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

Here we go–the launch of our 2008-2009 season. The start of a new season is always a thrilling moment for the theater. It’s such a lot of fun to finally start talking to our audience about the plays and artists that we’ve been thinking about and planning with for a year. (We’re in the midst of our planning process for 2009-2010 right now). And then comes the moment when our directors and actors show up for the first day of rehearsal and the dream gains body and voice. And then comes the moment when YOU show up and theater begins.

We began with the negotiation of a theme for the season. As you know, this past season, 2007-2008, was bannered under the question of “What does it mean to be an American?” We felt the urgency of this question as we, as a nation, embarked on the Presidential election process. By positioning our season within this context, wonderful conversations about the plays ensued with our audiences–conversations about ideas that reached beyond the theater and into our lives. (more…)

We begin the final weekend of performances for Love-Lies-Bleeding at Steppenwolf today. Tech rehearsals at the Kennedy Center start on June the 15th, and we open the show in the Terrace Theatre at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, June the 18th. We will do eight shows the following week, closing on Sunday June the 25th. I’ll be very interested to see if audiences in Washington respond to the show differently in any way from our Steppenwolf Chicago audiences.

Over the years, we have taken a number of shows to other cities, nationally and internationally. The venues have ranged from the large commercial houses on Broadway; to large, subsidized theaters like the National Theatre and the Barbican Theatre in London; to international festivals in Ireland and Australia; to the smaller houses of off-Broadway; to other regional theaters in the United States like the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, or most recently, the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. (more…)

Our production of Lady Madeline opened this past weekend. Lady Madeline is being presented through our Steppenwolf for Young Adults program, performing on weekdays for Chicago-area school students, and for the general public on weekends. Lady Madeline, commissioned by Steppenwolf from Chicago writer Mickle Maher, is based upon the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. The run of this show, overlapping with our Subscription Season run of after the quake, made me think about the nature of adaptation. With after the quake, we see an example of Frank Galati’s approach to the task, with nearly all of the text being taken directly (via translator Jay Rubin) from Haruki Murakami’s writing. Lady Madeline, on the other hand, uses Poe’s work as a jumping off point for an entirely different kind of exploration, with most of what appears on-stage issuing in Mickle’s voice. I imagine most of us have had the experience of reading a book and then seeing a movie or theatrical version of it (or vice-versa) and arguing afterwards with our friends about which we preferred. How much of the way in which we receive an adapted work is dependent upon our knowledge and appreciation of the source material? If you’ve read Poe and/or Murakami and seen Lady Madeline or after the quake, I wonder where did you stand on that question.

It’s very exciting to have after the quake and The Well-Appointed Room running at the same time at Steppenwolf and be able to participate in the post show discussions for both shows. The plays are very different from one another – in tone, in production style, in their treatment of language and character – and yet the discussions they create share common themes.

The stories in after the quake were motivated by the Kobe earthquake in 1995. The two plays that comprise The Well-Appointed Room were written in response to the events of September the 11th, 2001. Both works register the after-shocks of these large cultural events on individual lives of those who have endured their disruptive force. Not insignificantly, both after the quake and The Well-Appointed Room use the crucible of a love relationship to examine the deepest tremors of these massive world events. And, not insignificantly, both works contain the presence of a child – the impressionable and innocent consciousness, the next chapter of the story.

The resonances of these two plays – especially striking, given their concurrent runs – begins to echo back to our opening production, Last of the Boys. Here, too, a central cultural event – the Vietnam War – is the instigating event for what becomes an examination of the effects of that war on individual lives. And here, too, that examination is cast in multi-generational terms: both a daughter and a son represent the living legacy of a culture torn asunder.

This is fascinating to me – to discover a set of themes and motifs in this season’s work. When we designed this season, our dedication was to present new work, to mark the 30th anniversary of Steppenwolf by looking forward. We did not thematize the work itself – we just wanted to find rich, fresh voices that spoke to the way we live now. Compelling, then, that in doing so, we discover stories of a great disruption – a great disruption and its afterlife. All of the plays display a profound sense of urgency, a sense that something has been broken and needs repair (or at least address) for the story to continue. And the story, very importantly, is the story of human connection.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this theme – a theme that is emerging in our post-show discussions. Is this the story of ALL time? Would we find ourselves discussing the quake/the attack/the war 20 years ago? Was this the sensibility of America in 1986? Would the story-of-the-times have been this common anxiety? What would the story have been in 1966? (I choose those 20-year intervals because 20 years is typically cited as “a generation” and, typically, cultural trends are said to recur every 20 years).

I guess one of the questions I am asking is: do we learn? Is “progress” a story we tell ourselves? (or do the permutations in the way the story plays out represent real change?) I don’t know the answers to these questions – I simply find them provoked by the work on stage and your engagement with it. I would love to hear your thoughts.