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

I attended the New York opening of our production of The Sunset Limited at the 59E59 Theatre this past Sunday with our Executive Director, David Hawkanson, and our publicist, Will Nedved. Written by Cormac McCarthy, Sunset, you’ll remember, played in the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre this past summer and it moved to 59E59th with its creative team intact: director Sheldon Patinkin; the actors, Austin Pendleton and Freeman Coffey, and the design team of Scott Neale, Tatjana Radisic, Martha Wegener, and Keith Parham.

59E59th is a complex of three theaters. located, naturally enough, at 59 East 59th Street in Manhattan. The Sunset Limited plays in the 99-seat theater of the complex through November 19th. I’m happy to report that the play has been well received and that the theater is a very fit setting for the production–an intimate, focused space for a play that turns on an engagement with a complex text and the intricate, layered performances of the actors. (more…)

There’s a lot going on at the theater these days. We have our production of The Pillowman continuing in the Downstairs Theatre through November the 12th, and Upstairs, our production of The Bluest Eye plays to student audiences on week day matinees and for general audiences on the weekends. The Bluest Eye then moves to the Duke Theatre in New York for three-week run. This is the first time that we have taken a Steppenwolf for Young Adults production to New York.

We began rehearsals today for Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited for its run at the 59E59th Theatre in New York. The Sunset Limited will run in New York from October the 24th through November the 19th with its original cast of Austin Pendleton and Freeman Coffey, and its director, Sheldon Patinkin. So for a couple of weeks, Steppenwolf will have two productions running in New York. (more…)

One of the pleasures of moderating post-show discussions with our audiences, as I did this week after a performance of Love Song, is the way in which our audience’s aptitude for engaging in insightful conversation about the play provokes new ideas – even when it is my job to be deeply familiar with the work already.

One member of this discussion was deeply struck by the brother/sister relationship between Joan (Molly Regan) and Beane (Ian Barford), seeing each of them as the savior for the other. Yet another suggested that Joan’s husband Harry (Fran Guinan) was the real hero of the story, pointing out how it is his efforts, first to help Beane and then Joan, that really propel the action of the play. This caused a third to chime in that Molly (Marianne Mayberry), and the power of imagination she represents, was the true catalyst from whom sacrifice is demanded for the betterment of the others.

The conversation was a useful reminder of the way in which any work of art, regardless of authorial intent, is always viewed through a variety of lenses – the choices made by the writer, the decisions made by actors, directors and designers in the production process, and the subjective point-of-view of any given audience member. The act of interpretation demands the collusion, and sometimes collision, of all of these. Each of these three audience members seemed to find their own reading of the play satisfying, but also appeared to gain something from hearing other perspectives. Despite spending much of my day in solitary contemplation of the merits of a given play, it made me think that genuine, full interpretation of any work is a wonderfully collaborative experience.

This past Tuesday evening after work, I had the pleasure of meeting Graeme Maley, Artistic Director of the Liverpool New Writer’s Theatre. Graeme was seeing our production of Love Song and I met him for a drink beforehand. Graeme’s theatre shares Steppenwolf’s commitment to supporting the work of playwrights and the development of new work. Graeme was visiting Chicago on his way to Appleton, Wisconsin to do research for a play he is developing with playwright Ronan O’Donnell about the life and art of Harry Houdini. The play will be performed in Liverpool in 2008, the year that Liverpool has been chosen to be the European Capital of Culture.

After a lively discussion with Graeme, I went to meet novelist Cormac McCarthy at the corner of Halsted and North Avenue to escort him to the first rehearsal of his play, The Sunset Limited. We entered the rehearsal hall and met the actors, Austin Pendleton and Freeman Coffey, the director Sheldon Patinkin, the stage manager and understudies. After general introductions and a welcome to the theatre, I left them to the business of the first table reading of the play.

I crossed the street from the rehearsal hall to the theatre and proceeded to the Upstairs Theatre where the production of Don Delillo’s play, Love-Lies-Bleeding was in technical rehearsals. Onstage were the actors - Martha Lavey, John Heard, Penelope Walker, Louis Cancelmi, and Larry Kucharik. The creative team was working on the transitions between scenes and finessing the timing of lights and sound with the movement of the actors. I watched for about 45 minutes as director Amy Morton and the designers worked with tremendous sensitivity to get the cues just right. I slipped out of the dark theatre and down the elevator to the Downstairs Theatre lobby. When the elevator doors opened the lobby was abuzz with pre-show activity as the audience moved into the theatre to watch the performance of Love Song.

As I stepped out into the spring evening, I was struck by the fact that I had just visited three productions of plays at three stages of development – beginning, middle, and end. The creative process was churning throughout the buildings of Steppenwolf. I recalled my conversation with Graeme and realized that the first step with all three of these new plays, was the commitment to new play development.

Best of luck, Graeme!

In post-show conversations, our audiences for Love Song have eagerly embraced the idea of love serving as a force interdependent with the power of the imagination.

Most of us likely think about love in some form almost everyday; whether about those we love or used to, those we want to love us, or even love in a more abstract way – be it spiritual, sexual, or relating to humankind.

But how often do we think about imagination?

At the theater, as a group of artists, we like to think of ourselves as particularly engaged with imagination. We read a play and imagine what it may be like on stage. Or we imagine how a particular sort of person might behave when faced in a particular situation and try to enact what we imagine in a truthful and compelling way. Or we imagine what the apartment of these people might look like and imagine a way to create that environment on a proscenium stage.

But often we are less aware of our daily acts of imagination. We imagine what the cheeseburger will taste like before we order it. We imagine what we will look like in the blue shirt before we put it on.

One way in which Love Song works on me is as a reminder of the importance of a more conscious exercise of imagination. If we can imagine a cigarette that gives us pleasure without ill-health effects, can’t we also imagine a world without hunger or violence, or with equality and justice and yes, love. And isn’t imagining it the first necessary step to making it possible?