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

(Evan is the Front of House Manager at Steppenwolf)

“I’m wearing a shirt that’s unbuttoned way too low,” it sounded like he was almost confessing. “And a pair of pants that are tighter than anyone should really be wearing.”

It’s 15 minutes before the Downstairs Theatre would open for the January 7th performance of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, and I was standing in the back of the house watching Tracy Letts - who was sitting onstage - describe the attire he would be wearing that evening in his portrayal of ’70s fashion plate, insomniac and criminal mastermind, Teach.

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

Early in November, our Gala team (Director of Major Gifts Brooke Walters, Events Management Director Lori Davidson, Special Events Manager Kendra Stock, Special Events Associate Molly Kobelt, and myself) went to view the unrented retail space at the Blackhawk on Halsted building. For the first time in 12 years, Steppenwolf was considering forgoing the tent that had consistently housed our annual Gala parties. Walking into that space, it was both challenging and exciting to think about what it would look like on the night of the party. The raw, unsealed concrete floors were covered in a thin layer of dust, and support beams stood coated in fireproofing. The ceilings were made of steel and the windows looked out onto an undeveloped, vacant lot across the street, strewn with heaps of rocks and rubble. But this year, Steppenwolf asked of its audience and staff alike to embrace the power of Belief. And just as directors approach scripts as blank canvases from which to create and build their visions, we eagerly embarked on a new challenge to transform an empty, raw retail space into a cohesive, elegant vision for our Gala.

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In a few days, Steppenwolf for Young Adults will be hosting The Brother/Sister Plays Afterparty… I am super excited! Who am I? Julia Celentano, one of 19 lucky members of Steppenwolf’s Young Adults Council. The council is made up of high school students who want to learn more about the inner workings of a professional theatre. We see plays, read plays, organize events around plays, and (my favorite) meet with professionals in the business. Because of this connection to the theatre, we have seen The Brother/Sister Plays evolve from a series of amazing scripts into the brilliant shows they are today. If that doesn’t tempt you to join the council, then check this out: one of the first people with whom we met this year was none other than Mr. Brother/Sister Plays himself, playwright Tarell McCraney.

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(Jamie is the School at Steppenwolf Coordinator)

One of Steppenwolf’s best kept secrets is The School at Steppenwolf. If you are an actor in town, you may have come across it. If you aren’t, chances are slim that you have. But even if you’ve never heard of the school, you’ve probably seen many of our alumni tearing up stages across Chicago or great productions at theatre companies founded by our students.

In the summer of 2009 we had the opportunity to cast six of our School at Steppenwolf alumni in our First Look Repertory of New Plays. I recently tracked down the six to see what they’ve been up to and how the School at Steppenwolf has had a lasting effect on their artistic lives.

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A few weeks ago, talking to a friend about my work reading scripts for Steppenwolf, I was asked probably the most common question I hear about the job: “Has anything you’ve read ended up in their season?” The short answer is “no,” or at least “not unless they finally take my advice to produce Fran Guinan in The Belle of Amherst this year,” but it struck me that it’s worth exploring how exactly the process works, and hopefully to articulate what I’ve been up to the past five years (give or take) as a reader.

In essence, how it works is this: I get a batch of five scripts every two weeks to read and evaluate. I’ll sit down and read through them (sometimes aloud, sometimes not), let them rest for a day or two, and then come back to write them up. The evaluations consist of a brief, action-driven plot synopsis (David Ball’s Backwards and Forwards provides a model here) and a “comments” section. The comments section is the meat of the evaluation, but it’s often informed heavily by the synopsizing: laying out the events of a play tends to expose its strengths and weaknesses as character motivations are held up to scrutiny and overall narrative structure gets rebuilt by the reader, often clarifying authorial intent along the way.

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