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

It’s my first time working with the ensemble at Steppenwolf, and I’m here as production dramaturg in rehearsals for Eric Simonson’s play Fake.

Dramaturgy is a mystery to a lot of people: the word itself sounds intimidating and kind of ugly. Working as a dramaturg can mean lots of different things - there are as many functions for a dramaturg as there are productions of plays, really, because it’s about meeting the needs of the artists in the room and contributing to a particular piece of theater.

In this case, Fake is a new play, so I’m talking a lot with Eric, who is both the play’s writer and director, about what themes he wants to be most clear to audiences, how the rhythm of the play feels on the page and as the actors begin to embody it, and about things that might be clarified.

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We’ve just begun rehearsals for the first show of our 2009-2010 season at Steppenwolf. Our ensemble member, Eric Simonson, directs his play, Fake. We have a terrific cast: ensemble members Kate Arrington, Fran Guinan, and Al Wilder, and Steppenwolf veterans Coby Goss (When the Messenger is Hot and Dead Man’s Cell Phone) and Larry Yando (Mother Courage and Her Children).

Fake is a wonderful opening to our season-long conversation about authenticity and belief. I love the excitement of anticipating a new season of Chicago work. Most of the theaters in town have announced their seasons and I’m sure that, like me, many of you are thinking about the productions you are most eager to see. I’d love to hear which plays you are most looking forward to seeing at theaters across Chicago. If you were to create a five-play subscription series with each play produced by a different theater, what would that season look like?

I have this little book called Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living by John McQuiston. Frank Galati gave me a copy of it years ago and I have since given it to many friends and family members. It’s McQuiston’s contemporary adaptation of the sixth century Benedict of Nursia’s directions for a monastic life. McQuiston found great wisdom in the simplicity of Benedict’s instruction and wanted to make the document available to the contemporary reader, engaged, as he is, in the world as a non -monastic. In a chapter entitled “Right Relationship,” McQuiston writes, “We all have our own perception of, and relationship to some God. We may not use the name “God.” We may think in terms of Reality, Nature, The First Cause, The Behavior of the World, The Other, The All, The Ground of Being, The Force of Evolution, The Life of Spirit, or Things As They Really Are. Each of us creates an image of the supreme mystery in which we find ourselves, and we are always in relationship with it.”

When we were thinking about our 2009-2010 season, we began with the idea that we wanted to pursue the idea of Faith. Perhaps when we began our reading, we thought we would be pursuing the more conventional manifestations of religious faith but what evolved was an idea of Faith that was more in compliance with what McQuiston describes as our relationship to an image of “the supreme mystery in which we find ourselves.” We realized that we were pursuing belief, and the leaps of faith we make in owning our authenticity, our story of the world. (more…)

Steppenwolf dedicates its 2009-2010 season to the power of belief and how it illuminates what’s authentic in our lives. We bring you five plays that are, variously: playful, sly, strange, tender. They examine domestic intimacy, they question historical accuracy, they puzzle existential reach. They all ask us to look at what happens when we take a leap of faith and choose to believe.

We begin with ensemble member Eric Simonson’s new work, Fake. The play takes the Piltdown controversy as the starting point for its inquiry into authenticity. “Piltdown Man” is the name given to the purported archeological artifact that provided the missing link in the evolutionary chain between ape and homo sapiens. Along the way, the play traces the question of fidelity and the specter of religious belief in the negotiation of truth. Ensemble members Kate Arrington, Fran Guinan and Alan Wilder anchor our cast.

Ensemble member Amy Morton directs our second play, David Mamet’s American Buffalo. Amy has a long history with Mamet’s work, including having directed our very successful production of Glengarry Glen Ross. Mr. Mamet is regarded for his terse style and ability to introduce humor and menace in surprising, revealing ways. American Buffalo is the quintessence of the Mamet style. Ensemble members Fran Guinan and Tracy Letts play the roles of Donny and Teach. (more…)