Announcing the 2011-2012 Season
Posted by Martha Lavey on 3/02/2011
Dear Friends,
For Steppenwolf’s 2011/12 season, we are exploring what happens when everyday lives are touched by war. In each of our five plays, war exerts a pressure—sometimes centrally, sometimes obliquely—on the lives of the characters. Against the pressure of war is a great longing for home. This oscillation between the impulse for war and the search for home (site of our deepest loves) is enduring in the human psyche. Chris Hedges, the veteran of many wars as a correspondent has written a book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. In it, he describes war as “a narcotic” of which he partook for many years. As he writes:
The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.
In the case of each of our plays, war incites a purpose, an urgency in its characters and moves them to action. Poised against the uncompromising urgency of war is a search for home, a place of love and solace, an uncontested ground of clarity and comfort. We are moved to engage a conversation about the spectre of war because war is a deep presence in our contemporary life in America. Our country is engaged in two wars that have shaped our consciousness, guided government policy and reopened the wounds and emotions of previous wars. The events of 2001 gave new meaning to the word “homeland” —to be attacked is to be re-awakened to the enduring value of the safety of home.To the sanctity, the beauty and the utter elusiveness of home.
We are compelled by the urgency of these times. We are living with war and it is attendant upon us to mediate on the impact this hovering presence plays in our lives. A play allows us to consider war in the context of individual lives, in the context of the home. We are interested in what war brings to our psychological life, in how, as Chris Hedges says, war makes home unfamiliar, “The world we once understood and longed to return to stands before us as alien, strange and beyond our grasp.”
I am thrilled to welcome you to our 36th season and honored to bring you five plays animated by the big questions in our lives:
- Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris. Directed by ensemble member Amy Morton. Featuring ensemble member James Vincent Meredith.
- Penelope by Enda Walsh. Directed by ensemble member Amy Morton. Featuring ensemble member John Mahoney.
- Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies. Directed by ensemble member Austin Pendleton. Featuring ensemble members Francis Guinan and Sally Murphy.
- The March based upon the Novel by E. L. Doctorow. Adapted for the stage and directed by ensemble member Frank Galati. Featuring ensemble members Alana Arenas, Ian Barford, Tim Hopper, Martha Lavey, Mariann Mayberry, James Vincent Meredith, William Petersen, Yasen Peyankov, and Alan Wilder with Will Allan, Patrick Clear, Stephen Louis Grush, Michael Mahler and Shannon Matesky.
- Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. Adapted by ensemble member Tracy Letts. Directed by ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro. Featuring ensemble members Ian Barford, Ora Jones and Sally Murphy.
These dispatches from the homefront are alive with the humor, the tenderness and the urgency of lives struggling to find home. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I look forward to embarking on another exciting season with you in 2011/12.
Sincerely,
Martha Lavey
Artistic Director

(Jessica is the Events and Office Management Associate at Steppenwolf)