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

Lately, inspired by the extraordinary dreamscape of Kafka on the Shore, I’ve been thinking a lot about the strange logic that infuses our unconscious fears and desires into the detritus of our everyday life in our dreams each night. So, in celebration of the final days of the presidential campaign, I thought I’d share with you all a couple of my favorite election 2008 websites. Last spring, during the height of the primary campaign, a writer named Sheila Heiti was inspired by a friend’s dream about Hillary Clinton to start a blog soliciting people’s dreams about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain. She received a deluge of emails from people across America. Later, when slate.com invited their readers to submit their dreams about Sarah Palin, they received 500 in one week. Clearly, these figures have insinuated themselves into the deepest reaches of our unconscious and they creep forth in the still of the night in our nightmares and fantasies.

I love reading these dreams. I think it’s fascinating how saturated by emotion they are. Policy issues appear strictly as currency in interpersonal relationships (for example, the woman who dreamed that she would only accept Senator Obama’s marriage proposal if he committed to enacting health care legislation). And, as in Kafka on the Shore, I think some of them have a symbolic resonance that transcends logical explanation. For example, I’m not sure what this dream about John McCain means to the dreamer, but I find the image quite powerful: (more…)

The very concept of a blog is a little strange to me… The idea of recording your private thoughts as you would in a journal, but all the while knowing completely that there’s nothing private about the writing involved. It’s fixed up, polished, re-read and re-written several times over and then offered up to the public… Knowing this walking into it, it would be stupid to think that the writer isn’t just as worried about the ideas offered as they are of the personal impression left on the anonymous readers. It’s an imposed and developed ‘candid look’… So in that sense it can be incredibly hypocritical.

Though that would seem like an argument as to why people should leave blogs alone, it’s really the exact reason why I think that it complements the theater perfectly. It’s the same thing that we do for the stage.

We work and we work and we prepare and we discuss just how to make an impulse or a living breathing, and oftentimes very private moment ring true. Essentially we rehearse spontaneity, and the result is an applied truth. It’s biased. Polished… So in that sense the act of theater can also be hypocritical at times. (more…)

Francis Guinan takes a different journey every night. I have never seen him do a show without trying something new.

For those who have not yet seen Kafka on the Shore, Fran has taken on the challenge of bringing the capitalist icons of Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders to life. While these two figures serve the same purpose in the telling of the story, they both have personalities all their own.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve been thrown off guard by his willingness to completely change his intention from scene to scene. For Fran, each night is a new night. Each show a new show. Every audience that has stepped into the Steppenwolf house thus far has seen a unique performance by him. Even if he knows a moment works beautifully and is guaranteed to get a response, that does not stop him from taking a risk and changing it altogether. (more…)

Recently I’ve found myself making a few odd phone calls at work. Last month I called West Point Military Academy and the State Department. I also had a hugely informative chat with the conservation department at the Newberry Library, called a handful of Japanese cultural organizations and exchanged emails with an analyst about dreams. In each instance I was fulfilling some of my dramaturgical duties as the Literary Apprentice by trying to answer questions.

A unique and exciting part of my apprenticeship is researching questions raised in the rehearsal room, questions that when properly answered provide details that deepen the experience of the play for actors and for the audience. This is how I’ve come to know the protocol for an Army officer in World War II who wants to remove his hat and place it on the table. Or how an archivist treats and stores manuscripts, or how many numbers are in a phone number when one person with a Tokyo based cell phone calls another person in Tokyo. I collected these bits and pieces for the fine folks involved with Kafka on the Shore, and in pursuit of the answers I did some slightly odd things like tracking down an older service member at the State Department who needed some real convincing I wasn’t a member of the media. I guess they don’t get many calls from our country’s theater community! (more…)

Steppenwolf offers post-show discussions after every performance and one of the great pleasures of my job as Associate Artistic Director is leading them and being in conversation with our audiences. Kafka on the Shore is a galvanizing production; there are audience members who leave at intermission and there are audience members who have returned to the production for a second viewing. For those who have stayed to participate in the post-show discussions - admittedly people who enjoyed the production to the point of wanting to participate in an interpretation of it - the discussions have been especially rich due to the fact that the story relies heavily on the willingness of the audience to engage their imagination and interpretive powers.

The audience insights into the play are striking and we’ve decided to cull quotes from post-show participants and post them here on the blog. I hope they pique the curiosity of those of you who have not seen the production, and for those of you who have – please feel free to post your own observation or respond to the ones that follow below. (more…)