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

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t yet seen Up, you may want to wait to read this post…

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Alex Torra was the assistant director for Up.

I was lucky enough to be a part of the Up rehearsal process and see this remarkable play and the Steppenwolf audience encounter each other throughout previews and at opening. I’ve now returned to Philadelphia, where I am based, and I wanted to take a quick moment to share with you a particular part of my experience working on this show.

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Rachel Brosnahan plays Maria in Up by Bridget Carpenter

I will never forget my first matinee. I got to miss a whole day of school to see Les Miserables in the city with my seventh grade humanities class. As we passed through the theatre’s giant glass doors, all sound seemed to fade away and everyone suddenly felt the need to whisper. Accompanied only by the sounds of shuffling feet and air conditioning, we made our way to our seats. Within minutes, the house lights faded and the orchestra filled the house with a rich prologue as the lights came up on the stage. After nearly 3 hours (the show was performed without an intermission) of music, dance, violence, love and oppression, I relaxed in my chair realizing that I had literally been sitting on the edge of my seat. (more…)

Walter Griffin, Up’s perpetual dreamer, encourages his son, Mikey, to resist a traditional career path. “Don’t tie yourself down…” Don’t be “a slave to the dollar.” “Be your own boss; that’s what I think.” Despite his deep admiration for his father, after a series of enchanting events, Mikey soon finds himself defying Walter’s ideology and secretly working “every morning and every night.” As the money flows in, Mikey can imagine no other path for himself; Mikey, the unremarkable teenager, has quickly become Michael, the celebrated entrepreneur. Oblivious to Mikey’s capitalist ambitions, Walter dreams on. And so, in a reversal of stereotype, UP presents a father’s unwavering sense of adventure pitted against a son’s developing sense of practicality. (more…)

Last Friday, after seeing the Pixar film Up*, I shared an elevator with a guy whose face looked vaguely familiar. I’m congenitally awful at recognizing faces, so I have nightmares about this type of situation, but—luckily—he couldn’t remember where we’d met either. Trying to narrow it down, he asked “Do you work for a museum?”

Soon enough, we’d figured out that he’s a member of First Look 101 (a group of people who follow the rehearsal and development process of our First Look plays) and that we’d seen each other at the reading of Laura Eason play’s Sex with Strangers the previous Monday. But I absolutely love the fact that in order to remember where he’d met me, he had to rifle through the multiple cultural activities in which he apparently participates. (more…)