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

The cast comes spilling out of the dressing room curtain dressed as whores, beggars, gangsters, freaks. Our eyes are blacked-out like zombies. We hoot and clap. John Taflan announces the show by reading from a big floppy cardboard sign. We gather around kidney-shaped wooden tables populated by members of the theater-going public. Girls with almost non-existent short-shorts stand ass-to-face next to seated audience members who smile or furrow their brows accordingly. Ready or not, here we are.

Tim Splain strides confidently to the piano in the center of the room as we all applaud him. He sits down and pushes the hair back from his face. The lights dim. Spotlight on the piano. Tim launches into the extremely demanding Threepenny Opera overture, “Ballad of Mack the Knife.” Singer Alex Balestrieri stands a few feet away riding the waves from the piano, microphone in hand, ready for his turn. I stand there and watch Tim’s hands dance over the keys…sometimes tapping, sometimes pounding them like they have done him wrong, sometimes downright possessed like Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead 2. I watch him play and look around the room at the cast and audience sharing this moment.

I feel privileged. (more…)

“Skillfully layered”

“Volcanic”

“Terrific”

“Bawdy, full-throated”

These are reviews that most productions would kill to get. All have been used to describe Kurt Ehrmann’s portrayal of J.J. Peachum in our Threepenny Opera. And they are dead-on.

He has also managed to be called a “blustery autocrat” and an “amoral moralist” in strictly complimentary tones, which is quite a feat. I think the one review I might disagree with called him a “dysfunctional parent”. Kurt has managed to make Peachum’s raw, nasty edges deeply understandable. This is a man in desperate circumstances clawing and slashing to keep his family alive. I might call him “terrifyingly functional”.

And now he is leaving. (more…)

Things are busy at Steppenwolf as we get ready to begin the new season. Our first Visiting Company, the Hypocrites, are already in performance with The Threepenny Opera in the Garage Theatre. Across the street in Yondorf Rehearsal Hall, the cast of Kafka on the Shore are just beginning to do run-thrus of the play as they prepare to move across the street to the Downstairs Theatre on Sunday to begin technical rehearsals. In preparation for that our scenic and lighting crews are mounting the expansive set and focusing lights.

Just outside the theatre spaces themselves, the lobbies are undergoing a facelift – new paint and carpeting.

We look forward to finishing up all our preparatory work and having you join us as we kick off the 2008-2009 Steppenwolf season when the seats fill up and the lights go down for the first preview performance of Kafka on the Shore next Thursday.

Fucking musicals.

This thought runs through my head as I sit backstage after a particularly labored scene.

“Are we overthinking this?” someone asks. Energy is waning. Some of our tried and true bits are falling flat. People are slumped around the backstage space of The Hypocrites’ new office/rehearsal space, recently dubbed The Horn.

It is late August. It is humid. There are seventeen actors sweating and singing and dancing and guzzling water from paper cups and water bottles. Outside, it is 80 degrees. In The Horn, it is probably 112. We bought an AC unit, but quickly found out that it blows all the fuses when you turn it on. Sweet.

Kurt Ehrmann’s white shirt is completely soaked through with sweat. So is mine. Robert McLean’s is pretty damp, too. It’s like a middle-aged wet t-shirt contest. No one wants to see this.

Some people are backstage, poring over their lines, looking for clues to parts that aren’t working. Some are talking things through with each other:

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