Often emotional, the tributes came from Rick Cleveland (a founding ensemble member of American Blues Theater and currently a writer for “Mad Men”), actor William L. Petersen (who joked that he first took notice of Christiansen’s byline because they both spell their Scandinavian surnames with “-sen” at the end), Victory Gardens artistic director Dennis Zacek and executive director Jan Kallish, and Christiansen’s successor at the Tribune, Chris Jones. Jones wryly noted that after the announcement in January that Christiansen was getting a theatre named after him, he received a call from an unnamed artistic director who told him that they planned to name a latrine in his honor.

“He told me ‘I hope you won’t mind the smell.’”

He also noted that some of the “deification” of Christiansen is a post-retirement phenomenon, as he recalled a drawerful of angry letters that Christiansen had accumulated from disgruntled theatre artists over the years.

“At least you didn’t have the bloggers nipping at your heels,” he joked.

“You taught me how to be a man of the theatre,” said Petersen, who said that a Christiansen review of Seduced, a Sam Shepard play produced by now-defunct Remains Theatre in their early days helped the company run the show for months and cemented their determination to continue producing—and that Christiansen’s off-handed remark about the theatre needing air conditioners led to an unknown patron dropping off two A/C units that also helped make the summertime production possible.

Cleveland mentioned that Christiansen’s review of his first play said that Cleveland had “a home in the theatre,” and then, tearing up, he turned to Christiansen and said, “Until then, I hadn’t had a home.” He then produced a photo of the house in the Santa Monica hills (paid for with his professional writing work) where he and his family live now—and credited Christiansen with making it possible for him to think of himself as a writer.

And the first official performance on the Richard Christiansen stage came courtesy of John Mohrlein (also an American Blues Theater ensemble member) and legendary Chicago actor William J. Norris (who, among many other things, played Scrooge at the Goodman Theatre for years), who delivered a droll take on Moon and Birdboot, the Statler-and-Waldorfesque critics from Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound.

The audience consisted of some of the most prominent names in Chicago theatre past and present, including Tony-winning actors John Mahoney and Deanna Dunagan and regional Tony-winning artistic directors Zacek, Barbara Gaines of Chicago Shakespeare , and Goodman Theatre ’s Robert Falls. Former Goodman Theatre artistic director Gregory Mosher flew in for the event, and former Second City producer Bernie Sahlins was also on hand (his wife, Jane, co-hosted the evening along with publicist Margie Korshak Goodman), as were Second City vets Harold Ramis and Tim Kazurinsky. Victory Gardens playwrights’ ensemble members James Sherman and Jeffrey Sweet were there, along with B.J. Jones of Northlight Theatre , Michael Halberstam of Writers Theatre , and William Pullinsi, founder of Candlelight Theater (the first dinner theatre in the country) and currently the artistic director at Theater at the Center in Munster, Indiana.

Some of Christiansen’s most famous reviews were also cited, most notably his tribute to Petersen’s performance as Jack Henry Abbott in Falls’s 1983 staging of In the Belly of the Beast for long-gone Wisdom Bridge. In his review, Christiansen said he had to pull his car over to the side of the road after the show in order to compose himself. Petersen joked, “My great fear when Chris Jones took over for Richard was that he would take cabs to the theatre.”

When Christiansen himself finally got up to acknowledge the honor, he was choked with emotion and typically gracious, yet puckish. “I don’t want to be too vain, but I don’t want to be too modest, either,” he said, then turned to praising the great work that came out of Chicago during his tenure. “It happened on my watch.”