Steppenwolf Theatre Company announced impressive plans this morning for its 2018–2019 season, to include world premieres by Bruce Norris and Isaac Gomez, new works by Danai Gurira, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Lucas Hnath and Lucy Kirkwood, and a new production of one of the defining plays of the company’s early years: Sam Shepard’s True West.
Downstate, the season opener by Norris (Clybourne Park, Domesticated), is a co-production with the National Theatre of Great Britain. The play focuses on a group home for sex offenders in downstate Illinois, where a man arrives to confront his childhood abuser. Pam MacKinnon, who won the Tony Award for Steppenwolf’s revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, will direct a cast including ensemble members K. Todd Freeman, Francis Guinan and Tim Hopper alongside British actors to be named later. Downstate will play the Upstairs Theatre at Steppenwolf from September 20 to November 4 before transferring to London in the spring.
Gurira, the playwright (Eclipsed) and actor (currently stealing scenes in Black Panther), will be represented by the Chicago premiere of Familiar, a sharp family dramedy about first-generation Zimbabwean immigrants in Minnesota. Steppenwolf ensemble members Celeste M. Cooper and Ora Jones will be in the cast, with a director to be announced; it runs November 15 to January 6 in the Downstairs Theatre.
Back upstairs, Sandra Marquez will direct La Ruta, a premiere by Chicago playwright Gomez (The Way She Spoke: a docu-mythologia). The fact-based play takes its name from the bus route used by women factory workers in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the border town where hundreds of women have been murdered over the last 25 years. La Ruta runs December 13 to January 27.
Marquez will then appear onstage in the Chicago premiere of A Doll’s House, Part 2 (downstairs, January 31–March 17), Hnath’s cheeky 2017 sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 protofeminist classic. Marquez will play Nora, the role her fellow ensemble member Laurie Metcalf played in last year’s Broadway production, winning the Tony Award for best actress in a play. She’ll be joined in the Steppenwolf production by Cooper and Yasen Peyankov; a fourth cast member and the director are still to be announced.
Jonathan Berry will direct the Chicago premiere of The Children, by acclaimed young British playwright Kirkwood (Chimerica). The play follows a pair of retired nuclear scientists, holed up in a seaside cottage after a meltdown at their plant, who are visited by a former colleague and romantic rival. Ensemble members Ora Jones and Yasen Peyankov will be featured (downstairs, April 18–June 9).
Still fresh off his Oscar win for writing Moonlight, ensemble member Tarell Alvin McCraney will make a rare return to the stage in the cast of his own drag-ball extravaganza WIG OUT! (upstairs, May 23–July 7). McCraney will be joined onstage by fellow ensemble member Glenn Davis; they’ll be directed by McCraney’s longtime working partner Tina Landau, who staged WIG OUT!’s New York premiere in 2008.
Finally, ensemble members Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood will play the battling brothers of Shepard’s True West (downstairs, July 5–August 18; director TBA). Steppenwolf first produced the play in 1982, featuring Jeff Perry and John Malkovich and directed by Gary Sinise. It became the first Steppenwolf show to transfer to New York, where Sinise took over Perry’s role. The Off Broadway production put Steppenwolf on the global map—as former Chicago Tribune critic Richard Christiansen wrote in his book A Theater of Our Own, “it nearly tore the company apart, and it launched the troupe into the stratosphere.” Handing True West down to two of the company’s youngest ensemble members—and performers of color—feels like the latest in a string of statements about Steppenwolf’s direction in the Anna Shapiro era.