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

(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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As Steppenwolf examines “the power of belief,” the theme for our upcoming 2009-2010 subscription season, I am struck by how connected that theme is with our Steppenwolf for Young Adults 2009-2010 season. We open with a new adaptation of The House on Mango Street by celebrated Chicago author Sandra Cisneros. This new adaptation is being done by Chicago’s very own Tanya Saracho. I admire Tanya for her vibrant use of language and her bold and frank storytelling, but even more so as a person — Tanya is inspiring. Her energy and sense of self is contagious. The House on Mango Street is not only a coming of age story about a girl, Esperanzo, growing up in a Latino section of Chicago, but it’s also about wanting to find a place in this world.

Our second production, A Separate Peace by John Knowles adapted by Nancy Gilsenan, will conclude our season. This quintessential coming of age story about friendship, jealousy, war, love and hate is simply and eloquently told in this adaptation for the stage. The back drop is WWII, but the real battle takes place in the lives and friendship of Finny and Gene and the struggle each of them faces as they discover the truth about themselves.

I find myself these days looking back at my youth in utter amazement — how innocent I was to the goings on of the world. I think about what was the defining moment, the moment I crossed over into the world of “knowing,” the hardship, beauty, joy, love sorrow, heartbreak, regret. When was it exactly? These two stories take the characters back to these defining moments and ask them to look at it with grown-up eyes. I invite you to do the same.