Steppen-family Picnic 2010
Posted by Jessica Server on 8/12/2010
(Jessica is the Events and Office Management Associate at Steppenwolf)
The annual Steppenwolf picnic takes place every summer, on some warm, humid Monday, when our production team is sans performance and the administrative staff is just glad for a day off in the sunshine. This year our picnic was held on Monday, July 26th in Linne Woods, a forest preserve in Morton Grove. The day was perfect: sunny, warm, not too humid, and full of the carefree, lazy summer breezes that make you want to eat watermelon and lay in a hammock. As one of the members of the Picnic committee, I had taken part in the planning and execution of the event, which is one of only a handful of times that our entire company comes together, spanning departments and buildings, artistic and administrative, backstage and front-of-house.
You see, Steppenwolf as a company is divided. Our amazing carpenters and props artisans work at our scene shop, a 30-minute drive from our administrative offices. And those offices stand separated by a busy intersection and garage from our stages and production offices housed in the theatre itself. And so these moments are rare; moments when we can put down our hand tools and paperwork, scripts and keyboards, and walk away from it all and out into an open field, where good food and good friends await us.
This year’s picnic featured a delicious lunch spread from Tasty Catering, as well as volleyball, croquet, face painting for the kids (though mostly our adult staff participated) and a “decathlon” led by (the man I believe will become the world’s best little league coach someday) our House Manager, Evan Hatfield. Staff participated in everything from a water balloon toss to a memorized recitation of text from our current production, A Parallelogram, all in hopes of winning the grand prize: an extra paid vacation day. The stakes were high…
The park came alive with dogs and children, burgers and corn, guitars and sports, and yes, even an ice cream cart! It was a perfect summer scene. But as I looked around, I realized that Steppenwolf is one company where it is truly insignificant which building you work in or on which side of the stage. We are a family; at times a highly dysfunctional family worthy of a Tracy Letts play, but a family nonetheless. We do the things that families do: we talk, we support one another, we challenge ideas, we play, we fight, we laugh, we struggle through hard times, and we revel in the good ones. I had heard this term “Steppen-family” thrown around loosely in my nearly two years of employment, but I had rarely stopped to think about what that actually means, and just how lucky we all are…
A Parallelogram may focus on the future, but at Steppenwolf, right now, it is all about the present. The staff picnic is a time to enjoy the hard work we have all endured and make a fresh start for our new season. It is a tradition, yes, but it is also our own highly anticipated little family reunion of sorts… crazy uncle types included.