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

Hey, it is beautiful outside! And it’s WEEK FOUR of Dead Man’s Cell Phone. Funny to think about us still wearing these rainy day costumes when summer comes! The excitement so far: one understudy has gone on (bravo Dana), one onstage bloody nose (me), several uninvited phone rings during performance (hello audience!). WOW, live theatre!

We bought our crew dinner between shows this Saturday. The weekends are long; two shows both days, so it was lovely to have dinner in the building. Mary Beth made brownies and I scrambled to a store to grab strawberries. Our stage manger Chris had a visit from her baby Joan and her husband, actor Tom Cox. When we first met Joan she was crawling, but by the time our show closes she will be walking! (more…)

Hard to believe that Carter’s Way just closed. It’s amazing, this business we’re in. So intensely close, yet so transient. On the last day of a show, I’m always a little broken up inside. It kind of feels like a break up, the end of a relationship. Not just with the actors you see everyday, but with the faces you get used to backstage, like Caleb and Rick and Noelle and Jamie and Gregor and Becky and Dawn and Martha W and Malcolm and Lauren and others. You remember small things, like waving to the Front of House person who sees you as you enter the theatre on the other side of the double doors, just before you head downstairs–how they always wave back. The box office employee who gives you an unexpected compliment on the show when you really needed it that day. The amazing artists who understudy us, who see the show all the time, surely tire of it, and yet are always warm and welcoming every time we come in (particularly Justin, for some reason).
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We are pleased to announce the playwrights who will be participating in this year’s First Look Repertory of New Work.

For those new to this page or the program, First Look is a new play development process that culminates with three plays being presented for a limited-run rotating repertory in our Garage space. Now in its fourth year, the program has garnered significant national attention for its innovative, production-oriented, approach to developing new work, while at the same time allowing for unique access to the general public through First Look 101. Six of the nine plays developed through the Rep have gone on to premiere productions around the country, including three recently in New York: Marissa Wegrzyn’s The Butcher of Baraboo at 2econd Stage, Kate Fodor’s 100 Saints You Should Know at Playwrights Horizons, and When the Messenger is Hot at 59E59.

This year’s playwrights are all based in Chicago. They are: (more…)

So here I sit at my desk, at Steppenwolf – a desk piled high books and scripts, surrounded by people talking theatre. I’m feeling a bit anxious. Why? I’m trying to finalize my Steppenwolf for Young Adults season for 2008-2009. Maybe you’re asking: how tough can that be? Picking two plays for high school students?

I have had many suggestions, tons of them, in fact – from people like Sean Graney, Michael Patrick Thorton, Lisa Portes, Michael Rhod, my staff and colleagues, on and on. I have given scripts to our Young Adult Council to read and get feedback. Still I sit.

Why? Why the difficulty? Why the indecision? Because programming for SYA is not a straight-up artistic decision. (more…)

One of the interesting outcomes of our decision to program our subscription series across both our Upstairs and Downstairs theaters is that it produces a concurrent run of our subscription shows. Currently, we have Carter’s Way in the Downstairs Theatre and Dead Man’s Cell Phone in the Upstairs Theatre. Just having both shows in our house produces a dialogue between them. In a season dedicated to the question, “What does it mean to be an American?”, these two plays activate interesting parallels and contrasts.

Parallels: both shows are, in at least one thread of their narratives, love stories. Both plays feature a new technology–in Carter’s Way, the radio; in Dead Man’s Cell Phone, the…cell phone–and raise some questions about how that technology changes the boundaries of one’s sense of self. (more…)