An Embarrassment Of Riches
Posted by Martha Lavey on 4/10/2009
Wait! There’s more. We just opened The Tempest and I can’t wait to hear your responses to the production. As you know, it is the first Shakespeare play we have presented on our subscription series (we did a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream years ago for our student series). I look forward to hearing your interpretations of the play and the production.
Here we are in April and we still have five more Steppenwolf productions yet to open on our season, as well as two productions by visiting companies. Our final subscription series play, Up by Bridget Carpenter, directed by ensemble member Anna Shapiro, begins rehearsal in May and plays through the summer; our Steppenwolf for Young Adults production of Of Mice and Men opens at the end of April; our First Look Repertory of New Work premieres three new plays (Sex with Strangers by Laura Eason, Honest by ensemble member Eric Simonson, and Ski Dubai by Laura Jacqmin) in July. Our visiting companies are Rivendell with The Walls and 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal in our Upstairs Theatre.
An embarrassment of riches. We feel so fortunate to be able to present such a rich ecology of work: new plays, an American classic; and, from our visiting companies: a group-generated new play and a 500 Clown piece inspired by a range of sources including Brecht and the Fratellini clowns.
On this past Monday night, we did a one-night only program of Nelson Algren’s work in collaboration with Algren’s publisher, Seven Stories Press, to celebrate the centenary of Algren’s birth. In addition to our own actors, the readers included writers Don DeLillo, Russell Banks, and Barry Gifford, and visiting actor, Willem Dafoe. Harold Augenbraum, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, introduced the program and was gracious to acknowledge Steppenwolf as a valued Chicago resource. What needs saying is that it is our Chicago audience that makes robust and various programming possible. This is a theater town: you have an appetite for multi-dimensional work, strong voices, and stylistic invention. It’s very invigorating to keep thinking with you, to maintain a conversation with you through our work.
The International Olympic Committee was in town over the weekend to assess our city’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. If we win the Olympic bid, we have a great opportunity to create a cultural Olympics in parallel with the athletic games. What will make our cultural Olympics unique? What can we do to make a Chicago signature cultural Olympiad? Chicago is a city of fond tradition and future-leaning vision. How can we capture the soul of our place that is such a beautiful nexus of the old, the new; the urban, the neighborhood; the natural beauty of our shore, the constructed beauty of our architecture? What would a cultural Olympics in Chicago look like?
April 13th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Cultural Olympics, I like that, the thought itself might even help the bid when the IOC will cast the final vote… My first thought on reading this was that it might be nice to go back to the basics of Pierre the Coubertin who described the Olympic thought as a contribution to a peaceful and better world by education through sport practised without discrimination in the Olympic spirit of mutual understanding, friendship, solidarity and fair play. (I know we’ve strayed far since then but it’s still the fundamental thought)
Many themes to play with… to emphasize the multi-cultural identity of Chicago maybe pick plays connected to previously organizing cities/countries (eg by author or setting) to do that, and in spirit of broad support for the bid, a few of the bigger theaters could unite in their theme for the 2015/16 season (27 previous games with 18 different organizing countries could be represented by 3-4 season series?)