Steppenwolf’s Other Ambitious Production
Posted by Jessica Server on 5/12/2010
(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.
Six months later on the night before the event, the Gala team congregated in the party venue to run through lights and video for the live auction. The space we were standing in was nothing like the space we had walked through on that cold November day. It was warm and full of life, filled with copper hues and tree branches and vibrantly colored table linens. It was the space we had all envisioned, and I do mean ALL of us (just our catering team alone numbered 146 people!). As we worked through the auction, there were approximately 30 other people laboring away diligently. Men hung and focused lights in one section of the room while our designer scrutinized different lighting effects for the walls in the other. Security circled the space while an audio engineer adjusted sound levels for the auction videos, all while our little Gala team stood around a table and decided whether or not we would use one minute of a video or another. I realized it then, as we huddled around the table, workers bustling around us, that our success for the Gala and as a company had always and would always hinge on the melding of grand ideas with tiny details. Just like a great theatrical production, a great event involves hundreds of people doing specified, seemingly unrelated jobs, which, if you are lucky, come together with seeming effortlessness and ease. Every tiny action supports the overall vision of the event and the theatre as a whole. In other words, there is no “I” in Gala.
And as for those piles of rocks outside? We left them there. During an early walk-through of the space, Martha Lavey asked the building manager to have them remain outside of the venue’s windows, as a symbol of the growth and development of our neighborhood. From an empty stage to an empty retail space, leave it to Steppenwolf to create meaning and beauty out of something empty and ordinary. The challenge and potential of our new venue invigorated us all and infused this year’s Gala with a new synergy and energy that our guests could feel from start to finish. And just like in the theatre, once we have torn it all down, it’s time to start the process all over again.
