Steppenwolf Theatre Company Blog – Chicago Theater, World-Class Ensemble

It has been such a privilege to participate in the post-show discussions for our productions. As you know, this season we are offering post-shows six days a week (on two-show days – Saturdays and Sundays, we conduct a post-show discussion after one of the two performances). Next season, we will be offering discussions after every performance – eight shows a week. We offer the discussions because they enhance our conversation with our audience – we learn a great deal about the impact of our work, and, we hope, your experience of the plays is amplified by the opportunity to participate in an interpretive community.

I am always moved, and deeply grateful, for the candor and intelligence of your remarks and insights. The discussions refresh my conviction that theater provides an arena for the exercise of imagination – that it activates a realm of thought and feeling that hovers around and animates our quotidian experience.

Those of us who have made our life in the theater have a host of reasons for doing so. We may have begun our engagement with theater from a very young age; we may have come to it at a turning point in our lives, recalling it as the one thing that made us feel most alive. Certainly, all of us can recall some experience, some teacher or parent or friend, who was pivotal in our decision to enter the theater.

You are theater-goers. What I wonder is: what makes you one? Did you have some signature experience that encouraged your pursuit of the theater as a past-time, an entertainment, an intellectual exercise? What do you seek from attending a play? Have you had an experience in the theater that you count as complete, as thoroughly satisfying, as revelatory? What made it so?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given my involvement at Steppenwolf, some of my most profound experiences in the theater have been given me by the Steppenwolf Theatre. I speak here as an audience member, rather than as a practitioner within the theater. I remember the very first Steppenwolf show I saw: Say Goodnight, Gracie which I saw in 1979, the year I graduated from the theater program at Northwestern University. I was starting my adult life in Chicago, having trained as an actor at Northwestern and hoping to make a career in the theater. I knew about Steppenwolf, of course – all young actors were aware of the ensemble’s reputation. I really didn’t know how to go about making a life in the theater, I just knew I wanted to, very much. Seeing Say Goodnight, Gracie provided both a confirmation of my desire and an aspiration: if I could ever act that well, or act with people that good, I would be happy. Not long afterwards, I signed up for acting classes at Steppenwolf – the first of which, taught by John Malkovich. I entered a world of people completely dedicated to creating the fiercest, most vivid theater possible. I was soon seeing productions like Balm in Gilead, True West, Absent Friends. I was cast (as a naked savage) in John’s production of Christopher Hampton’s Savages. You must understand: Savages lives, in Steppenwolf lore, as a nadir point, a production that just didn’t work. But those of us in it at the time didn’t think that. We believed in what we were doing, we showed up every night, convinced of the show’s value. And we had fun. (Hey: a bunch of naked young folks, putting on body make-up before the show and showering collectively after the show. What’s not to love (as a 20-something aspiring actor)?)

I realize that I have dovetailed my audience experience into my participant experience. Given my aspiration to be an actor, Steppenwolf allowed me to dive in. It convinced me. It convinced me, sitting there as an audience member, that something real could happen in the theater. Once in (even as a non-speaking character – an extra, if you will – naked and in full-body make-up), I had an experience so singular, so vivid, of the imaginative realm of the theater that my course was set.

What about you? What happened (and when) that made you a theater-goer? What has been the enduring value of that engagement? I would be so grateful for sharing your experience with us. Your language, your perspective will help us shape our address to schools and young folks, in particular, in our encouragement to supply arts education to students. As well you know, there has been a trending away from a support of the arts in our public schools. I know why I think this is a terrible loss, I know what the arts have given to me. But it would be wonderful to have the thoughts, and feelings, and words of our audience – people who make their living outside of the arts but continue to seek the presence of the arts in their lives. If you feel like the arts – and in particular, theater – have enhanced your life, it would be invaluable to us to have your testimony. One of the core values of Steppenwolf, along with ensemble and innovation, is citizenship. We believe, deeply, that a participation in the theatrical discourse is an act of citizenship – that by entering the collective imaginal realm of theater, we participate in the construction of meaning and the amplification of compassion. Any words you can share with us will be treasured and valuable. Thank you, again, for your participation in Steppenwolf.

During a panel discussion among theatre directors in London recently, an audience member asked, “What is the difference between an acting company and an ensemble?” An impeccably dressed and erudite director drolly replied, “An acting company is a group of theatrical artists who come together with the intention of mounting a theatrical production. An ensemble – is what I am wearing.”

This anecdote made me laugh, but also made me think about the nature of ensemble. Our ensemble consists of thirty-five artists whose talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking, and textual adaptation who share an artistic home here at Steppenwolf. But what about ensemble acting style? What qualities characterize it? Are there any striking examples that come to mind of productions you’ve seen here at Steppenwolf or elsewhere?

Here’s what Bruce Weber of the New York Times had to say:

“Chicago actors tend to be less career-oriented offstage and thus less audience-oriented on. They play to one another here; they don’t mind turning upstage. Actors here speak of this as liberating, a license to challenge their colleagues with a vigor that isn’t necessarily appreciated elsewhere. The physically robust quality that many critics have attributed generally to Chicago actors is a manifestation of this.”

(exerpted from a review of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest)

Watching the opening night performance of The Well-Appointed Room, I was struck by a phrase of dialogue found toward the end of each act, in each case uttered by the character played by Amy Morton, the essence of which is “in the unlikely event of a future.” It seemed at once a daring and sad thing to have characters say, and no doubt speaks to some of the urgency and anxiety Martha refers to in her previous posting.

But it also struck me as an extraordinary thing for a playwright to postulate. I have always thought of the creative act as one marked by ultimate optimism. If one believes the world is beyond hope, why create anything? I was struck by the irony that in theatre, except for closing night, there is always a future. The play will be performed on Friday, then again on Saturday, and again on Sunday and so on. So I wonder, do others find this play, and the storytelling contained in it, acts of optimism? How do you read the end of the play?

A brief note, in response to the question from Justin Palmer, we expect to announce our plays for this summer’s First Look Rep within the next month. For those unfamiliar with the Rep: we present developmental productions of three brand new plays in rotating rep in the Garage. Last year, we offered unprecedented access to the development/rehearsal process to the members of our First Look Council. We expect to expand this in the coming year to give others the same opportunity. Watch these pages for details in the next month or two.

On behalf of the Steppenwolf ensemble and the artistic staff of the theater, I am very happy to announce the 2006-2007 subscription-series productions.

We open our season with Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman under the direction of ensemble member Amy Morton. You will remember Martin McDonagh as the playwright of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which Steppenwolf produced in our 1998-1999 season. The Pillowman had its debut at the National Theatre in London where it won the Olivier Award for Best New Play and went on to a successful run on Broadway. Steppenwolf is honored to present its Midwest premiere. The play is a deeply funny, complex and thoughtful rumination on the personal and political legacy of story-telling. How are our lives shaped by the stories we tell ourselves and by the stories we create? McDonagh’s singular voice is well-met by the clarity and vibrancy of Amy Morton’s directional vision.

Second on the season is a new play by Melinda Lopez, Sonia Flew, under the direction of Associate Artist Jessica Thebus, and featuring ensemble member Al Wilder. You will recall Jessica’s work from the 2005 production of Intimate Apparel. Like Intimate Apparel, Sonia Flew telescopes the large cultural and political forces of an historical moment to examine their impact on the intimate lives of ordinary men and women. This close examination of a family, shaped by the large forces of nationality, politics, and religion, reveals and celebrates the passions and tenderness that lends those forces nuance, grace, and a capacity for forgiveness.

In the Upstairs Theatre, we present the third production of our season, Betrayal, by British playwright, Harold Pinter. Mr. Pinter is the winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature and familiar to Steppenwolf audiences from our productions of The Caretaker (1978 & 1985), The Homecoming (1989), The Lover (1976), The Hothouse (1983), The Dumbwaiter (1976), and The Collection (1980). Rick Snyder directs with a cast that includes ensemble members Amy Morton and Tracy Letts. Betrayal is the story of a marriage shadowed by an extra-marital affair. The story is told in reverse time: we begin in the present and trace back, through nine beautifully-etched scenes, to the moment when the love affair began. Moving from the consequences to the cause, examining love in all its lovely and terrible manifestations, Betrayal offers us a complex and compassionate portrait of how we live and love.

The fourth play of the season returns us to the Downstairs Theatre, where ensemble member Tina Landau directs The Diary of Anne Frank in the revised adaptation by Wendy Kesselman. Ensemble member Yasen Peyankov once again teams with Tina to create the role of Otto Frank. In Kesselman’s vivid adaptation, this familiar story of the young Anne Frank, trapped by the crushing force of Nazi Germany, is given fresh life. The indomitable spirit of this young girl, yearning for love and artistic expressiveness, provides a beacon in a dark world. Our gift, in presenting this well-known and beloved story to our Steppenwolf audiences, is the pairing of the play with Tina Landau, an artist of singular sensibility in her command of the orchestration of ensemble acting and theatrical design. Like Steppenwolf’s 2002 production of The Time of Your Life, The Diary of Anne Frank joins Tina’s visionary direction with a classic drama to shine a new light on a story of heartbreak and beauty.

Finally, we present a new play, August: Osage County, by ensemble member Tracy Letts. Tracy, a recent recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, has written a play, commissioned by the theater, for the actors of the Steppenwolf ensemble. This three-act play traces the complex network of relationships in a multi-generational family. The disappearance of the family patriarch, a brilliant, difficult academic and poet, precipitates a re-convening of his daughters, their mates and children to the family seat, now presided over by their fierce, unstable mother. The play crackles with fiery humor, profound psychological truth, and the power of rich characterizations. Ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro returns as a director to Tracy’s work, reprising their previous collaboration on Steppenwolf’s very successful production of Man from Nebraska. In this world premiere of August: Osage County, ensemble member Amy Morton anchors the play as Barbara, the oldest daughter, who must negotiate the uneasy alliances of her gifted, fractured family.

It is a joy and an honor to offer this varied palette of plays to our Steppenwolf audience. We bring you a world premiere, two new plays in their Midwest debuts, and two familiar titles given fresh life by Steppenwolf artists. We welcome you back to a season rich in ideas, bristling with humor and human pathos, and animated by the world-class talent of Steppenwolf actors and directors. We deeply appreciate your loyalty to Steppenwolf, your adventuresome spirit, and your interpretive acumen – all of which make it possible for us to choose the plays we love for the people we love.