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

I want to tell you about my love affair with Chicago actors.

Madison– the magician musician. I loved Madison the minute I heard him play guitar. Madison is tall and lanky. I love a tall man. He takes his shirt off in the play, and he’s all sinew. He plays guitar. Of course I love him. He is soulful and sad, and he plays Tommy who is soulful and sad. Madison makes music all the time—you can just say, Madison, play something, and he can. In the rehearsal room, he’s restless and unsatisfied, and only comes to stillness when he traces his long fingers over the strings.

Judy Blue is my love. Judy is soft where Madison is solid. Strawberry blonde with alarmingly blue eyes, she is genteel as a Tennessee Williams heroine—and just as tough. She’s shy when she steps up to the microphone to sing her solo—I don’t know why because her voice is powerful and full of truth and pain—but her modesty is so disarming that I love her for it. She never stops working on the character she plays. She never hurries. She has the dignity of royalty. I bet she makes a great pie. (more…)

Melinda Lopez’s blog (posted July 19) re her play Gary certainly was timely. It allows me to riff on her comments about creating a play and the music in it — where things are more improv than planned.

For me, as she wrote/mapped the play, the importance of music became a planned element, no longer improv.

When we 101ers heard the first reading of Gary on June 4, Ed read the stage directions, “Fugue. Scene 1. The Beginning.” Then the actors spoke…

Along about Scene 8, I started recognizing that the scene titles weren’t the traditional kind — a location and the time of day and or season — and that some also were musical terms. I began writing them down. At the same time, I realized that “Fugue” might be the play’s subtitle (if you will). (more…)

I have a not-so-secret bias; I’m unabashedly in love with all things Chicago. From the green of the river to the view from the El, I think this is the best city in the world. I was thinking about this last Friday, as I had occasion to drive through several different neighborhoods. I left Steppenwolf in Lincoln Park and drove down to Hyde Park to meet my daughter, a student at the University of Chicago. She led me to Joy Yee’s, one of Chinatown’s most bustling restaurants. An elderly woman and her adult daughter were sharing rice out of a pineapple polishing off a tasty-looking fish still wearing its head. A trio of African-American women in braids waited patiently in line next to a cluster of Asian teens in black leather and studs. I tried my daughter’s bubble tea, made from fresh fruit and embellished with weird black tapioca balls. It was new and also familiar—this is what makes my Chicago heart sing….

Many black people in Chicago know about Bridgeport and its reputation with regard to race relations, but that’s changing too. My son has been friends with skaters in the neighborhood for the past several years, and challenged my perceptions of it. This night, my daughter was going there to attend the Printer’s Ball, a Poetry Foundation-sponsored event for the indie press. We got a little lost, but did not need the address to know that the hipster parade was marching toward the Zhou B. Art Center, a sprawling converted warehouse that is bringing all kinds of Chicagoans into the community and making a positive impact. The Zhou brothers are world-renowned artists and I marveled at the impact they’re making by investing in their own backyard. After I dropped Eve off, I enjoyed the sights and sounds of a beautiful Chicago night. I traveled through the east side of Pilsen, though old Maxwell Street in its bizarre new “University Village” outfit. People were out and about in Greektown and on the Near West Side, around the United Center. The pulse of the city flows through these neighborhoods and all of the people who live in them. We are the threads that make up the fabric of life in Chicago. (more…)

Lauren Katz and ensemble member Kate Arrington in rehearsal for When the Messenger Is Hot.

I studied piano for twelve years, but I can’t play. I mean, I can read music. If you put music in front of me, I can read it — I know how to get it to sound like music, but I can’t create music. I can’t play. I can’t cook. I am great with a recipe, even adventurous if I have one to follow. I’m great at following directions. But I can’t cook. I always follow maps. I check off the signposts, and always get to where I am supposed to — the waterfall, the landmark, the city. But I don’t explore, and I don’t make my way.

I love adventurers. I married one. My husband has been known to pull the map out of my hand and shout — “Look around! See where you are! Read the landscape.” Once he told a forest ranger in Yosemite, “I don’t need a guide book. I’ll write the guidebook.” He isn’t afraid of making his way. He isn’t afraid of anything. Not being lost, not cooking a bad meal. He listens to the land; he smells the spices. He creates something new. (more…)