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

Rachel Brosnahan plays Maria in Up by Bridget Carpenter

I will never forget my first matinee. I got to miss a whole day of school to see Les Miserables in the city with my seventh grade humanities class. As we passed through the theatre’s giant glass doors, all sound seemed to fade away and everyone suddenly felt the need to whisper. Accompanied only by the sounds of shuffling feet and air conditioning, we made our way to our seats. Within minutes, the house lights faded and the orchestra filled the house with a rich prologue as the lights came up on the stage. After nearly 3 hours (the show was performed without an intermission) of music, dance, violence, love and oppression, I relaxed in my chair realizing that I had literally been sitting on the edge of my seat. (more…)

Last week at Steppenwolf was the final week of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s production of The Walls which was presented under the Visiting Company Initiative in the Garage Theatre.   Over in the Downstairs Theatre, Steppenwolf’s final subscription series play, Up, began its first week of previews.  And finally, this past Saturday night in the Upstairs Theatre, another visiting company, 500 Clown had their first preview performance of their production of 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal.

In addition, tomorrow all three of the plays of The First Look Repertory of New Work, Honest, Sex with Strangers, and Ski Dubai all begin rehearsal simultaneously.

It will be a busy and full summer at Steppenwolf and we look forward to hearing your responses to the work and to continuing our conversation with you.

This is the first week of my Literary internship at Steppenwolf, and besides spending a lot of time bonding with the photocopier (“Me, Alpha! You, Beta!”), one of my new responsibilities is to manage the theatre’s script library. Walking by the stacks of produced plays, it’s hard not to feel a bit intimidated. The names on the black binders read like a who’s who of theatre royalty. The first time I strolled by the production copy of Glengarry Glen Ross I nearly froze in terror. Some paranoid part of my brain was convinced that I would trip, fall, and somehow manage to shred it. I’m hoping by week’s end I’ll have mustered the courage to open it. (more…)

Walter Griffin, Up’s perpetual dreamer, encourages his son, Mikey, to resist a traditional career path. “Don’t tie yourself down…” Don’t be “a slave to the dollar.” “Be your own boss; that’s what I think.” Despite his deep admiration for his father, after a series of enchanting events, Mikey soon finds himself defying Walter’s ideology and secretly working “every morning and every night.” As the money flows in, Mikey can imagine no other path for himself; Mikey, the unremarkable teenager, has quickly become Michael, the celebrated entrepreneur. Oblivious to Mikey’s capitalist ambitions, Walter dreams on. And so, in a reversal of stereotype, UP presents a father’s unwavering sense of adventure pitted against a son’s developing sense of practicality. (more…)

Last Friday, after seeing the Pixar film Up*, I shared an elevator with a guy whose face looked vaguely familiar. I’m congenitally awful at recognizing faces, so I have nightmares about this type of situation, but—luckily—he couldn’t remember where we’d met either. Trying to narrow it down, he asked “Do you work for a museum?”

Soon enough, we’d figured out that he’s a member of First Look 101 (a group of people who follow the rehearsal and development process of our First Look plays) and that we’d seen each other at the reading of Laura Eason play’s Sex with Strangers the previous Monday. But I absolutely love the fact that in order to remember where he’d met me, he had to rifle through the multiple cultural activities in which he apparently participates. (more…)