Mark Twain is not Pritner’s first encounter with great men in one-person plays. He has impersonated the great lawyer, Clarence Darrow and the Protestant Reformation religious leader Martin Luther. In addition, as himself, he performed a one-person show about William Shakespeare and his attitudes toward women in For Several Virtues Have I Liked Several Women.

Besides his work as an actor and director in Chicago and New York, Pritner has logged time in front of the camera. He had a recurring role in Chicago Story, was an Air Force officer on The A-Team, was a detective on HBO’s The Speck Murders and on Hunter, and most recently appeared on film as the governor of Missouri in Robert Altman’s Kansas City.

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He was the founding artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, was founding chair of Illinois State University's Department of Theatre, has been elected a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre (limited to a maximum of 150 theatre persons of distinction), and most recently served as chair of the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Department of Theatre. In 2001, he co-authored, with Louis Colaianni, How to Speak Shakespeare. He and Scott Walters have an introductory play analysis text (McGraw-Hill) at press.

Former students include: Gary Cole, John Malkovich, Judith Ivey, Laurie Metcalf, William Peterson, Tom Irwin, Suzzanne Douglas, and Robert Townsend. Students from Pritner's tenure as Illinois State's theatre chair formed Chicago's Tony-Award winning Steppenwolf Theatre.