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

I’ve spent my life loving addicts. I’ve hopelessly and helplessly yearned for love from alcoholics, potheads, crack addicts, people addicted to morphine, uppers, downers, cigarettes, coffee, aspirin, other women, the list goes on and on. You name the addiction and I’ve probably tried to be the one to make a difference in their life. So, it’s no surprise that I’ve struggled with addiction myself. I’ve even been proud of the fact that my addictions are relatively harmless compared to most. And so the cycle continues.

I’ve loved a couple of recovering or recovered addicts as well. My grandfather struggled with alcohol and drug addiction upon returning from WWII. When my mother fell ill as a child, he turned to religion for help and managed to quit drinking, smoking and doing drugs. What I learned from him, and a lesson I seem destined to learn over and over again, is that even if the addict isn’t practicing their addiction, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t exhibit addict behavior. My grandfather continued to struggle with his anger, his abusiveness, his tremendous sadness. If you don’t deal with the underlying reasons for your addiction, it’s almost impossible to live a fulfilling life, with or without the substances. (more…)

I was fortunate to be able to make the trip to London to see the opening of our production of August: Osage County. August opened at the Royal National Theatre on Wednesday, 26 November in the Lyttelton Theatre. (The Lyttelton is one of the three theaters of the National, a 900-seat proscenium theater). Our production of The Grapes of Wrath played in the Lyttelton Theatre twenty years ago and like The Grapes of Wrath, August opened to glorious reviews in the British press. In both cases, Steppenwolf was able to bring a big American play to the National, animated by our ensemble actors and directed by a Steppenwolf artist. David Hawkanson, our Executive Director, and I felt tremendous pride to represent our theater with August: Osage County to British audiences.

You know the fun part? Coming back to Chicago and watching the final run-through in the rehearsal room of The Seafarer on Friday. Reading the show reports for Dublin Carol, playing in our Upstairs Theatre. Continuing our season-planning for next season. The fun part is that our theater continues to do its work for our Chicago audiences. We are thrilled to have our work received by a larger audience–in New York, in London. But the best part is that we have all of you here, at home, watching plays in your theater and continuing to encourage and support the on-going life of Steppenwolf. Many thanks for that.

Feel free to post a hello to our folks in London. We’ll make sure they get them.

I am delighted to announce that William Petersen has accepted our invitation to join the Steppenwolf ensemble. Many of you remember Billy from the early days of the ensemble when he acted with us in Balm in Gilead and Fool for Love.

Billy was one of the founders of Remains Theatre, the original company of both Amy Morton and Gary Cole. Remains and Steppenwolf grew up together in the Chicago theater scene of the late 1970s and ’80s and many of our company members have known one another and worked together for years. Our founders, Gary, Jeffrey and Terry recently approached me to suggest that we extend the invitation to Billy to join Steppenwolf when it became clear that Billy would be concentrating, once again, on working on stage and maintaining a base in Chicago. As you know, Billy is now on our stage in our production of Dublin Carol and will be acting in Blackbird at Victory Gardens later this season.

We are very fortunate to have our long-time friend officially a member of our company.

The first play I can ever remember seeing was A Christmas Carol. I imagine many of you can say the same thing. In my case, I went with my second grade class; my classmate Travis Neal was playing one of the Crachit boys and accordingly became a minor celebrity for the season. I remember three things about the show: 1) mild asphyxiation from the suffocating waves of stage fog rolling off the stage (I recognize this in retrospect as the exuberant excesses of a neophyte stagehand) 2) the terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future (I think he was about 13 feet tall and maybe an actual demon) and 3) crying just a little at Scrooge and the company’s joyously musical celebration at the end.

Since I know a lot of theatre people, I generally have to see at least one holiday play every year. By all rights, I should be jaded by now, rifling through my playbill with a bored knowing sigh and bolting from my seat the second the lights come up. But, honestly, I love the ritual of it all. There’s even something just a little bit spiritual about the experience. I think the holiday show is the purest modern incarnation of the medieval mystery play. (If you’re familiar with medieval theatre, please forgive me as I get a little Professor Theatre for a second here.) Mystery plays are a form of theatre that emerged from Catholic liturgy in the middle ages. These plays employed spectacle in the dramatization of biblical stories. While individual plays were diverse in subject and style, they were connected as a cycle by the Christian story of salvation: man’s sin puts him at risk of damnation, but through the twin miracles of compassion and repentance, he is offered the chance of redemption. Sound familiar? (more…)

A confluence of production schedules made for a very cheery opening night of Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol last Sunday evening. To begin with, Kafka on the Shore closed with a matinee performance that afternoon so the cast was able to join us that evening. In addition, the cast of The Seafarer had finished rehearsal at 5:00 so a number of actors from that cast joined in. Finally, the cast of August: Osage County had just that afternoon finished a week’s rehearsal in preparation for the run at the National Theatre in London, so we had some representatives from the Weston clan into the bargain.

As always, our colleagues from the theatre community joined us for the performance and opening night party. It was a bustling lobby as old and new friends, staff members and artists got caught up with each other before heading into the house to see the show.