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

What’s cool about playing August in August on Broadway?

It’s cool to enter the “stage door” of The Music Box right from the sidewalk every night, and say hello to either Tim or Sonny, the union doormen (every Broadway house has them.) How New York is that? By contrast, at the stage door of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, we actors punch a security code into a keypad to enter the inner sanctum (which, I admit, also has a certain high-tech appeal.)

It’s cool to tread the boards every night, knowing who walked here before us. The Music Box Theatre was built by Irving Berlin in 1921; Marlon Brando made his stage debut here in 1944, in I Remember Mama; this theatre was the site of the original productions of Kaufman and Hart’s The Man Who Came to Dinner, Pinter’s The Homecoming, and Ira Levin’s Deathtrap (which ran for 1,809 performances); Ben Gazzara, Colleen Dewhurst, Jonathan Pryce, Gene Hackman, Jessica Tandy, Bert Lahr, Mary Tyler Moore, Christopher Plummer, Julie Harris and Carroll O’Connor all played here. (more…)

As First Look Rep enters its third and final week, there is no question the festival has been a success. All three new plays have been met with genuine enthusiasm from audience members, and from a marketing standpoint the shows have sold amazingly well. But despite these successes, the Rep’s ultimate goal has not yet been reached. Yes, it’s nice to put up three pieces of quality developmental theatre, but the Steppenwolf Garage is not meant to be the final destination for these new plays. The hope is that other theatres will become interested in the projects and produce the newly minted scripts elsewhere - giving the plays life after First Look.

One way we nudge this process along is by hosting Professionals Weekend, a three-day event during which professionals from all over the country are given the opportunity to see what First Look is all about. In addition to learning about the play development process and mingling with one another, the hope is that some of these professionals might go back to their home theatres and exclaim (with reckless abandon), “Let’s put on one of these shows in our next season!” Or at least, that’s the idea. (more…)

Steppenwolf’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone closed last week after an 18-week run in the Upstairs Theatre. That is a longer run than usual for a production in Chicago and it is interesting to note what is rewarding and what is challenging in sustaining an extended run.

Over the course of the run Polly Noonan, who played the central character of Jean, talked about constantly discovering the play. Polly had been in a previous production of the play at Wooly Mammoth in Washington DC, so her ongoing discovery of the play is even more striking. Yet, right up to the last week of performances, she spoke of learning new things about the play through the playing of it. (more…)