Announcing the 2007-2008 Season
Posted by Martha Lavey on 3/05/2007This is a wonderfully exciting moment for all of us at Steppenwolf–the time when we announce our new season. We have been reading and discussing plays for months now in preparation for just this moment. Those of us in the artistic office have been framing the issues of the season and balancing the interaction of the plays in creating a lively and vigorous conversation on those themes. We have been in discussion with our ensemble artists, assembling the directors and actors for the productions. We use the forum of our blog to announce those plays and artists first to you, our dedicated patrons. You have the inside scoop.
When we began shaping our thoughts about 2007-2008, we were galvanized by the knowledge that we are in the midst of an important presidential election. Change is in the air. Issues of American identity, questions about what constitutes American citizenship and responsibility are being vigorously discussed and debated. We felt it was crucial for Steppenwolf’s season to participate in this discussion. We look to the 2007-2008 season as one that foregrounds the American voice. Five playwrights: one, an elder statesman of the American theater who spent his artistic life interrogating the question of citizenship; two, ensemble members who make vivid and specific the articulation of the personal with the political; two, new voices in the American theater who are gaining prominence as important chroniclers of how we live now.
We open the season with the great American playwright, Arthur Miller with his brilliant and now-classic play, The Crucible. Ensemble member Anna Shapiro directs the large ensemble cast with, from the Steppenwolf ensemble, James Meredith, Sally Murphy, Alana Arenas, Ian Barford, Tracy Letts, Ora Jones, Fran Guinan, and Al Wilder. Miller used the circumstances of 17th century America–a society in great flux as it struggled with issues of religion and civil rights–to reflect on his own time in the 1950s–a society disrupted in its confidence about the sanctity of civil rights by the fear of Communism. America in 2007 faces some of the same challenges as we confront the spector of terrorism: how do we stand strongly in support of the principles of personal freedom in the face of our fear? The Crucible opens our discussion of citizenship with the voice of an American master.
In our second production of the season, we turn to a new voice. Roberto Aguirre Sacasa, a young, Nicaraguan-American writer, trained at the Yale School of Drama, tells the story of a young man, Brandon Hardy, as he looks to his life beyond his exclusive, all-male prep school. Good Boys and True engages issues of class and privilege and interrogates their permissions and constraints. Amy Morton directs a cast of six–I am delighted to be an actor in this premiere of Sacasa’s new work.
We follow with ensemble member, Eric Simonson’s Carter’s Way. Eric wrote Carter’s Way inspired by the Orpheus myth. He has set the play in 1930s Kansas City as the jazz scene was being born. The play traces the course of a singularly talented and iconoclastic African American musician, Oriole Carter, as he struggles to preserve his artistic autonomy in the face of exploitive businessmen. His journey is complicated by his love affair with a young white woman. This play, animated by an original jazz score, is both a love story and a piercing examination of the costs of one’s convictions. The cast includes ensemble member, Bob Breuler.
In the Upstairs Theatre, we present a new play by Sarah Ruhl. Dead Man’s Cell Phone, directed by associate artist, Jessica Thebus, will include ensemble members Kate Arrington, Ian Barford, and Molly Regan. With the cell phone as a central metaphor for our curious contemporary condition of feeling constantly connected and strangely disembodied, the play offers a witty, whimsical, and ultimately profound meditation on how we live now. The play is, finally, deeply loving and deeply confirming of the human bond that only contact can provide.
We close the season with a new play by ensemble member, Tracy Letts. Amy Morton will direct Superior Donuts, a play set in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. In a slightly shabby donut shop in a changing Chicago neighborhood, an intriguing cast of characters overlaps and weaves together in their accidentally shared common home. The cast includes ensemble members Jon Hill and Yasen Peyankov. Tracy Letts’ writing is, as you have come to expect, sharp, funny, and insightful.
We are thrilled to announce the 2007-2008 season. This is a vigorous moment in our cultural life. Steppenwolf participates in this lively cultural and political moment with plays that question and celebrate our collective life.
March 17th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
wonderful to see that the city of Chicago is responding to the Time Out Chicago article on homogenous and diversity challenged theater with actual action rather than just talk. to see the 2007-2008 Season announcement of Steppenwolf and to note the additions made to your ensemble shows more than a willingness to just diversify (because that in itself is meaningless and useless) but that it is a venturing into undisdcovered artistic territories that keeps a theater growing and challenging itself to continue that most elusive artristic accomplishment- to discover the many shades of truth and humanity beyond the familiar, taking the unexplored route not because it will get you to a destination quicker but will get you there with a sense of wonder and community wherein the more we learn of each other, the more knowledge we gain of ourselves. after watching closely our two major theater cities, Chicago and New York, it is quite clear that as New York timidly steps into the 21st Century by constantly wading in the same waters, Chicago is seeking out the future of an American theatre responsive to the world they find themselves in with a prospicience that all artists must have for the soul to continue to grow. having studied the work of Chicago writer Leon Forrest lately looking for new dynamics and forms for Negro theatre and African American theatre (the blues and jazz of American theatre), the inescapable truth is that we are are blended and melted together and it is impossible to understand ourselves without knowledge of the other and that which makes us “anothers”. Until we explore our full American character we are only being half assed about our art and it doesn’t matter whether the glass is half full or half empty because one cannot live half a life fully. so I applaud the steps Steppenwolf is taking as it learns and adds new ways of walking. I look forward to what the new year brings, because you are correct in one other thing. The next elections will be the most important statement of who we are and who we are becoming so what we now do, all of us, matters a hell of a lot more than we can possibly dream. we cannot be on the sidelines any longer. our humanity is at stake. the moral ground is waiting to be conquered. it is time for us all to ride to the sound of battle together.
and so it goes,
Marion
March 20th, 2007 at 11:01 am
I want to thank Marion McClinton for his blog posting of 17 March 2007. Marion is kind enough to offer his congratulations to Steppenwolf for our upcoming season and for the inclusion of our new ensemble members. Further, he supports the work of our Chicago theater community for our embrace of the forces that are shaping our collective future. His is a stirring call to citizenship: a cry to occupy the “moral ground waiting to be conquered.”
For those of you unfamiliar with Marion’s work, it is my pleasure to describe his professional accomplishments. Marion is a premier American director who has worked throughout the country and in London directing works by, notably and repeatedly, August Wilson, by Kia Corthrun, Regina Taylor, Eugene Lee, Keith Glover, Sarah Schulman, and Cheryl West among others. Marion began his career as an actor and is also a playwright (whose play, POLICE BOYS premiered at Playwrights Horizon in New York under his direction). Marion has received a host of honors including an Obie, a Drama Desk Award and a Tony nomination for Best Director (KING HEDLEY II). Many of you will be familiar with his work from the Goodman production of GEM OF THE OCEAN.
Marion began his theater life at the Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul, Minnesota–an ensemble-based African American theater which was founded at roughly the same time as Steppenwolf began its life.
Again, many thanks, Marion, for your inspired words. We acknowledge your leadership position in the American theater. You are a champion of new voices and of the vital role that theater can play in the activation of our ideals as citizens. Much gratitude.