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

Steppenwolf’s Director of New Play Development Ed Sobel was recently presented with the Elliot Hayes Award by the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas for outstanding contribution to the field of literary management and dramaturgy in recognition of his work on our First Look Repertory of New Work. What follows is an excerpt from his acceptance speech.

I’ll freely confess to being enough of an artist, or having sufficient ego, that when someone gives me a platform, I feel a responsibility to say something worthwhile, or at least mildly provocative and not tranquillizing…

I am not the first to point out we have to recognize there has been a fundamental change in our culture in the last 15 or 20 years, primarily due to technological and economic forces: the rise of the internet, YouTube, Tivo, DVDs, cell phones, fluctuations in the GNP, competition for sparse dollars and flitting attention for the social good, hurricanes, acts of terrorism and acts of war, the almost complete lack of arts education in schools for the last twenty-five years. Rail against as many of these we wish, they are facts of life. And we ignore them at our peril. (more…)

Audience response to our show has been remarkable, like nothing I have ever experienced in thirty-some-odd years on stage. People of all ages, from teens to the quite elderly, wait outside the theater to shake our hands and thank us for the performance. Many say it was the shortest three and a half hours they’ve ever experienced. One was overheard to say, exaggerating a little perhaps, that it was shorter than a 15 minute one-act she had seen. After the Saturday matinee last week, a man approached me, tears running down his face, to say that it had been years since he had seen this kind of theater, the kind that first made him fall in love with Steppenwolf. Company member Rondi Reed, who plays my sister (and who directed me in Stepping Out, my first Steppenwolf show in 1988) said of the opening night performance that it was “like being at a Blackhawks hockey game.” Perhaps my favorite remark was from Alexandra Billings, noted Chicago performer, now teaching at the Steppenwolf school, who said it was like “climbing into a Picasso.”

The fact is, I have not really recovered from our final push to get this remarkable piece up there for public viewing; and I find myself playing catch up, attempting to take care of all the mundane and necessary things one needs just to live — laundry, groceries, house cleaning, doctor’s appointments, hair-cuts, e-mail — or as Tracy, more poetically, has Beverly say in the Prologue, the “paying of bills, purchase of goods, cleaning of clothes or carpets or crappers.” Just the idea that we have two full days of daylight without rehearsing or performing is enough to make me lightheaded with joy. (more…)

Actors Rani Waterman and Madison Dirks read Gary by Melinda Lopez

Costume renderings for When the Messenger is Hot, designed by Debbie Baer

For more pics of the first rehearsal, click here.

I saw SICKO this afternoon–Michael Moore’s documentary about the health care industry in the United States. I found the film incredibly upsetting–particularly in light of the thinking in which I have been immersed as we consider the presiding question of our 2007-2008 season: “What does it mean to be an American?” Moore, in the style of his earlier films that explore the impact of corporate interests on public policy, compares the American health system to the health systems of other nations. It is a distressing report that the film issues.

Seeing SICKO comes on top of my distress at watching the current Presidential campaign. The second quarter fundraising reports are out and we are all being alerted to a) the vast sums of money dedicated to the campaign (and the corporate interests expressed in those vast sums); and b) the degree to which dollars translate into political viability. And all the time, we are watching the war in Iraq; the great disparity in the distribution of wealth and resources in our wealthy, privileged nation; the quality of our education system; the environmental crisis brought on by our overconsumption of the Earth’s resources; and, and, and…. (more…)

For more photos of August: Osage County, click here.