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

Martin McClendon, who plays Martin in Ensemble member Eric Simonson’s First Look play, Honest, is a professor of Theatre at College Carthage where Honest was first commissioned.

The role of Martin was written for him.

Honest was performed in an early student production up there with an all student cast, and Martin’s students were all invited to audition for this First Look Production.

Martin is blogging regularly to his students about his experiences here at Steppenwolf, and we thought we’d share them with you.

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Laura Eason is the playwright of Sex With Strangers.

I am afraid of this blog.

Well, that is a little overstated. But I am hesitant, at the very least, about this contribution.

See, I am incredibly comfortable putting my ideas out into the world as expressed through the fictional characters I create in my plays that I develop over months and years. But dashing something off as myself is always less comfortable for me. I read plenty of blogs and often have responses, but I never post or comment on anything. There is something about this mode of communication I am uneasy with. It is something I can’t quite get to the bottom of except to say that, for someone who puts work out very publicly, I am a private person.And although I have plenty of things to say about a great many things, I feel no urge to impress them upon people outside my circle of friends and acquaintances in any way beyond my playwriting.

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Throughout my play Ski Dubai, my protagonist Rachel is unmoored and adrift in Dubai. She lives in corporate housing with a complete stranger, works an unfamiliar job in a foreign country, and has no real roots to speak of. She searches and scrambles for some sense of “home” without really knowing what home is to her.

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At Steppenwolf, there is a tradition around the first day of rehearsal. The entire Steppenwolf administrative and production staff pile into Yondorf rehearsal hall, and form a giant circle around the artists involved in the nascent production. The staff, actors, director and production team then introduce themselves – saying their names and what they do for Steppenwolf – and suddenly the sheer magnitude of persons involved in this single production is revealed. No matter how many times I saunter downstairs for this little Steppenwolf tradition, it never gets old. The energy in the room is always palpable, and all the names are always impossible to remember.

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Last week at Steppenwolf was the final week of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s production of The Walls which was presented under the Visiting Company Initiative in the Garage Theatre.   Over in the Downstairs Theatre, Steppenwolf’s final subscription series play, Up, began its first week of previews.  And finally, this past Saturday night in the Upstairs Theatre, another visiting company, 500 Clown had their first preview performance of their production of 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal.

In addition, tomorrow all three of the plays of The First Look Repertory of New Work, Honest, Sex with Strangers, and Ski Dubai all begin rehearsal simultaneously.

It will be a busy and full summer at Steppenwolf and we look forward to hearing your responses to the work and to continuing our conversation with you.