Steppenwolf Theatre Company has announced a pair of additions to its legendary ensemble, and both of them can currently be seen on the company’s stages. Actor Caroline Neff and actor-director Sandra Marquez bring the population of the Steppenwolf ensemble to 46.
Neff, currently appearing in Annie Baker’s The Flick in Steppenwolf’s Upstairs Theatre, made her Broadway debut last season with the transfer of Steppenwolf's premiere of Airline Highway, by Lisa D’Amour. She’s also a longtime ensemble member at Chicago’s Steep Theatre, though because Neff is now a member of Actors’ Equity and Steep is non-Equity, she’s largely moved into a casting role there, including the company’s current production of Samuel D. Hunter’s The Few. At Steppenwolf, Neff has also appeared in The Way West, Three Sisters, Annie Bosh is Missing and Where We’re Born. She won the Jeff Award for Actress in a Principal Role in a Play in 2011 for Steep’s production of A Brief History of Helen of Troy.
Marquez, who currently plays one of the characters who encounters the titular woman in Tracy Letts’s new play Mary Page Marlowe in Steppenwolf’s Downstairs Theatre, is a longtime ensemble member of Teatro Vista, where she directed My Mañana Comes earlier this season. At Steppenwolf, she’s appeared in The Motherf**ker with the Hat, Sonia Flew, A Streetcar Named Desire, One Arm and The Boiler Room. Other recent productions as an actor include Iphigenia in Aulis, Agamemnon and the upcoming Electra at Court Theatre; The Happiest Song Plays Last at the Goodman Theatre; and Mojada at Victory Gardens Theater. Marquez is a member of the theater faculty at Northwestern University.
Neff and Marquez are the first new additions to Steppenwolf’s ensemble under the tenure of new artistic director Anna D. Shapiro, who talked to me earlier this year about her plans for the company, including expansion of the ensemble.