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

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. Artistic merit is central, of course, but I must also ask myself many other questions: What do the schools want? What do the students want? What do the teachers want? Does the piece fit into the school curriculum? Can I get the rights to it? What about the production elements: Does it need a big cast? Elaborate set? Can we do justice to the text with the budget we have? Then there’s a series of questions about the audience experience: is the play too long? Does it address themes teenagers can relate to? Is there enough action? Humor? Then there the organizational aims of the theater to consider: is it diverse enough? What’s the play’s relationship to the overarching theme of the Steppenwolf season? What point is it making? What kind of conversation will we spark around it? Then there are the departmental obligations of the piece to the community we serve: what will the study guide look like? How can we help teachers fold it into their lesson plans?

You get the picture.

In my view, it’s crucial for me to pick the right pieces – whether plays or books to adapt. In fact, I see this as the most important part of my job. I feel an acute responsibility to these students, since in a lot of cases, this will be their first experience with theatre. We work really hard to try to make sure that experience isn’t lame or boring. In fact, precisely because an SYA show is often the first time these students are seeing a play, we feel we have a singular opportunity to demonstrate the uncommon power of theater.

As I create this season, I think about Steppenwolf’s overall theme that guides the season, the theme of the imagination. I’m compelled to reflect that too often our school system is sorely lacking this vital quality. Indeed, you could make a strong argument for the notion that the struggles our school and our society face arise from a failure of imagination.

I want our conversation about the coming SYA season to be, in part, about art for art’s sake. Remember that idea? Anybody? It goes a little something like this: the very fact of art – where it is created with sufficient love and skill – can constitute the soundest, most persuasive argument on its own behalf. When art is good enough, no one seeing it leaves the theater or gallery or concert hall (or nightclub or website or open field) asking: “what is art FOR?” Conversely, when art fails, it draws attention to its own limitations and you can leave shaking your head, saying: “who needs that?”

So. Here I sit. Struggling to balance it all.

This entry was posted by Hallie Gordon on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under 2008-2009 Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.