With Great Relish
Posted by Randall Arney on 11/12/2008To return to Steppenwolf to direct The Seafarer with a cast of friends and colleagues of thirty years is a special treat. And to bring this depth of personal relationships to a play as rich as The Seafarer makes the experience all the more rewarding. A founding tenet of the ensemble at Steppenwolf is the belief that actors with as much personal and professional history with each other as the characters they portray are bound to get closer to the truth and nuance of these relationships than if the artists were strangers to each other at the outset. It sure makes the work fun!
The Seafarer is about a special Christmas Eve in the lives of a pair of Dublin brothers and some of their mates as they gather for a night of poker to celebrate the holidays. A stranger is also at the table and soon the stakes become profound…for all of us. A funny and scary journey for the audience, The Seafarer is an exploration of the very nature of hope and despair, and a reminder for all of us in the holiday season that we are connected in our lives by our search for love and redemption.
As the cast and I end the first week of rehearsal, we are excited by the richness of our task, and we anticipate with great relish sharing the fruits of our labors with you…just not yet!
And to my initial point, many of us are gathering today (on the day off) for an afternoon and evening of poker.
See you at the theatre!
December 5th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Very poor first night! To charge full price for a production in the making is a rip off. Roberto
December 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am
First, I thank Mr. Maguire for attending a preview performance of The Seafarer. Our preview audiences are terrific—they are, for the most part, game to see the work in progress and anxious to receive the work without the filter of reviews.
I want to remind Mr. Maguire that when we invite our audience to subscribe to the preview series, we explicitly state:
Be the first to see Steppenwolf productions as the director and designers prepare the show for its official opening. Become part of the process and save money too.
We acknowledge, in this language, that the show is not considered complete until opening and the lowered ticket prices (both subscription and single-ticket prices) of our previews acknowledge this. The preparedness of our productions through the preview process is variable. Sometimes, with a new play, the early preview audience is seeing a substantially different play than the opening night audience sees. (The ending of Superior Donuts was changed during previews, for example). Sometimes, with dense text, the preview process becomes the final stage in the actors gaining complete mastery of the play’s words.
Again, the understanding that the preview process is a continuation of work to prepare a production for its opening is reflected in ticket prices which are discounted by from over 18 to over 31 percent against the ticket price of our regular-run performances.
I look forward to our continuing work on The Seafarer and acknowledge our preview audiences who have always been so generous and supportive to our process.