A Micro-Study of Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago.
Matt Mulhern
In 1974, Steppenwolf Theater, having adopted their name from the Hermann Hesse novel, put on their first season of plays. Originally published in 1927, this choice of the company name from the Hesse book was more spontaneous than illustrative of any particular influence. They needed a name, and Ricky Argosh, the director of the first production, was holding the novel in his hand when founding member Gary Sinise decided they should have a title for their fledgling theater collective. But it was a reflection of the plea for self-examination of Hesse’s protagonist and the intellectual hypocrisy of the Weimar-era setting of the book.[1]
Jeff Perry and Gary Sinise, soon joined by Terry Kinney, started out in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, and began a journey that has taken them from putting on theater in malls and church basements, to national recognition as one of the most highly regarded theater companies in the United States. Influenced by the films of John Cassavettes and his sense of voyeuristic naturalism, and the ethos of The Group Theater, which embodied the voice of social drama in the 1930s, these three founders expanded into a company of actors, directors, and designers that have contributed over forty-five years of uniquely American theater that has added to a national conversation about American issues, including those addressed in this project: wealth and poverty. How so? In a study of the mechanics, goals, and results of Steppenwolf’s development over its decades of making American theater and undertaking outreach to the wider community, psychologist Bob Harlow identifies a set of core values held by the group that included the idea of building a new kind of theater where artists (not administrators) drove decision making, and the organization prioritized the cultivation of new voices and new artists. This is coupled with a sense of responsibility to the theatrical and cultural community.
Martha Lavey, who served as the long-time Artistic Director for Steppenwolf, was instrumental in setting out these core values. Under her leadership, the group increased the level of the intellectual conversation to be found within its walls, favoring scripts that evidenced substantial societal debates, especially of the responsibilities and culpability of the upper-middle-classes. As she explained: “Steppenwolf began as a conversation among artists. … The ensemble members envisioned their role as speaking from a platform to an audience. There has been an evolution over the past number of years [to] where it now feels like a conversation with a community, where our role is the activation of a public discourse.”[2]
How does theater move beyond its limitations to break through the fourth wall and inspire change? Presentation of wealth and poverty connects to cultural politics by presenting its audiences with portrayals of struggling Americans left behind and then asking “what can we do about it?” Charles Isherwood asked “Can art save the day? More specifically, can theater rouse the populace from a sense of numbed anxiety? Can a stage play change minds, or help channel passive beliefs into active commitment? Art’s ability to stir activism, an argument for the possibility of real impact.”[3]
Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago has done something unique: they have created a thriving, living theater over forty-five years that has evolved artistically, spiritually, and in its financial approach to keeping its doors open. That commitment to a larger purpose, to theater that matters, to theater that challenges its audience and its community to look at these issues through the lens of provocative plays and consider if they themselves are part of the solution or part of the problem – and still be wildly entertaining and worth the price of admission – is rare. The Group Theater itself collapsed from infighting and lack of funding. However, Steppenwolf has not only survived, but thrived. Why? What sets them apart from a thousand other well-intentioned and passionate groups of actors looking to change the world, only to eventually bend their knees to the prohibitive economic reality of American theater? There are many fine regional theaters in the United States, but this one has been especially well-served through good times and bad times by its mission to show its audience fellow Americans who refuse to be categorized by tropes social scientists are rejecting about the notion of a “monolithic and unchanging culture of poverty.”[4] And they attribute destructive attitudes and behavior not to inherent moral character but to sustained racism and isolation. As Alice O’Connor points out, the “war on poverty” instead, became a war on the poor.[5] The unique ability of live theater to allow audience members to see themselves in the characters onstage while alone in a darkened theater; to walk out of a performance feeling an identification with a troubled soul they had just witnessed struggling to cope with systemic racism, or the crushing weight of poverty, is distinct. Bearing witness to our common humanity is live theater’s magic, its essence, and its power to promote change.
In my conversation with him, Terry talks about Steppenwolf’s approach to issues of wealth and poverty, and gender and race in the troop’s development, while also commenting on the American government’s lack of commitment to the arts, and how theater goes forward in the age of Covid.
https://vimeo.com/user20009216/review/496600445/070a79a6f9
The influence on Steppenwolf of the Group Theater, the ensemble created in the 1930s as the first not-for-profit theater collective during the height of the Depression, speaks to a shared vision of theater that matters, and a combination of entertainment and larger purpose. As Terry Kinney explains in the video, Steppenwolf actors self-identified as working-class kids born of working-class parents, and wanted to specifically perform plays by writers who focused on the kind of people they themselves felt they were. Why theater, and why Chicago, instead of dreams of film and Los Angeles? Steppenwolf inspiration, Harold Clurman, a founder of the Group Theater, argued that a play was different from a movie, or a radio broadcast, in that a play pretended to affect one’s heart, and awaken a social conscience. “In the end, however, the development of playwrights, actors, repertory and the rest are important only as they lead to the creation of a tradition of common values, an active consciousness of a common way of looking at and dealing with life.”[6]
The three founding members were soon joined by John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Al Wilder, Moira Harris, H.E. Baccus, Joan Allen, and designer Kevin Rigdon. The working-class roots of this core group came through in their fierce depiction of the “communal spirit” that John Steinbeck wrote of. Steinbeck, in his series of articles, The Harvest Gypsies, written in 1936, focused on the plight of migrant workers of California’s Central Valley, a struggle Steppenwolf captured in productions of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men, directed by Terry Kinney.
Now in its fifth decade as a professional theatre company, Steppenwolf has received unprecedented national and international recognition, including a series of Tony Awards and The National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government. In Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago: In Their Own Words, theater historian John Mayer describes what started out as three teenage boys from corn-country Illinois, and became a national institution: “What Steppenwolf Theatre Company has accomplished is truly remarkable – here were some high-school students who had a dream, and they had no idea where it would take them. Look where they’ve ended up. They have become the model for the start-up of so many other companies. I compare it to Apple starting out in a garage and growing into Apple computers. That’s what Steppenwolf is to theater.”[7]
Anna Shapiro, Steppenwolf’s current artistic director, cites a contemporary priority of “expanding the ensemble and nurturing new voices. We have to create more opportunities for young and diverse artists to work with us,” she said. “We want the art we make to look more like the world we all live in. Steppenwolf had a really homogeneous origin that does not reflect its interests now. We have an organic process now about what kind of conversations we want to be in, and we want those conversations to be wider and include more people.”[8]
Through their Community Partnership model, which seeks to build authentic and mutually beneficial relationships and bring Steppenwolf’s programming outside of their theater walls, Steppenwolf aims to provide no-cost, barrier-free programming and establish long-term partnerships with community organizations working to empower Chicago youth through the arts. For four years, part of that outreach, Steppenwolf Education, has toured its acclaimed Steppenwolf for Young Adults productions to detained and incarcerated youth in juvenile justice facilities. Also, BUILD, Inc. has been an important part of Steppenwolf Education’s work, bringing students from West Side Chicago communities to Steppenwolf and Steppenwolf to them. This program provides a lifeline to the youth they serve.
[1] John Mayer, Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago: In Their Own Words (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 14.
[2] Bob Harlow, Thomas Alfieri, Aaron Dalton and Anne Field, Building Deeper Relationships: How Steppenwolf Theater Company Is Turning Single-Ticket Buyers Into Repeat Visitors, (New York: The Wallace Foundation, 2011), 45, 57.
[3] Charles, Isherwood, “The Culture Project and Plays That Make a Difference,” The New York Times, September 3, 2006, 35.
[4] Patricia Cohen, “Culture of Poverty Makes a Comeback,” The New York Times, October 17, 2010, 32.
[5] Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 197.
[6] Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the 30s, (New York: De Capo Press, Inc., 1975), 68-69.
[7] Mayer, Steppenwolf Theater, 45.
[8] Donald Liebenson, “How Chicago’s Famed Steppenwolf Became the Apple of Theater,” Vanity Fair, August 17, 2016, 31.
