Steppenwolf's 2010–2011 season

Steppenwolf Theatre Company has announced its 2010–11 subscription season, the ensemble’s 35th. It includes three new plays (one of which was seen as a work in progress in Steppenwolf’s First Look series last summer) and two revivals of 20th-century classics. The plays are: Detroit by Lisa D’Amour; Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, starring Tracy Letts and Amy Morton as George and Martha; Laura Eason’s Sex With Strangers, the First Look alum; Lanford Wilson’s The Hot L Baltimore; and Will Eno’s Middletown.

For the last several seasons, the company has organized its seasons around a defining theme; artistic director Martha Lavey says this year it’s the idea of the public vs. private self. “That we negotiate both our public persona and our private self is human, so it’s not as though new technologies have invented that dynamic,” she told me earlier today. “But it feels that particularly with contemporary communication technologies—things like, as an obvious example, Facebook, where one constructs a persona—there’s more of a conscious shaping.”

Sex With Strangers is explicitly about such constructs, with its story of a Tucker Max–like writer’s relationship with a somewhat older failed author who finds new success when he encourages her to create an online persona. It’s the first play to jump from First Look to the company’s season. Lavey describes Middletown as “a contemporary Our Town, “more of a play-play” than Eno’s hit THOM PAIN (based on nothing), “although there are those signature self-reflexive interludes in the play that characterize that guy’s consciousness.” Detroit’s D’Amour was announced earlier today as one of the company’s Mellon grant recipients.

Virginia Woolf reunites Letts and Morton on stage for the first time since Betrayal; repeat Albee collaborator Pam McKinnon (who helmed Steppenwolf’s Good Boys and True in 2007) will direct the pair as one of theater’s most caustic couples. Tina Landau (whose productions of The Brother/Sister Plays are currently running) heads up The Hot L Baltimore, with which the ensemble revisits the playwright of one of its most legendary productions, 1980’s Balm in Gilead. Pasted below from the company’s announcement, the full slate and currently announced casting.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company 2010-2011 Subscription Season includes:

September 9 – November 7, 2010
Detroit
A new play by Lisa D’Amour
Featuring ensemble members Kate Arrington and Robert Breuler
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

Picture-perfect couple Ben and Mary fire up the grill to welcome the new neighbors who’ve moved into the long-empty house next door.  Three barbeques later, the fledgling friendship veers out of control, shattering Ben and Mary’s carefully maintained semblance of success—with comic, unexpected consequences.  Detroit is a fresh, off-beat look at what happens when we dare to open ourselves up to something new.

Lisa D’Amour is a playwright and interdisciplinary artist whose works have been presented in New York and other major U.S. cities.  D’Amour has been commissioned to write two new plays for Steppenwolf over the next two years through support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

December 2, 2010 – February 6, 2011
Edward Albee’s
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Featuring ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

On the campus of a small New England college, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife home for a nightcap. As the cocktails flow, the young couple finds themselves caught in the crossfire of a savage marital war where the combatants attack the self deceptions they forged for their own survival. Ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton face off as one of theatre’s most notoriously dysfunctional couples in Albee’s hilarious and harrowing masterpiece.

Edward Albee is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony® Award-winning American playwright whose noted works include A Delicate Balance, Seascape, Three Tall Women and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? Pam MacKinnon returns to Steppenwolf, having previously directed Good Boys and True.  A trusted collaborator of Albee’s, MacKinnon most recently directed his play Occupant at New York’s Signature Theatre, having previously directed productions of Peter and Jerry; The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? and The Play About the Baby.

January 20 – May 15, 2011
Sex with Strangers
By Laura Eason
Directed by associate artist Jessica Thebus
Featuring ensemble member Sally Murphy with Stephen Louis Grush
In the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre

Ethan is a hot young writer whose online journals of “sexcapades” are the buzz of the blogosphere. Olivia is an attractive 30-something whose own writing career is fizzling. They hook up, sex turns into dating and dating into something more complicated. A break-out hit at Steppenwolf’s 2009 First Look Repertory, Sex with Strangers explores how we invent our identity – online and off – and what happens when our private lives become public domain.

Laura Eason, a longtime member of the Lookingglass Theatre ensemble, is the author of more than 15 plays, both original works and adaptations.  Previous productions at Steppenwolf include When the Messenger is Hot, A Tale of Two Cities and Huck Finn.  Jessica Thebus directed Sex with Strangers during Steppenwolf’s 2009 First Look Repertory of New Work. Other Steppenwolf directing credits include Intimate Apparel, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, No Place Like Home, When the Messenger is Hot (also 59E59 Theaters, NYC) and Sonia Flew.

March 24 – May 29, 2011
The Hot L Baltimore
By Lanford Wilson
Directed by ensemble member Tina Landau
Featuring ensemble members Alana Arenas, K. Todd Freeman and Yasen Peyankov
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

The Hotel Baltimore used to be the swankiest place in town—now it has a date with the wrecking ball. Eviction notices just went out to its residents, who live on the fringes of society and call the seedy hotel home. This acclaimed play from the author of Balm in Gilead is filled with everyday humanity—unexpectedly intimate and moving. Helmed by visionary director Tina Landau, Hot L Baltimore reveals the private lives of an unconventional community about to be turned inside out.

Steppenwolf’s defining 1980 production of Lanford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead later transferred Off-Broadway. Other plays by the Pulitzer Prize winner seen at Steppenwolf include The Fifth of July, Home Free, his translation of Three Sisters (1985) and Burn This. Tina Landau’s Steppenwolf directing credits include The Brother/Sister Plays, Superior Donuts by ensemble member Tracy Letts (also on Broadway), The Tempest, The Diary of Anne Frank, Cherry Orchard, The Time of Your Life, The Berlin Circle and her own play, Space.

June 16 – August 14, 2011
Middletown
A new play by Will Eno
Directed by Les Waters
Featuring ensemble member Alana Arenas
In the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

Mary Swanson just moved to Middletown. About to have her first child, she is eager to enjoy the neighborly bonds a small town promises. But life in Middletown is complicated: neighbors are near strangers and moments of connection are fleeting. Middletown is a playful, poignant portrait of a town with two lives, one ordinary and visible, the other epic and mysterious.

Will Eno’s frequently produced play THOM PAIN (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  His other works include The Flu Season, TRAGEDY: a tragedy and OH, THE HUMANITY and other exclamations. Les Waters serves as Associate Artistic Director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre.  He returns to Steppenwolf, having previously directed The Designated Mourner and The Memory of Water.