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

(Joy is the Literary Manager at Steppenwolf)

We’re about to enter previews for Endgame, so this seems like a good time to share this great blog post about Beckett that I found a few months back. It’s by Conor McPherson, another Irish playwright who you might know from our productions of his plays The Seafarer, Dublin Carol, and The Weir. The entire post is good, but I particularly love his take on the central question of Endgame:

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Playing Chet in A Separate Peace was a fantastic experience. After the show closed earlier this month, I’ve been reflecting on the process. Over the run, I was fascinated by our evolving discussions within the cast and with our audience. I had in-depth discussions with actors Damir Konjicija (a Bosnian refugee), Govind Kumar (of Indian descent), and Jake Cohen (a Jewish American), as well as conversations with our director Jonathan Berry about my African and Japanese bloodline. A recurring question for me was: how did we, or rather the characters we play (Finny, Bobby, Gene and Chet), get to Devon, an elite New England private school, as minorities in 1942?

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(Paige and Ashleigh play June and Jennifer Gibbons in The Twins Would Like to Say, part of the Visiting Company Initiative Garage Rep)

In true June and Jennifer fashion, we are writing this post together, combined with questions asked by the elusive Mr. Nobody (June and Jennifer’s imaginary friend).

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(Jake plays Gene in A Separate Peace)

I first met the young men of A Separate Peace in 9th grade English. A decade later, I find myself back at the Devon School playing Gene in our SYA production. Conveniently mirroring Gene’s journey in the novel, this return to Devon has led me through the complex landscape of masculinity.

Only now in my 20s have I found myself examining the conditioning I received as a man-in-training. It has taken me this long to do so partially because introspection is the first sin of maleness: something about how looking inwards is at odds with keeping an eye out for danger at the entrance to the cave.

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(Polly is the Director of Artistic Development at Steppenwolf)

Recently I got obsessed with Dexter, that cable show about a serial killer who kills bad guys. After watching four seasons in about two weeks (I said obsessed), I found myself stressed out, worrying about Dexter, would he get away with it? I was rooting for him. Good storytelling will often put us in surprising emotional and intellectual states. I find it even more powerful when this happens in theater, when we imagine ourselves in places we’ve never been or identify with outsiders completely unlike us. In theater, I like to think of those emotions as almost tactile: we feel them because we’re in such close proximity to the living, breathing actor.

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