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

When the director, Amy Morton, and I first met to discuss the costumes for American Buffalo, we talked about keeping the play within the period that it was written (the late 1970s). Technology has changed our world so much with cell phones and computers that plays like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross can’t realistically be updated to contemporary dress. This is not to say the plays don’t speak to their audiences today… they do! The themes are universal and powerful even if the costumes the actors are wearing represent the world 20-30 years ago.

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Happy Thanksgiving from the Steppenwolf family!

(Jon is directing this season’s Steppenwolf for Young Adults production of A Separate Peace)

I hadn’t been exposed to John Knowles’ A Separate Peace until I was brought in to direct the project for SYA. Somehow, I’d fallen through the cracks of all the middle school and high school students required to read it as part of their curriculum. So, while most people connect with the high school-aged characters when they first read the novel, I connected more directly with the narrator Gene, looking back at the events of that fateful year with a touch of melancholy and distance - for certain, a very different perspective than those boys who tear through that summer with fearless abandon.

Gene’s story - looking back at that last joyful, desperate breath of innocence before a crack of a branch and the crack of a gun ripped open those boys’ eyes to the painful truths that compose a life - manages to capture both the pleasurable callowness of youth and the melancholic recollection of a simpler time. Gene returns to the scene of that summer, the moment that changed his life forever, the moment where the clarity of his boyhood innocence ended as he caught his first glance of the shades of grey that comprise life as an adult.

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Ensemble members Amy Morton, Tracy Letts and Francis Guinan with Patrick Andrews

See more rehearsal photos here.

Credit: Mark Campbell

One of the best parts of my job as Steppenwolf Literary Apprentice is creating Actor Research Packets. What is an actor research packet? Good question! An Actor Research Packet is research compiled to support and contextualize the world of the play for the actors. This research can be excerpts from stories, articles, films, photos, oral histories: anything that helps to add detail to the physical landscape and the themes of the play.

The American Buffalo research hunt was a wild ride full of twists, turns and surprises. I researched topics that ranged from pig iron to Mamet-speak to Thorstein Veblen. But by far my favorite research discovery was a quote from James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel, explaining why he chose this particular symbol:

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