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

On Saturday, April 8th, Steppenwolf celebrated its ensemble of 35 actors, directors, playwrights, and adaptors of text with the annual Black Tie Gala. The evening began with a performance of Love Song in the Downstairs Theatre and proceeded into the large tent that had been constructed over the parking lot for cocktails, a delicious dinner by Wolfgang Puck, and dancing to the rocking sounds of Gary Sinise and his Lt. Dan Band.

Before dinner, co-founder Jeff Perry addressed the assembled guests with typical feeling, humor, and wit. Here is what he said:

Like the majestic Statue of Liberty or the warming alcoholic glow of our dear Gaslight, or our never to be forgotten O’Rourke’s, may Steppenwolf continue to exclaim “bring me your self involved, your conspicuously talented, your thespians huddled in packs yearning to confront.”

Let these hallowed halls of courageous and shameless hammery always embrace audience and artists judging them not by the color of their skin or the peculiarities of their childhoods (see Pendleton, Malkovich and Metcalf to name but three), but by the content of their collaborative passion.

Like Leonard Cohen’s ‘birds on a wire or drunks in a midnight choir’ may we – in, please god, politically incorrect ways - try always to be free, of choice, of spirit, of voice.

May Steppenwolf always seek to create a more perfect union of artistic trust, respect and challenge so that ensemble work of the artists, by the artists and for the artists – sorry, the audience - shall not perish from this earth.

Dearest Steppenwolf may your efforts to borrow from dear William Saroyan add not to the sorrow and misery of the world, but help us all smile at the infinite delight and mystery of it.

Well, the cast, crew, and creative team are approaching the first public preview of John Kolvenbach’s Love Song tonight. A week and a half ago, the cast, director, and stage managers moved from the rehearsal hall, located down the street, into the theatre where they were joined by the designers and production crew. After an intensive period called “technical rehearsals” or “tech” which included a number of twelve hour work days, they arrived at the final dress rehearsal last night. It has been a longstanding tradition at Steppenwolf to invite veterans of former wars to the final dress rehearsal and it is always an honor to have them in the theatre. They tend to be a very lively and responsive audience and they are a tremendous presence as the actors begin bridging rehearsal and performance. Dennis Zacek, Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theatre, refers to the audience, the final element to be added to the production process, as “the great teacher.”

So we anxiously await your coming to the theatre to see the show, and hope that when you do you will feel free to post a comment here on the blog about your experience of it. As Spring unfolds in Chicago, this is the perfect show to see, full of new beginnings, reawakenings, and hope.

At the start of a process for a play, artists collaborating on a production conduct their work in relative privacy, secure in the knowledge that if they are making a fool of themselves, it is only in front of others in the same boat. There comes a point in the rehearsal process, however, when the insular, protective environment of the rehearsal room must give way to greater exposure. At Steppenwolf this happens on the Thursday before a production moves into the theater to begin technical rehearsals, when the designers for the production and the staff of the theater are invited to watch a run-through of the play in the rehearsal room.

We had such a run-through for Love Song yesterday, and I was reminded of how valuable and privileged an experience it is.

Odd as it sounds, this may be my favorite time to see the show. One still feels the intimacy of the rehearsal room, but the performances are sufficiently advanced that one can extrapolate what they may be like after a few weeks of previews. Without the technical elements (the set, lighting, sound effects) one fully engages exclusively with the text and the actors. With a new play, this is a particularly exciting moment – we are in a sense the first audience for a work never before seen.

Feeling this way yesterday, I started to wonder if the thrill I experience wasn’t a little parochial, or even downright “geeky”. It made me wonder if others, in their pursuits, ever have similar feelings, when encountering something entirely new.

While Bruce Norris is braving the wilds of Africa, a new Steppenwolf playwright has landed here in Chicago. His name is John Kolvenbach, author of Love Song, which opens on April 9th. We began rehearsals for this world premiere yesterday, and we’ve asked John to give us a little insight into his own terra incognita.

Writing a play involves a kind of willed insanity. You talk to yourself. You hear voices. You hope to remove yourself from the everyday, inhabit a world of your making. You are passionate about things that don’t exist, you would stake your life on the middle name of a made-up friend.

And you’re a bore to the actual people you’re with. You’re terribly tedious. You slip into daydream mid-conversation, you’re distracted and impatient, you make impassioned pronouncements about fictional friends. You find necessary everyday concerns beneath you. You cease to bathe.

You become, when you are really working well, someone who seems to require a long hospitalization. And this is the goal. Any less, and you feel you’ve cheated, feel you’ve done the work from the outside, from a perch of dispassion. You hope with all your being that you’ve gone a little nuts with it.

So, when you’re asked to make a rational judgment about your play, you are unable. You’re unqualified. Does it make sense? Who knows. Might an audience enjoy it? You have no idea.

So when you arrive, as I did yesterday, at the first day of rehearsal, there is some fear. There is a story by Ray Bradbury that takes place on Mars, in a Martian insane asylum. If you’re on Mars and crazy, apparently you are able to create visual hallucinations that other people can see. If you imagine that a green dog follows you everywhere, other people can see the dog. So, what you hope, is that other people can see your green dog. I am here to report, happily, that Molly and Fran and Ian and Mariann, and Austin are all nuts. They saw my green dog. They named him. They scratched him behind the ears.