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

“Playing John Merrick will save my life.” That’s what I wrote in my notebook one week into rehearsals of The Elephant Man. Flashback to 13 years earlier: I am a gangly and disproportionally excited high school freshman leaning out of my balcony seat—eyes bulging, jaw dropped, heart pounding—furiously clapping for the Steppenwolf for Young Adults production of Twelve Angry Men. Acting at Steppenwolf became a goal for me as an actor and (perhaps more importantly so) as a Chicagoan. I have spent much time since that experience in the balcony chasing that feeing and failing in articulating it. I would dream of myself playing delicate & intellectually touché-ing scenes with Malkovich, and oh, who’s this beautiful woman I love entering with tea? And a knife? Why that’s Joan Allen! And here’s Jeff Perry playing my good buddy dropping over for a late-night/rain-soaked/kitchen table with copious empty bottles of beer/confessional betrayal scene.

Those were my dreams. I’ve had lots of them. Most have come true. But never—never—in my wildest dreams did I see myself taking the stage at Steppenwolf in a wheelchair. (more…)

August: Osage County, which earned six Jeff Awards last night, begins previews tonight at the Imperial Palace on Broadway.

Check out the new video feature of ensemble members Jeff Perry, Francis Guinan, Amy Morton and Mariann Mayberry talking about bringing the Steppenwolf production to Broadway.

Next weekend, on Saturday, October the 27th, Steppenwolf is presenting two new plays as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. The theme of this year’s Festival is The Climate of Concern. About two years ago, Ren Weschler, the Artistic Director of the Festival convened a group of people–scientists, journalists, scholars, policy makers, and artists–to brainstorm about programming for the Festival around this idea of climate change. It’s incredibly interesting to have that benchmark of two years ago–the collective attention to climate change has increased dramatically since then. Perhaps the most visible indicator of that growing consciousness is the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Albert Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To have granted the Peace Prize to these people, who have dedicated their public lives to the issue of climate change, is to acknowledge how urgently our environmental well-being is tied to our every aspect of our political, social, and cultural well-being. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to two parties–a scientific panel and an individual who had won an Academy Award for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth–speaks to Ren’s prescience in convening both scientists and artists to a discussion of climate change. As Ren said at the time of our convening, it is the artists who provide the vision for our urgent social issues. The research that science and scholarship produce is the foundation of our collective knowledge; the crafting of that knowledge into image and language is the task of the artist. Those images, those metaphors provide story for hard science. They humanize and make vivid the story of science.

Ren approached Steppenwolf with the idea of enlisting several Chicago theaters to commission playwrights to write about the issue of climate change. Ed Sobel, our Director of New Play Development, and I enlisted two of our colleague theaters and we each partnered with another Chicago theater company to commission plays of both nationally-known and local playwrights. So: three theaters–Steppenwolf, the Goodman, and Next Theatre, and their partners, Teatro Luna, Congo Square, and Rivendell–and six playwrights. (more…)

It’s Sean. Not Graney. Cooper. Sean Cooper.

Who?

Exactly.

I’m an actor. And I’m working on a play at Steppenwolf. So I must be at least halfway decent. They won’t let just anyone come in here and walk around and say lines. Or write on their blog, for that matter. I mean, it’s Steppenwolf, they have a screening process.

So, the play is called Wedding Play, and it’s a Visiting Company Initiative production at Steppenwolf from About Face, another very highly respected theatre… like Steppenwolf for homosexuals. It’s a new play, a world premiere, written and directed by Eric Rosen, the Artistic Director of About Face. You’ve probably heard of him, right? (more…)

Michael Patrick Thornton and Thomas J. Cox. Check out more scenes from The Elephant Man.