[1] He was born on August 1, 1931, in Berwyn, Illinois, to William Edward, an electrical engineer and Louise Christine (Dethlefs) Christiansen.
The second-floor studio theatre at the Victory Gardens Theater was named after him in 2010.
Christiansen is the author of the book A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago, which was published by Northwestern University Press in 2004.
[4] Christiansen was also noted for being instrumental in the development of Chicago's grassroots theatre movement starting in the 1960s.
[6][7] This biographical article about an American film critic is a stub.