Announcing the 2009-2010 Season
Posted by Martha Lavey on 2/03/2009Steppenwolf dedicates its 2009-2010 season to the power of belief and how it illuminates what’s authentic in our lives. We bring you five plays that are, variously: playful, sly, strange, tender. They examine domestic intimacy, they question historical accuracy, they puzzle existential reach. They all ask us to look at what happens when we take a leap of faith and choose to believe.
We begin with ensemble member Eric Simonson’s new work, Fake. The play takes the Piltdown controversy as the starting point for its inquiry into authenticity. “Piltdown Man” is the name given to the purported archeological artifact that provided the missing link in the evolutionary chain between ape and homo sapiens. Along the way, the play traces the question of fidelity and the specter of religious belief in the negotiation of truth. Ensemble members Kate Arrington, Fran Guinan and Alan Wilder anchor our cast.
Ensemble member Amy Morton directs our second play, David Mamet’s American Buffalo. Amy has a long history with Mamet’s work, including having directed our very successful production of Glengarry Glen Ross. Mr. Mamet is regarded for his terse style and ability to introduce humor and menace in surprising, revealing ways. American Buffalo is the quintessence of the Mamet style. Ensemble members Fran Guinan and Tracy Letts play the roles of Donny and Teach.
As our third offering, ensemble member Tina Landau directs three plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney, a brilliant young playwright whose work has been produced in New York and London. The plays, known collectively as “The Brother/Sister Plays,” are: In The Red And Brown Water, The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or The Secret Of Sweet. We will run the plays in repertory, playing In The Red And Brown Water on one night in alternation with The Brothers Size and Marcus on another. The plays stand alone as independent productions but gain a special resonance when viewed in collection. Subscribers will have one of these programs included in their subscription and will be given an exclusive opportunity later in the season to purchase tickets to the other.
The fourth play is Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece, Endgame. Ensemble member Frank Galati directs this absurd, comic and profound exploration of the stories we construct to make sense of our lives. Our newest ensemble member, William Petersen, plays the indomitable Hamm, the actor-king at the center of the play, ensemble member Ian Barford plays his beleaguered servant, Clov, and Fran Guinan and Rondi Reed play the parents.
The season concludes with a new play by Bruce Norris, A Parallelogram. Ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro directs this world premiere with ensemble member Kate Arrington in the role of Bee, a young woman with an uncanny ability to see the future. Would we change our story if we knew the outcome? Would we want to?
We welcome you to our season of belief. Three new plays and two classic plays from the canon of American and world drama that look at how the power of belief can corrupt, delude, nourish or empower us. Thank you so much for being a part of the Steppenwolf family and I look forward to kicking off another exciting season with you in 2009-2010.
February 4th, 2009 at 11:59 am
The line-up looks great, already looking forward to next season, I hope I can make it to a few of the plays… The Brother/Sister Plays sounds intriguing with the alternating productions… (and a nice long run so us out-of-towners can plan for a combination of plays) and… wow you’re early with announcing next season!
February 6th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Marja, thanks so much for your encouraging words. We’re having such a good time as we put together our casting and begin enlisting our design teams. Already, we’re beginning to envision the plays on stage and are very excited. We’ll look forward to seeing you at the theater!
February 8th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Martha,
I wonder how actors are screened or casted or whatever it is called within a theatre, for the plays. Are they being asked to participate in a play?
And who exactly within Steppenwolf decides which plays will be on stage next season?
No Chicago for me this year since I’ve planned a New York trip. I was hoping August would stay on Broadway till September. Glad I got to see it in London.
Jolanda
February 12th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
There’s an interesting article about Boston’s American Repertory’s current production of Endgame right here:
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/02/13/no_give_and_take_for_art_in_endgame/?rss_id=Boston.com+–+Theater+and+arts+news
February 14th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Thanks for the link, very interesting!
I’ve always wondered about the leeway between the protection of the playwrights dramatic copyright and the freedom of artistic expression of the director and performing artists, especially when the playwright has included meticulous stage directions. This article was a nice reminder to dig a little into the subject. I wonder if mr Beckett would have gotten his injunction if he hadn’t confused the issue by objecting to the casting decisions and had stuck to only the stage direction (or maybe the miscegenation issue was the publisher’s ‘creative’ elaboration?). In any case… if I make it to Chicago to see Steppenwolf’s ‘Endgame’ I’ll be counting the steps…
February 17th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Beckett is like Mozart. There are neither too many notes nor too few. The score is its own deiscipline. As the maestro himself said: “It’s the shape that matters.” I directed a production of “Endgame” at the University of South Florida in 1966. Because I was in “Speech” and not “Theatre” the production was mandated by the Department to be a “reader’s theatre” performance which, at that time, “pre-supposed” the use of the text. This seemed silly to me. Why use the physical text? The hero of the play is blind. Why should the actor playing Hamm use a script? “Reader’s Theatre” was a fashion at the time. It was a pared-down performance modality meant to focus on poetry rather than spectacle. All that aside, I felt that it might be interesting to take the convention to it’s limit. So I gave Hamm a physical text, an immense box of a book with loose weathered pages IN BRAILE. What about Clov? Since he is a slave to Beckett (and his stage directions) as much as to Hamm, I chained the actor to his cumbersome block of a text with heavy rattling coils of steel. The actor playing Hamm had been in a bad car accident and was in a full body cast up to the waist. He lived in a motorized wheelchair. I picked the play for him. It was one role I thought he could play in his disabled condition. Anyway, in those years Beckett had many bigger fish to fry and no one paid any attention to our little weekend offering in Tampa. My point? Art that seeks to perform, to be accomplished in time, to be bodied forth before an audience is ALL GIVE AND TAKE. The writer gives and, when it’s Samuel Beckett, everyone else takes? Not exactly. In rehearsals for “Godot” once the actor playing one of the tramps paraphrased a line. Instead of “There’s no lack of space,” the actor said “There’s no lack of void.” Beckett, who was directing, yelled “Keep it! That’s even better! No lack of void.” And so it goes. Beckett has now been dead twenty years. The dim horizons of his plays remain for us to contemplate. We must as interpreters master the score. Every note, cadence, cadenza, aria, fermata, every void. Every drip of pain. Is there room for thunder not in the text, or driving rain? Might dogs bark in the distance? Could Hamm and Clov dance their dance in the sub-basement of an ancient hospital, as in Michael Maggio’s production in Chicago in the 70’s, or might they be held up in a sea-side shack? Hamm is Beckett’s parody of Prospero. One strives, in studying Shakespeare, to find the deepest music in the text and let it out. All the key-changes and interperative instructions are there WITHIN the lines of verse. Who could love Beckett and NOT regard the exquisite discipline of his directions:
(Very agitated.)
All kinds of fantasies! That I’m being watched!
April 14th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
After Steppenwolf announced “Endgame” for the next season I decided to see this play in my native language german. So I went to Berlins famous theater “Deutsches Theater/Kammerspiele”. Maybe you can imagine my surprise to see only 2 persons on the stage - Clov and Hamm. In very glittering costumes. Sounds weird but I have to say that I enjoyed the play (85 minutes). But was it really Beckett ?
Would Steppenwolf ever cut a scipt that way ?
Kerstin
April 15th, 2009 at 9:54 am
At Steppenwolf, it has been our policy to make no alterations to the text of a play still under copyright, without the express consent of the writer or his/her authorized agent. Director Tina Landau has made some cuts to the text for our current production of The Tempest, but that play has long been in the public domain.
I am particularly surprised to hear of this instance, as the Beckett estate is known for keeping tight control over both the text and the interpretive choices for productions. The customary running time of Endgame is around 80-90 minutes. The play, as written, has only four characters; Hamm, Clov, Nagg and Nell. The latter two we see only their upper torsos and heads, as they are seated in ash cans for the entire play.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Thanks for the answer.
The play in Berlin is on stage since 2 years. Maybe I can do some research about the staging here.
If you want to take a look, here is a small clip.
http://www.deutschestheater.de/programm/stuecke/repertoire_detail.php?sid=755
Kerstin
May 5th, 2009 at 12:34 am
How about John Mahoney in Death of a Salesman?
I see he was in it back in 1980…is he the right age for Willy?