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

(Leslie is the understudy for Kate Arrington in Fake)

I love being part of an audience almost (I say almost) as much as I love being on the stage. It is therefore lucky for me that I am understudying, and have been a member of several dozen audiences over the past two months or so. It has allowed me the luxury of time in which to observe (and reinforce) my pet theory that each audience is a very definite, varied and extremely vivid personality.

It’s very common for an actor to come offstage and think to themselves about the mood of the audience that evening. It’s much as if that audience were a brand new person to the actor, sort of a first date. At least I think this is a common thing.

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Meatloaf cupcakes? England, the father of us all? Shop The Onion this holiday season?

On Friday, October 2, Steppenwolf hosted an EXPLORE event for Fake, featuring entertaining and informative discussions of fakes with Professor Robert Martin, curator at the The Field Museum, and Peter Alter, curator at the Chicago History Museum. Professor Martin has spent a significant part of his career studying brain size and brought slides of the Piltdown skull. In spite of scrutiny and skepticism at the time of its discovery, popular opinion as to its authenticity prevailed over science.

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Hello, readers. I’m Leslie Frame, understudying Kate Arrington in Fake.

“Tech” is an interesting time during a production. For the actors, crew and understudies (well, actually for everyone except the director and stage manager), there is a lot of down time, and - theatre people being the curious social animals that we are - a lot of down time means a lot of conversation.

Fake covers a lot of sacred ground; ideas and questions of belief, memory, veracity, mystery, loss and discovery. It is only natural that as we move back and forth from auditorium to green room, these questions come with us. And so it has been my experience that the backstage conversation of this production in particular has been extraordinarily personal, colorful and often quite deep. There have been conversations of fathers and mothers, ancestral migrations, the weight of a word, historical legislation and how it impacts us today (no, really!), the physical injuries that change our paths, religious backgrounds, experiences and beliefs.

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Greetings from the basement of Steppenwolf Theatre! I am Karyn, the 2009-2010 Downstairs Stage Management Apprentice. I am currently working on Fake, the new play written and directed by ensemble member Eric Simonson. This is the first world premier show I have ever worked on, and it is quite a change of pace for me!

One of the largest tasks that I work on is keeping track of all of the script changes. We started our rehearsal process on August 11th, and since then I’ve been keeping track of every change, no matter how small… and there are some small ones indeed! For example, a line went from “I didn’t think you’d remembered” to “I didn’t think you’d remember.” It was a change so small, but it matters!

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(Eric is the playwright and director of Fake)

Saturday, 2pm: Technical rehearsals started today for Fake. We joke and call it the fake tech rehearsal, but it’s very real, and hopefully all our expectations will be met. This is the first time the crew and cast get to see all the production elements together.

The initial hours of tech give me an indication of how the next three or four days will go. So far, so good. We’re about two hours in and moving along. The costumes look tremendous: we’re in the 1914 part of the play. Karin Kopishcke did a wonderful job supplementing what the actors have already developed with their characters. The mood of the play is coming together very nicely: very “Agatha Christie mystery.” Todd Rosenthal has created a very evocative and open design, and it fits nicely in the Steppenwolf space. Technical director Russell Poole oversaw the building of the set, and it all looks exactly like the model. I couldn’t have asked for better. Prop Master Jenny DiLuciano and her crew are bringing in a great assortment of archeological artifacts that add to what Todd has created. There’s a lot of detail here that reinforces collective design. Things are definitely coming together, but I’m already itching to get back to the play and the actors.

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