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

Playing Chet in A Separate Peace was a fantastic experience. After the show closed earlier this month, I’ve been reflecting on the process. Over the run, I was fascinated by our evolving discussions within the cast and with our audience. I had in-depth discussions with actors Damir Konjicija (a Bosnian refugee), Govind Kumar (of Indian descent), and Jake Cohen (a Jewish American), as well as conversations with our director Jonathan Berry about my African and Japanese bloodline. A recurring question for me was: how did we, or rather the characters we play (Finny, Bobby, Gene and Chet), get to Devon, an elite New England private school, as minorities in 1942?

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(Jake plays Gene in A Separate Peace)

I first met the young men of A Separate Peace in 9th grade English. A decade later, I find myself back at the Devon School playing Gene in our SYA production. Conveniently mirroring Gene’s journey in the novel, this return to Devon has led me through the complex landscape of masculinity.

Only now in my 20s have I found myself examining the conditioning I received as a man-in-training. It has taken me this long to do so partially because introspection is the first sin of maleness: something about how looking inwards is at odds with keeping an eye out for danger at the entrance to the cave.

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(Emilio has been a Teaching Artist at Steppenwolf for the last four years)

Since reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles during my sophomore year of high school under the recommendation of a good friend (PAM REYNOLDS - are you out there and listening?), I have always been moved by the strong images and the complex dynamics of friendship in the book. I attended an all-male undergraduate Alma Mater, so that’s why I can easily latch onto the personas of Gene, Finny, Leper, Brinker, Chet, Bobby and those events at Devon School that senior year with a certain mischievous scrutiny.

But what about my students at Harlan High School, Prosser Career Academy, MAS-LVLHS, or Young Women’s Leadership Academy, who are themselves just “at this teenage period of life,” as Finny says in the play? Will they connect to this story?

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(Jon is the director of A Separate Peace)

I was taught, and have found it to be true, that when embarking on a production, one of the most important moments for a director is the first moment. The moment when we all, designers and actors and production staff, gather around the table and read the play for the first time. I always say a few words, to share where I’m coming from with this production. The words, I hope, provide the team guidance of where we are heading and why this production of this play is an important and necessary endeavor. At the same time, I hope that the talk will subtly inform actor choices so that, as we embark on scene work, the actors have a clear direction in which to run. What follows is the jumping off point for our work on the SYA production of A Separate Peace.

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(Jon is directing this season’s Steppenwolf for Young Adults production of A Separate Peace)

I hadn’t been exposed to John Knowles’ A Separate Peace until I was brought in to direct the project for SYA. Somehow, I’d fallen through the cracks of all the middle school and high school students required to read it as part of their curriculum. So, while most people connect with the high school-aged characters when they first read the novel, I connected more directly with the narrator Gene, looking back at the events of that fateful year with a touch of melancholy and distance - for certain, a very different perspective than those boys who tear through that summer with fearless abandon.

Gene’s story - looking back at that last joyful, desperate breath of innocence before a crack of a branch and the crack of a gun ripped open those boys’ eyes to the painful truths that compose a life - manages to capture both the pleasurable callowness of youth and the melancholic recollection of a simpler time. Gene returns to the scene of that summer, the moment that changed his life forever, the moment where the clarity of his boyhood innocence ended as he caught his first glance of the shades of grey that comprise life as an adult.

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