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

Check out more photos from The Pocketbook Monologues.

Hey everyone! It’s Gaby here, along with Clifton, Majdi and Raquel. We’re four returning members of the Young Adult Council, and we just thought we’d write a blog to let all of you know what those pesky (a.k.a AWESOME) teenagers at Steppenwolf are up to.

So, in case you don’t know who or what we are (besides hormonal); we are a group of teenagers from different high schools from the Chicago-land area that gather twice a week to LEAD. CREATE. and COLLABORATE (as our motto says) in forming new ways to attract other teenagers to see and participate in different aspects of theater.

We are known to…
-Lead post-show discussions
-See diverse works of theater around the city
-Create workshops and events
-Learn from talented actors, artists and writers
-Collaborate with the staff to explore exciting opportunities for our own future and well as the future of the audience

(more…)

Kelly O’Sullivan, who plays Cheryl in Good Boys and True (and who plays her like a violin, in case you haven’t had the opportunity to see her), and I were talking about when the previews and knocking knees and expectations and overwhelming excitement and opening are over, you’ve got a job to do. This is where the real job starts. Keeping the story and your character fresh. Every single performance.

When you’re getting ready for your big scene and you feel dry as a bone inside. Nothing’s working. All your emotional songs on your ipod have lost their juice. And you’re so terrified to let down all the people waiting in the audience that when you walk on stage, you just know that your scene partner sees the terror in your eyes and is saying to you, “Hey, I got you. We’re OK.” And you breathe easy because you know you’re working with the best. (Thanks, Stephen.) (more…)

I’m newly fascinated by the different ways people define what theater means to them. Last month I saw a wonderful play at the National Theatre in London. For me, theater became a chance to look into an unexplored intellectual debate between British West Indians and Africans in Kwame Kwei-Armah’s play Statement of Regret. It was also a chance to learn more about a respected venue. The house manager proudly gave me an overview of the National’s three spaces. Her perspective on theater was rooted in place.

I later had a very different conversation with a woman at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Perhaps it was influenced by the fact that she was at an event celebrating fashion in Black London, but she looked me in the eye and said that her favorite American playwright is…Tyler Perry, of Diary of a Mad Black Woman fame. “He’s brilliant. Quite interesting,” she said, with such a lovely accent that I didn’t bother telling her about August Wilson or Chicago’s own Lydia Diamond. (more…)

As Literary Apprentice, it’s part of my job working with Ed Sobel, our Director of New Play Development and Joy Meads, our Literary Assistant, to make sure the actors and creative team have a clear perspective on the material. So I spend a lot of time in the library – often diving deep into history, looking up unfamiliar words and researching the cost of postage stamps. My work is rarely referenced in the rehearsal room, but such “deep background” can shade the creative process. In Good Boys and True, an actor familiar with Reagan-era AIDS policy is equipped with a new sense of his character’s motivations and fears.

Two books offered countless real-life parallels to the play: Our Guys, by Bernard Lefkowitz, is a piercing study of high school “jock” culture, its deep roots in American suburbs, and how a culture of entitlement can lead to crime. Restless Virgins, by Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley, features a recent sex-tape scandal at an elite New England boarding school. Both are widely available.