A New Addition
Posted by Whitney Dibo on 10/02/2008Remember that first day back to high school after summer break? That bizarre sense of compulsory reunion, with people who populate your life based only on proximity to the local high school? Well imagine that scene, except with students who actually like each other – and have chosen to reunite not for the daily grind of high school, but to promote theatre for young audiences across Chicago. Welcome to the Steppenwolf Young Adult Council.
I am a new addition to the Council. As a recent hire into the Steppenwolf for Young Adults Department, I am coming onto the scene three years after the Council’s inception. In those first three years, the Council created the high school-geared MaTEENe series, facilitated teacher and student workshops and regularly met with Steppenwolf staff to better understand the inner-workings of professional theatre. However, aside from these quantifiable accomplishments, the Council members have obviously reaped other, intangible benefits from their time at Steppenwolf: a trust between each other, and an impressive vocabulary with which to speak about theatre in Chicago.
At least these are the first things I noticed during our inaugural Young Adult Council meeting of the year. As the students trickled into the third floor conference room from all sides of the city – from Lincoln Park High School to Roberto Clemente, from Oak Park River Forest to Whitney Young – they were unabashedly happy to be back and exchanging rapid-fire ideas about what should become of this year’s council. How rare, I thought, that this flurry of welcome back buzz was not reserved for a small, select group (as during most high school first-days), but included every single Council member who walked into the room. Whatever had gone on during the last three years had fostered a truly special bond between these students.
Not to mention that the conversations I overheard didn’t center on last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, but rather on the upcoming opening of Steppenwolf’s Kafka on the Shore and the recent closing of Superior Donuts. Again, color me impressed.
But the Council is far from reaching the peak of its growth. After the usual housekeeping announcements, Artistic and Education Director of Steppenwolf for Young Adults, Hallie Gordon, opened the meeting with a simple question: What was one thing you liked about last year’s Council? And what was one thing that could have been better?
The students had a lot to say on both fronts. They unanimously enjoyed the workshops they had planned with artists around the city (a playwriting workshop, an ensemble-building workshop with risky theatre company 500 Clown), but were all disappointed at the lack of attendance at their carefully-planned events. Basically, they are proud of what they have created, but the time has come to market.
Hallie Gordon and I also threw something brand new into the Council’s curriculum: involvement in Steppenwolf’s innovative play-development program, First Look 101. Throughout the year the Council will meet with Director of New Play Development Ed Sobel and Literary Manager Joy Meads to learn the essentials of developing new work – and then watch the process up close and personal through the transparent lens of First Look 101 (the program allows participants a unique chance to observe open table readings and rehearsals in hopes of demystifying the new play development process.) The Council was stoked, to use a term I still retain from high school.
We were still brainstorming when 6pm rolled around (some of us moving onto our third piece of pizza…), but in just an hour and half the first Young Adult Council meeting accomplished something very real: a collective understanding that something unique has been created over the last three years, and now it’s time to harness that success and take it farther, transforming these ideas into broader programming that can effectively reach out to teen audiences in larger numbers. But one thing is for sure: these students are passionate about raising awareness about the arts in their schools, communities and around Chicago – a quality you don’t usually find in a group of ten high school students. But we found them, and we have them here at Steppenwolf, so watch out.