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

And we’re off! The Pillowman goes into tech on Saturday and starts previews on Thursday, September the 14th. Thus begins Steppenwolf’s 31st season.

It’s incredibly exciting, the start of a new season. We’ve been thinking about these plays for a long time–assembling the artistic and production teams, beginning the design processes, assembling the dramaturgical information and artists’ profiles for our magazines and programs, considering how to reach audiences who may have particular interest in each of the shows, creating events specific to each of the shows, and on and on. But all of the pre-planning simply anticipates THE DAY, the moment rehearsal begins and the production is given birth. It is when, finally, we meet YOU, our audience, that the real fun begins. As you know, we will be conducting post-show conversations for every performance this year. I hope that many of you will stay for a discussion–we dearly cherish your response to our work and appreciate, in the conversations you engender, the creation of a public square at Steppenwolf.

Last season, we dedicated ourselves to new work. We took the opportunity of our 30th season to foreground our role in the creation of new work and you responded with the sense of adventure and sophistication that distinguishes the Steppenwolf audience.

This year, we offer both new work and established titles. It has always been Steppenwolf’s charter to create an experience of the new–whether that has meant the premiere of new play or a refreshed vision of a known work. Our 31st season is a wonderful balance of both experiences: we give two contemporary plays their Midwest premieres; we offer two established plays the deep bench of Steppenwolf artists; and we premiere the work of a Steppenwolf ensemble artist, actor and playwright, Tracy Letts. In each case, we give you an “only at Steppenwolf” experience.

One of the overarching themes that we have discussed, relative to this season, is the articulation of the personal and the political. We live in a politically-charged time. I am hardly saying anything new when I remark that the political charge produces a fervency and a polarization that for many of us, leaves us wondering how the conduct of our days expresses (or resists) these currents. (In other words, does our personal self have political currency and meaning? And–why do we have to parse these questions? It’s exhausting and often enough, discouraging. But to avoid the larger world, to hope to retreat into a personal sphere, feels…equally exhausting. How to make sense of all of this?)

The Pillowman and Sonia Flew incorporate these questions effortlessly. Both plays are great stories. They offer rich characters, surprising conversations, great good humor, touching–and sometimes, shocking–human encounters. Anne Frank is a well-known story. Beautifully intimate AND hugely political in its reach. The other two plays–one known, Harold Pinters’ Betrayal and new, Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County–are slightly more elusive in their expression of this personal/political thematizing. They both seem like interpersonal stories (Betrayal, the story of lovers; August, the story of a family). And they ARE–both plays work beautifully as insightful surveys of our most intimate spheres. But because both plays also interrogate history–how the past is mapped onto contemporary outcomes–there is a political content that while buried, can be highly instructive to our inquiry into the public sphere of our lives. (Do you ever wonder: “what am I authoring, in my life? And what, that I received, is authoring ME?”)

The kind of great thing about doing this in public, in the language of theater (a shared, collective act), is that we get to measure our personal response against the response of others. (Have you ever felt, sitting among an audience, “why are they LAUGHING? This makes me CRY.”) In other words, we can get dislodged from our naturalized response–what we believe and feel is thrown into relief.

It’s weird, all of that. And it’s also why I think theater is an inherently political act–we are compelled to experience ourselves in the context of a community.

It’s this that we celebrate in our 31st season: the complete absorption into the intricacies and emotions of our interpersonal life–within the context of the shared space of this theater, this moment, these people. All the more reason to encourage your presence at our post-show conversations. (Every time I “lead” one, I am enlightened by the expression of a point of view this is revelatory).

Thank you so much for being with us. Our effort this year is to earn your futher engagement with our work. We want to know what you think and feel, we want to learn how to make our theater more eloquent, more germane to your lives.

May we have a wonderful year together. (May we, all, from our own small corner of the world, create a political climate more nuanced, more urgent and appropriate, to our lives, as we live them).

This entry was posted by Martha Lavey on Monday, September 11th, 2006 at 8:00 am and is filed under The Pillowman, Sonia Flew, Betrayal, The Diary of Anne Frank, August: Osage County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.