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Monday, November 01, 2021
Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s new building a ‘love letter to Chicago’
Chicago Sun-Times: The new Steppenwolf Theatre campus is all about collision.
Glass panes collide with ribbed concrete panels. Traditional playwriting collides with a new style of art for performers to imagine. In the new in-the-round theater, artists collide with audiences, who sit close enough to see the sweat bead on actors’ foreheads.
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4 comments:
I am amazed that they were able to complete such a beautiful and expensive piece of architecture at a time like now. It’s crazy to think that they have been planning this since 2007. Just from this one article you can get a sense of how much effort and hard work went into it. Looking at the pictures does give you a sense of hope that theatre is coming back and coming back strong. I am a little obsessed with the lighting rope fixtures that seem to be in the lobby. So much goes into planning and preparing them nowadays with all of the technology that we have. There really is nothing like a brand new theatre. I have heard a lot of good things about this theatre company and it is very refreshing with all of the bad news surrounding theatre and entertainment companies right now. I hope that I can get a chance to head over there and see a production in the future.
We often overlook the importance of how the space in which we view theater affects its impression on us. A grand theater with ornate molding and boxes implies an elevated production value, so our expectations are pretty high. A smaller, less well kept theater may have a similar effect in presenting the mindset of poor acting and directing. Steppenwolf Theatre’s new Arts and Education Center is a really interesting and innovative new take on this principle. The architectural design theme of collision is really intriguing because it implies that this concept would apply to their theatrical works, which seems rather odd to me. I do not know much about the works typically featured in this theater, but to me something so divisive and specific may not frame the works in the best way. It is very thought provoking and something that will inform how I will think about the theater I enter in the future as audience, technician, or designer.
I adored the quote in the article from E. Brooke Flanagan. “The new campus is a love letter to the city and a promise to our next generation of artists.” Steppenwolf is truly dedicated to their community and to the concept of being a Chicago theatre. There is a theatre community in Chicago unlike the community that we see in other metropolitan cities because the work done there is more neighborhood based. Most Chicago theatre-makers work to ensure that their work is directly contributing to the area it is in. Most importantly, we observe a lot of strong community-based teen education programs. I appreciate that Steppenwolf focused funding from the start on a teen lounge and space for local young people to openly express themselves. This space will stand to serve and, in many ways, cultivate artists of the future. Without the community it serves a theatre is nothing, and Steppenwolf recognizes that.
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