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

Today the first thing Tina told me in the morning was how she was not ready to allow the Nazis to enter our world. I have had the same feelings as we have been approaching the end of the play. It is very strange to introduce any new characters to this world that we’ve been living in for the past two weeks, let alone these particular ones. We keep reminding ourselves that it is only a play after all, but we are still to have a full day of rehearsals without crying. I’ve never worked on something this emotional before and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so attached to a character in such a deep and emotional way. I also finished the book that Tina gave me that chronicles pretty much Otto’s whole life and I feel even closer to him. What a complicated man and his dignity and humanity are just overwhelming. (more…)

I keep thinking back to the day when I got the phone call telling me that I was called back for Anne in Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of The Diary of Anne Frank. I keep recalling the afternoon of the call back, sitting in the passenger seat of my mom’s station wagon, a handful of bobby pins, pinning and re-pinning my hair. I remember the butterflies in my stomach as we pulled into the Steppenwolf parking lot. These particular butterflies and I have a friendly relationship. They weren’t nervous butterflies, the kind that flap and writhe violently in your stomach. These were the gentle, friendly butterflies, cheerfully reminding me that I really had nothing to lose. I could hear them squealing with delight, “Oh my gosh, in a matter of seconds you will be INSIDE STEPPENWOLF, meeting TINA LANDAU! You get to read with a REAL STEPPENWOLF READER! For the next five minutes you get to share what you love with people who love it just as much as you do!” I owe a lot to those butterflies.

Now that the rehearsal process has begun and this experience that was once a distant fantasy is a part of my reality, it’s strange for me to think back to that time. (more…)

On Wednesday, Amy Morton, Tracy Letts, Ian Barford and I did a talk at the Arts Club. We were there to discuss Betrayal–both the play itself and their actor experience of it. One of the things we discussed was the language of the play and the orchestration of the “pauses” and “silences” (a distinction that Pinter supplies in his stage directions) in the play. We started talking about the discipline that Pinter requires in the actors’ management of language. It’s not naturalistic speech (it isn’t intended to be) but it does require that the actors create the illusion of conversation. In the conversation, we also referenced Mamet as a playwright who produces a similarly rigorous deployment of language. (And Tracy pointed out that Mamet references Pinter as an influence on his, Mamet’s, playwrighting style). We sort of riffed our way into the ways in which playwrights distinguish themselves through the shaping of the speech act.

Thinking more about it, I suspect that playwrights are subject to a myriad of influences as they develop what comes to be understood as their “style.” One influence, surely, is the force of their own internal voice–the speech they received in their early environment (the talking style of their home which, itself, is a confluence of forces–the collectively-achieved family voice, the influence of national, regional, and cultural/ethnic identity). Another is the voice of the times (the popular cultural lingo, the political discourse, the social proprieties). And another, surely, is their project as artists–the ways that they choose to resist those commonly-held texts to foreground their voice as distinct against the background of culture. I suspect that playwrights are compelled to engage in a dance between a participation in the language culture of their belonging and the adoption of a counter-cultural voice (out of which can issue a cultural critique–or, at least, a voice that awakens culture to its received values). (more…)

Well, finally, back to Anne Frank. I’ve been in NYC opening a play at the Vineyard Theater, called Mary Rose by J.M. Barrie. As happens to me on a production, I became completely immersed in that particular world but, now that it is up and running, am back to Anne Frank, ready to fully dive in as I gear up to start rehearsals next week.

I left off here, a couple months ago, just as we made a big shift in our design approach to the production. It was a scary and exhilarating move, and one I’m thrilled we made when and as we did - let me explain:

Richard Hoover (the set designer) and I had done a design that was a fairly realistic replica of the Annex, as best we could fit it in the Steppenwolf theater and reveal its rooms to our audience. My mandate from the get-go was to observe and recreate the Annex in as much detail as possible. We quickly discovered, however, that we could not choose a single wall to “open up” without other, primary playing spaces (rooms) being blocked to the audience. (more…)