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

It’s my last week at Steppenwolf.  I have that funny feeling in my stomach you get when you realize that date you’ve looked at many times- May 28th, final day of Apprenticeship- has appeared in your weekly planner.

A friend from school who works at a web design firm downtown met me at Steppenwolf’s office my first week of work.  “Books!” He exclaimed when he arrived at the desk where I work, surrounded by our play library, crisp copies of contemporary plays, leaning happily against hardcover anthologies so old their titles have worn away.  “Books,” he said more softly, running a finger down one’s spine. “I wish I worked near books.”

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(John is the Marketing Director at Steppenwolf)

“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
this ain’t no fooling around
This ain’t no Mudd Club or CBGB
I ain’t got time for that now”

Anyone remember THAT song? “Life During Wartime” - Talking Heads. It burst onto the scene in 1979, then reappeared in their live film Stop Making Sense. I used to put on one of my dad’s way-too-big-for-me suits and jerk-dance around to it like David Byrne. As I understand it, it’s about some kind of urban guerrilla movement gaining momentum in NYC - and the protagonist is getting caught up in it - it feels like something that is going to change (or end?) society, and he is reflecting back to when he used to hang at the (now defunct) NYC punk clubs Mudd Club and CBGB. I do miss my punk youth… anyway, I was thinking about it as I was putting together the EXPLORE event for Endgame, which happens this Friday. How do you put together a rockin’ party for Samuel Beckett’s Endgame? Well, it turns out that you think about “Life During Wartime.”

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(Evan is the Front of House Manager at Steppenwolf)

“I’m wearing a shirt that’s unbuttoned way too low,” it sounded like he was almost confessing. “And a pair of pants that are tighter than anyone should really be wearing.”

It’s 15 minutes before the Downstairs Theatre would open for the January 7th performance of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, and I was standing in the back of the house watching Tracy Letts - who was sitting onstage - describe the attire he would be wearing that evening in his portrayal of ’70s fashion plate, insomniac and criminal mastermind, Teach.

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(Jessica is the Events and Office Management Associate at Steppenwolf)

Early in November, our Gala team (Director of Major Gifts Brooke Walters, Events Management Director Lori Davidson, Special Events Manager Kendra Stock, Special Events Associate Molly Kobelt, and myself) went to view the unrented retail space at the Blackhawk on Halsted building. For the first time in 12 years, Steppenwolf was considering forgoing the tent that had consistently housed our annual Gala parties. Walking into that space, it was both challenging and exciting to think about what it would look like on the night of the party. The raw, unsealed concrete floors were covered in a thin layer of dust, and support beams stood coated in fireproofing. The ceilings were made of steel and the windows looked out onto an undeveloped, vacant lot across the street, strewn with heaps of rocks and rubble. But this year, Steppenwolf asked of its audience and staff alike to embrace the power of Belief. And just as directors approach scripts as blank canvases from which to create and build their visions, we eagerly embarked on a new challenge to transform an empty, raw retail space into a cohesive, elegant vision for our Gala.

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I play Nell in Endgame. Nell has one scene in the play, which occurs about 15 minutes into the play and takes less than 10 minutes to perform. The unique aspect of this small role is that I enter from a garbage bin. My husband in the play, Nagg, played by Fran Guinan, also lives in a garbage can and both Fran and I get into our places by going into the basement of the theater, climbing a staircase under a trap in the stage floor, and wait on our perch underneath the bins until our entrance. It’s a peculiar way to experience the play. Our physical expressiveness is limited by our confinement in the cans and, further, we come to understand that both Nagg and Nell are losing their sight (and perhaps their hearing).

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