Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s 2022/23 Season
Chicago Premiere
The Most Spectaularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington
By James Ijames
Directed by Whitney White
Featuring ensemble member Celeste M. Cooper
September 1 – October 9, 2022
In the Downstairs Theater
The recently widowed “Mother of America” lies alone in her Mount Vernon bed, ravaged by illness and attended to by the very same enslaved people who will be free the moment she dies. The form-shifting fever dream that follows takes us deep into the uncomfortable and horrific ramifications of this country’s original sin. Dizzying and fantastical, this skewering Chicago premiere from James Ijames’ daring voice puts the American myth on trial.
World Premiere
Bald Sister
By Vichet Chum
Directed by Patricia McGregor
December 1, 2022 – January 15, 2023
In the Ensemble Theater in Honor of Helen Zell
Ma is dead; now what happens? Vichet Chum’s world premiere follows two sisters—at odds since birth—as they settle the affairs of their strong-willed, wise-cracking mother while reconciling their family’s Cambodian heritage with its ever-so-complicated American present. Where’s the will? A burial or cremation? And what do we do with Ma’s teeth? Bald Sisters is an irreverent, comic and ultimately poignant examination of the ties that bind multigenerational families of immigrants together: history, spirituality, and humor.
Chicago Premiere
Describe the Night
By ensemble member Rajiv Joseph
March 2 – April 9, 2023
In the Ensemble Theater in Honor of Helen Zell
Truth is lie; lie is truth. Russia, 1920: Jewish writer Isaac Babel begins a journal while serving in war. Ninety years later, this same journal is found in the wreckage of a suspicious plane crash. What did Babel write, and why does it matter? Ensemble member Rajiv Joseph’s sweeping and arresting epic follows the unlikely lives of seven Russians—soldiers and poets, KGB agents and babushkas—as they unearth mysteries buried by decades of history, fiction and blood.
Chicago Premiere
Last Night and the Night Before
By Donnetta Lavinia Grays
Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton
Featuring ensemble member Namir Smallwood
April 6 – May 14, 2023
In the Downstairs Theater
Monique is on the run. From what, she will not say. Showing up on the doorstep of her sister’s Brooklyn brownstone with her timid daughter Sam—and without her husband—their arrival raises more questions than it answers. As the specter of their abandoned life in Georgia creeps back into focus, the family is forced to consider what must be sacrificed to break a cycle of despair. Poetic and heartbreaking, Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ stunning portrait of Black Love explores what it takes to nurture family in an often-cruel world.
World Premiere
Another Marrige
By ensemble member Kate Arrington
Directed by ensemble member Terry Kinney
June 15 – July 23, 2023
In the Ensemble Theater in Honor of Helen Zell
You meet. You marry. You have kids. That’s the way it always goes. Or is it? What if your story changes? What would it cost? Another Marriage is an intimate and beautifully rendered portrait of an ever-evolving relationship that may never be quite finished. Ensemble member Kate Arrington’s playwrighting debut upends the typical romantic comedy to explore the liabilities of falling in and out of love—and time.
No Man’s Land
By Harold Pinter
Directed by Les Waters
Featuring ensemble members Austin Pendleton and Jeff Perry
July 13 – August 20, 2023
In the Downstairs Theater
In the drawing room of his stately Hampstead mansion, the wealthy, aging Hirst hosts his newfound acquaintance, the enigmatic Spooner, for an evening of endless beer, scotch, and vodka. The night winds on, the drinks keep pouring and the ground keeps shifting—until two sinister younger men arrive and interrupt the bacchanal. Steppenwolf returns to Harold Pinter’s modern masterpiece: a generational power struggle, a tug of war between expert wordsmiths, a maze of murky meaning. Or perhaps it’s just two old English sots waxing nostalgic and waiting for the sun to rise. In No Man’s Land, you can never be certain, and nothing is at is seems.
Steppenwolf for Young Adults
2022/23 Season: Finding the words to speak your truth
Steppenwolf for Young Adults performances will be held on weekdays at 10 a.m. for school groups and on weekends for the public. In addition to 100 CPS classrooms receiving free workshops that explore the themes of each play, classroom teachers will receive free professional development and curricular support, allowing them to build upon content from the source books and plays.
World Premiere
1919
By Eve L. Ewing
Adapted by J. Nicole Brooks
Directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent and Tasia A. Jones
October 4 – 29, 2022
In the Ensemble Theater in Honor of Helen Zell
On July 27, 1919, Chicago erupted following the killing of seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams in treacherous waters off the segregated Lake Michigan shoreline. The days that followed made an indelible mark on the city—its sense of boundaries, of relationships between neighbors, and of the underlying systems of inequity and racism that persist today. Adapted by J. Nicole Brooks from Eve L. Ewing’s collection of searing and luminous poems, this world premiere is a hopeful, lyrical exploration of Black Chicagoans’ resistance, fortitude, and endurance: past, present and future.
World Premiere
Chlorine Sky
By Mahogany L. Browne based on her book
Adapted by Mahogany L. Browne
Directed by Ericka Ratcliff
February 14 – March 11, 2023
In the Downstairs Theater
“OK, so boom. / We ain’t friends anymore.” Sky and Lay Li were always in sync. But now their rhythms are changing; Sky likes swimming, and Lay Li is all about beauty. Sky, basketball; Lay Li, boys. Things just make more sense underwater and on the court. A world premiere adaptation of Mahogany L. Browne’s popular young adult novel, Chlorine Sky is an intimate coming-of-age story told in verse about two girls who are best friends—until they aren’t. Sometimes, growing up means growing apart.
Along with two exciting Steppenwolf for Young Adults world premieres in the 2022/23 Season, Steppenwolf Education will offer free workshops and programming for educators and students throughout the year in The Loft, the company’s first-ever dedicated education space encompassing the entire fourth floor of the new Arts and Education Center—including open hours each Thursday from 4-7 p.m. in which teens (ages 14-19) can come to do homework, listen to music, practice a monologue or just hang out! Steppenwolf was founded more than 46 years ago by a circle of students who craved a space to call their own, and the Arts and Education Center continues and amplifies that vision, growing the reach of Steppenwolf’s education programming from 20,000 to 30,000 students annually. For more information on The Loft and Steppenwolf for Young Adults programming, visit steppenwolf.org/education.
The Expanded Steppenwolf Campus
Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s trailblazing new 50,000 square foot theater building and education center, the Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center, was designed by world-renowned architect Gordon Gill FAIA of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, with construction by Norcon. The centerpiece of the new Arts and Education Center is the new 400-seat in-the-round Ensemble Theater in Honor of Helen Zell—one of its kind in Chicago—with theater design and acoustics by Charcoalblue.
The expanded Steppenwolf campus is a cultural nexus for Chicago, offering bold and ambitious opportunities for creative expression, social exchange, unparalleled accessibility, and arts-driven learning for Chicago youth in The Loft, Steppenwolf’s first-ever dedicated education space. The campus expansion also features bright new lobbies and two new full-service bars for socializing designed by fc STUDIO, inc. The $54 million new building is part of Steppenwolf’s multi-phase, ongoing $73 million Building on Excellence expansion campaign. Learn more about Steppenwolf’s campus expansion at steppenwolf.org/buildingonexcellence.
