Steppenwolf Theater Company Announces Its 2009-2010 Season

Steppenwolf Theatre Company is excited to announce its 2009-2010 Subscription Season, exploring the theme of belief. Season subscriptions go on-sale to the public on Tuesday, February 3 at 11 a.m.

Steppenwolf ensemble members currently confirmed for the 2009-2010 Season include: Alana Arenas, Kate Arrington, Ian Barford, Frank Galati, Jon Michael Hill, Francis Guinan, Tina Landau, Tracy Letts, Amy Morton, William Petersen, Rondi Reed, Anna D. Shapiro, Eric Simonson and Alan Wilder. Additional casting to be announced.

"Steppenwolf dedicates its 2009-2010 season to the power of belief and how it illuminates what's authentic in our lives," comments Artistic Director Martha Lavey. "We present three new plays and two classic plays from the canon of American and world drama that look at how the power of belief can corrupt, delude, nourish or empower us. They examine domestic intimacy, they question historical accuracy, they puzzle existential reach. They ask us to look at what happens when we take a leap of faith and choose to believe," adds Lavey.

Subscription Series packages start at $130. Dinner/Theatre and Wine Series packages are also available. To purchase a 2009-2010 subscription, contact Audience Services at 1650 N. Halsted, (312) 335-1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

Additionally, Steppenwolf 2009-2010 subscribers will receive a pre-sale ticket offer for the national touring company of August: Osage County, playing a limited two week engagement February 2 - 14, 2010 at Chicago's Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre. August: Osage County, by ensemble member Tracy Letts, directed by ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro, premiered at Steppenwolf in 2007 and received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and five 2008 Tony® Awards including Best Play. The pre-sale ticket offer for Steppenwolf 2009-2010 subscribers ends Friday, May 1, 2009.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company 2009-2010 Subscription Season includes:

September 10 - November 8, 2009

Fake
A new play written and directed by ensemble member Eric Simonson

Featuring ensemble members Kate Arrington, Francis Guinan and Alan Wilder
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
In 1914, renowned mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invites four guests to his English country home. Each visitor has a connection to the infamous "Piltdown Man," purported to be the missing link between ape and man-later exposed as a hoax. Swinging back and forth through time, Fake investigates how "Piltdown" rattled assumptions about evolution, faith and science-and how we are transformed by our quest for the truth.

Ensemble member Eric Simonson recently completed a documentary on the late Studs Terkel for HBO. Simonson received a Tony® nomination for his direction of Steppenwolf's The Song of Jacob Zulu with Ladysmith Black Mambazo and directed an Oscar®-nominated documentary about the acclaimed South African singing group. Simonson received an Oscar® for Best Documentary Short for his film A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin in 2006. Other directing credits at Steppenwolf include Carter's Way (also playwright), Slaughterhouse-Five (also adaptor) and Nomathemba (Hope).

December 3, 2009 - February 7, 2010
American Buffalo
By David Mamet
Directed by ensemble member Amy Morton
Featuring ensemble members Francis Guinan and Tracy Letts
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

In a cluttered, run-down Chicago junk shop, three small-time crooks plot to steal a valuable buffalo nickel. As the heist unravels, the men's frustration and paranoia intensify. Ensemble member Amy Morton directs this groundbreaking American play that weaves humor and menace throughout an emotionally charged struggle for identity and dominance.

World-renowned playwright and Chicago-area native David Mamet has a successful writing and directing career in theatre, film and television. Steppenwolf has produced Mamet's productions of The Water Engine and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Glengarry Glen Ross (also directed by ensemble member Amy Morton). Amy Morton received a 2008 Best Actress Tony® nomination for Steppenwolf's August: Osage County on Broadway. Steppenwolf directing credits include Dublin Carol, The Weir, The Pillowman, Love-Lies-Bleeding (also Kennedy Center) and Glengarry Glen Ross (also Dublin and Toronto).

January 21 - May 23, 2010
The Brother/Sister Plays:

In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet
By Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by ensemble member Tina Landau
Featuring ensemble members Alana Arenas and Jon Michael Hill
In the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre

A breakthrough theatrical event: three interconnected plays by a brilliant new American voice. Grand in scope, yet intimate and heartfelt, Tarell McCraney's plays are daring, funny and genuine.

On the banks of a steamy bayou, the tiny community of San Pere, Louisiana springs to life with stories of love, sexuality and coming-of-age. Influenced by lively Afro-Caribbean folklore, The Brother/Sister Plays explore the struggles that arise when the quest for self identity is at odds with community values.

Presented in two separate programs, these three plays can easily be enjoyed independently, but gain a special resonance when experienced in collection. Steppenwolf will present the plays in repertory, with In the Red and Brown Water on one night in alternation with The Brothers Size and Marcus on another. Subscriptions will include one of these engaging programs, and subscribers will be given an exclusive opportunity to purchase tickets to the other before the general public.

Evening 1
In the Red and Brown Water
directed by Tina Landau
April 24 - June 21, 2009

Evening 2
The Brothers Size
Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet (world premiere)
directed by Robert O'Hara
May 14 - June 21, 2009

Marathon days (all three plays) will be performed on June 6, June 7, June 13, June 20 and June 21.

April 1 - June 6, 2010
Endgame
By Samuel Beckett
Directed by ensemble member Frank Galati
Featuring ensemble members Ian Barford, Francis Guinan, William Petersen and Rondi Reed
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

Beckett's absurd comic masterpiece follows Hamm, a blind man unable to stand, and his servant Clov, who is unable to sit, as they pass their days in a tiny house by the sea-if the sea still exists. Pestered by Hamm's parents, they move through their daily rituals, awaiting the end of everything. A powerful all-ensemble cast anchors this profound exploration of the stories we construct to make sense of our lives.

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Samuel Beckett is the author of more than 25 plays and novels including Waiting for Godot, Happy Days and Krapp's Last Tape, produced at Steppenwolf in 1978. An adaptor and director, as well as an actor, Tony® Award-winner Frank Galati's Steppenwolf credits include Kafka on the Shore, after the quake and The Grapes of Wrath among others. Broadway directing credits include Ragtime and The Grapes of Wrath, and he appears as Prospero this spring in Steppenwolf's production of The Tempest.

July 1 - August 29, 2010
A Parallelogram
A new play by Bruce Norris
Directed by ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro
Featuring ensemble member Kate Arrington
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

If you knew your fate-would you accept it? Or try to change it? Bee is a young woman who believes she has an uncanny ability to see the future, and maybe even alter it. From the playwright and Tony Award®-winning director who brought you The Unmentionables and The Pain and the Itch comes this dark, funny world premiere about a woman bent on reinventing her own destiny-and possibly the world.

Bruce Norris has on ongoing collaboration with Steppenwolf where his plays The Unmentionables, The Pain and the Itch, We All Went Down to Amsterdam, The Infidel and Purple Heart (also in Galway, Ireland) were commissioned and produced. Anna D. Shapiro won a 2008 Tony® Award for her direction of Steppenwolf's critically-acclaimed production of August: Osage County, currently playing on Broadway. Other Steppenwolf directing credits include the 2008-2009 season production of Up as well as Three Days of Rain, Drawer Boy, I Never Sang for My Father and Man from Nebraska. She is also head of the Graduate Directing Program at Northwestern University.

Free post-show discussions are offered after every performance in the subscription season.

Committed to the principle of ensemble performance through the collaboration of a company of actors, directors and playwrights, Steppenwolf Theatre Company's mission is to advance the vitality and diversity of American theater by nurturing artists, encouraging repeatable creative relationships and contributing new works to the national canon. The company, formed in 1976 by a collective of actors, is dedicated to perpetuating an ethic of mutual respect and the development of artists through on-going group work. Steppenwolf has grown into an internationally renowned company of 42 artists whose talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking and textual adaptation. For more information, visit www.steppenwolf.org.

Photo: Francis Guinan, Rondi Reed, Ian Barford, and Kimberly Guerrero

 

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