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

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.

What to say about the last three months?

Really, it’s hard to describe. While this show has been an awakening of sorts for me, it has also felt very much like a dream. It feels like I just got here yesterday, yet my belongings have been shipped home and my bags are packed to go. Trying to put this experience into words is just as difficult as trying to explain the overall meaning of the play.

Frank Galati once said the reason people go to the theatre is to dream. He also said that much of this play is about memory. The audience enters the house, shares in the dreaming and then takes the experience with them as a memory. I suppose the same holds true for me. This show will soon be a memory that I’ll take with me wherever I go. It has helped shape the person I’m becoming, and I’m all the better for it. (more…)

As Kafka on the Shore approaches its closing on November 16th, we are made strikingly aware of the fleeting nature of the Theater. Instead of discussing the interpretations of Haruki Murakami’s novel or Frank Galati’s beautiful vision of that novel, I want to talk a little about the family unit that is developed in working on a show like this.

Throughout this process I have become accustomed to making extraordinary leaps in logic and/or consciousness. From the beginning we all made the choice to be absorbed by this disturbing, confusing, delicate, gorgeous, violent, and dreamlike world Murakami created. We have lived in this world for over two months. It is my firm belief that there is a bond that forms when people do something this weird together. We share in each other’s amazement and wonder at what we’re involved in, and when audience members leave the show we’ve worked so hard to realize for them, we share in each other’s disappointment and understanding. I often come off stage to pass David Rhee (Nakata) on his way to an entrance. We used to exchange words of encouragement, but we’ve reached a point where all that is needed is a simple, wordless exchange of understanding. (more…)

“Kafka’s return ‘home’ is a return to self. Through an act of forgiveness he reconciles the memory of the mother who loved him with the memory of the mother who abandoned him, and ultimately returns to ‘home’ which in this case is self.”

“That poor boy was abandoned by his mother and as a result he had to go on this incredible mind trip to recreate her so he could face her and forgive her.”

“I loved the line, ‘In dreams begin responsibility.’ That is why it is important to exercise our imagination.”

“It reminded me of The Wizard of Oz – the psychological journey from adolescence to adulthood and the transference of the idea of home from a place to an internal state.”

“It’s all about integration of self - the integration of impulse, memory, emotion, psychology, sexuality. It’s a helluva balancing act.”

“The entrance stone is the portal to the other world, Oshima says, that lives in parallel to our own. It is given the form of a stone, but it could be anything.”

“We should all go home happy. A fifteen year old murders his father, sleeps with his mother, and gets on with his life. It’s the typical story, right?”

Lately, inspired by the extraordinary dreamscape of Kafka on the Shore, I’ve been thinking a lot about the strange logic that infuses our unconscious fears and desires into the detritus of our everyday life in our dreams each night. So, in celebration of the final days of the presidential campaign, I thought I’d share with you all a couple of my favorite election 2008 websites. Last spring, during the height of the primary campaign, a writer named Sheila Heiti was inspired by a friend’s dream about Hillary Clinton to start a blog soliciting people’s dreams about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain. She received a deluge of emails from people across America. Later, when slate.com invited their readers to submit their dreams about Sarah Palin, they received 500 in one week. Clearly, these figures have insinuated themselves into the deepest reaches of our unconscious and they creep forth in the still of the night in our nightmares and fantasies.

I love reading these dreams. I think it’s fascinating how saturated by emotion they are. Policy issues appear strictly as currency in interpersonal relationships (for example, the woman who dreamed that she would only accept Senator Obama’s marriage proposal if he committed to enacting health care legislation). And, as in Kafka on the Shore, I think some of them have a symbolic resonance that transcends logical explanation. For example, I’m not sure what this dream about John McCain means to the dreamer, but I find the image quite powerful: (more…)