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

Recently, someone who came to see the show shared with one of the cast members a family secret. A traumatic event that his mother had experienced, but vowed to never share with her own children. It sounded as though she had wanted to keep them safe from this knowledge. That Sonia does not share the trauma of her leaving Cuba with her family resonated quite strongly with this person. It’s all left me thinking about how ones’ family history can shape us even if we don’t know that history. And how those secrets never go away…

It’s been two months since my trip to Amsterdam. So much has happened on the show: we have cast it, and the design has radically shifted (along with my overall approach to the material. I’ll write about this in the next blog.)

As I’ve been home and moved on with other projects, Anne has stayed with me. Haunted me, somewhat – and in the best possible way. Not the play so much, but her. Her words – and the spirit expressed through her words. I see her face, from the photographs, often, as I’m just sitting around or my mind wanders for an instant.

When we did auditions for the production in Chicago, I kept her photo out on the table while we were looking at potential Annes, and did the same with the other “characters” as folk came in to audition for those roles. Not because I was in any way trying to cast people who literally look just like them – but because I believe there’s some way in which I want their spirits evoked, and also hope their spirits look down on us, bless us. (more…)

Today was the beginning of our third week of rehearsal. We’ve done a few runs of the show and are going back to scene work and then we’ll do more runs and scene work and go on like this for awhile. This is the first time I have done any Pinter and it is very much a… learning experience. Working with a text without the writer present is often about “decoding” what it all really means ie:

Emma: “Ever think of me?”

Jerry: “I don’t need to think of you”

Emma: “Oh?”

Jerry: “I don’t need to THINK of you”

(more…)

Producing Sonia Flew is proving to be a unique experience. Because Sonia Flew borrows from the historical record–a history near enough to touch on the experience of contemporary lives–we have had the privilege of presenting the play to some of the folks who are a part of the history. In post show conversations, we have had participants to the conversation who were, themselves, Pedro Pan children. The insight that they are able to bring to the experience of the play and to the ensuing conversation is singular.

What my own participation in those conversations produces in me is a profound recognition of the responsibility and the privilege we have in making theater. Occupying a platform, the agenda for which is providing a reflective space for how we live our lives, is the privilege. The responsibility is to make the portrait of those specific lives authentic–to get the particulars right. The responsibility, artistically, is to make the expression of those authentic lives eloquent–to craft their expression in a way that is meaningful, in a way that transcends the particulars to universal resonance. It is that transcendence of the particulars, in the eloquence, that empathy is possible. On our stages, we offer up lives and experiences and ask our audiences to recognize a commonality in our shared humanity. (more…)