as core members of the previous Open Theatre, among others. In the Winter Project, Chaikin proposed and participated in explorations of the boundary between life and death, the actor as storyteller, listening, found dialogue and more. His production of The Dybbuk at the Public Theater in 1977-78 was, to some extent, influenced by some of these researches. Chaikin had a close working relationship with Sam Shepard and they cowrote the plays Tongues and Savage/Love, both of which premiered at San Francisco's Magic Theatre. They were commissioned to write When The World Was Green for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, later collaborating to write War in Heaven. Chaikin was an expert on Samuel Beckett. Chaikin adapted Texts for Nothing with Steven Kent who directed him in a solo show based on the material which performed at the Public Theater in New York, at the Roundhouse Theatre in London, the American Center in Paris, and in Toronto. Chaikin directed a number of Beckett's plays, including Endgame at the Manhattan Theatre Club and [[Happy Days (play)|Happy Days]]'' at Cherry Lane Theater. Awards and honors Chaikin received six Obie Awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement, and two Guggenheim Fellowships. His book, "The Presence of The Actor" was first published in 1972 by Theatre Communications Group, and a second edition followed in 1991. Based on his experiments with actors, the book includes exemplar notes, photographs, and exercises from Open Theatre productions, and records Chaikin's ideas about theater as a tool for social transformation. In 2010,