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

I have just returned from Washington DC where the Steppenwolf production of Don DeLillo’s Love-Lies-Bleeding opened at the Kennedy Center last night. The cast and crew had a two week hiatus after the production closed in our Upstairs Theatre at the end of May. The set was shipped down to Washington and reconstructed on the stage of the Center’s Terrace theatre. The director, Amy Morton, the designers, the stage management team, and the actors then arrived to begin rehearsals in the new space. At the opening performance last night, it was interesting to see the show performed in a different theatre space. The terrace theatre has a seating capacity of 500 as opposed to our Upstairs Theatre’s 300. It is difficult to describe, but the dimensions and dynamics of the space effect how a play is received. In this case, the production is very well matched to the space. You can take a virtual tour of the theatre here and see where our actors are performing. We wish them a good run.

Several of us at Steppenwolf just returned from Atlanta where we were attending the TCG conference. TGC is the Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for not-for-profit theaters. TCG provides grants, networking and advocacy for its constituent theaters. It’s a widely diverse constituency, embracing theaters of all budget sizes and varying missions as well as individual artists. Surprisingly given the diversity, the membership shares enough common concerns to conduct a valuable conversation.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Building Future Audience.” The forces in play when considering our audiences are the forces alive throughout our culture: the explosion of communication media; the generational, cultural, and political differences that generate our expectations and shape our desires for the forms and content of an artistic experience. (more…)

We have begun rehearsals for Bruce Norris’ play The Unmentionables. Following his series of postings on his journey in Africa, Guilt Trip, we’ve asked him to continue sharing some thoughts during the process.

June 4

Putting a new play together often becomes a form of crisis management, and when things go well you always have to remind yourself not to get too cocky since the next big tumble is just waiting to happen.

I don’t often write plays with particular actors in mind. Usually I’m composing something out of voices that arrive from some strange region of my brain, but in some cases - and this is particularly true with The Unmentionables - I hear the sounds of certain actors’ speech. In this case, since the play was being written as a commission for Steppenwolf, and since I have had the luxury of working with a number of those actors over the last few years (some for much longer), it is those particular voices that rattled around in my head. Well… and I don’t want to make too much of it, but as we’ve grown closer to the start of rehearsals (today is day 3) we began experiencing some… attrition… of the Steppenwolf ensemble members who had originally chosen to participate. These choices were made by the actors for wholly understandable reasons (health, family, financial), so one can’t hold it against them, exactly, but nine days before we began we lost another actor from the company after already having lost one some months ago, and then yesterday, the second day of rehearsal, we lost another. We now have a superb replacement, (Rick Snyder) but it takes a bit of confidence (which I lack) to try to figure out just how adaptable a play is or whether its success was dependent on the actors available at a moment in time. So this week, I’ve been in a bit of a panic. (more…)

Today we welcomed 24 students from around the country (and England!) to our ten week acting intensive. The School at Steppenwolf is a training residency for professional actors to immerse themselves in ensemble traditions, values and methods. A series of three-week trimesters of course work will culminate in a week of performances in late summer.

The original idea of the School at Steppenwolf occurred to co-founder Jeff Perry nine years ago as a way of offering a unique training program, one that embodies the actor driven ensemble work that the company was founded upon. The faculty this year includes the school’s co-founders, Sheldon Patinkin and Jeff Perry, Steppenwolf ensemble members, Bob Breuler, Fran Guinan, Mariann Mayberry, Rick Snyder, and Yasen Peyankov, in addition to Alexandra Billings, Jeff Ginsberg, Luda Lopatina, Bob Mason, Monica Payne, Suzanne Thompson, and Monica Payne. The curriculum for the school includes work in the varied techniques of Viewpoints, Feldenkrais movement work, Meisner technique, text analysis, and two-person and larger group scene work. (more…)

We had our first day of rehearsal on Tuesday for Bruce Norris‘ new play The Unmentionables. One of the first day rituals at Steppenwolf is something called the “meet and greet”. The entire staff of the theater descends upon the rehearsal room, and after some words of welcome from Martha Lavey, they introduce themselves one by one to the artists involved in the production. Usually standing in a large circle around the rehearsal table, each staff member announces their name and job position. Listening to this litany on Tuesday, I was struck by the sheer number of people it takes to actually present a play and maintain Steppenwolf as a healthy and vibrant organization. Many of these people get virtually no public recognition, except for their names in small print at the back of the program. In addition, as I’m sure most of you know, the financial rewards for working in not-for-profit arts are significantly lower than what one might expect in the commercial or private sector. I was struck by the thought that each person in this circle, from the Marketing Coordinator to the Costume Shop Manager to the Donor Records Assistant was here at least in large part, because of his or her faith in what we do, and a mutual embrace of the challenges we face. It was a remarkably affirmative way to start.