Jeff Perry on Steppenwolf
Jeff Perry is a co-founder of the reknowned Chicago theatre company Steppenwolf. Here he talks about the 'goth' in their choice of early plays, memorable prouctions in their history and his first impressions of August: Osage County.
Starting out at Steppenwolf
At the beginning of Steppenwolf our primary concern was just to get everybody working. Founders Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney and I veered rather quickly towards one act plays such as Israel Horiwitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx, Pinter's The Lover, Ionesco's The Lesson and Birdbath by Leonard Melfi. In the workers, commuters centre of Chicago's Hyman Park we had picked a season of absolute pitch black darkness. Only in hindsight would we realise perhaps how goth it was! In The Lover it's a couple having a created affair, Ionesco's study of abuse everywhere, in Birdbath the woman has killed her mother with a hammer and in Horovitz, two thugs brutalise an Indian. And this was our idea of light summer fair right out of school. It bought eights of tens of people into our theatre, which would be the case for the first couple of years.
About the family
There's ways in which we've repeated cycles endlessly. Because it was a place built for and buy actors we've always loved the familial aspect of the work; everything about what is communal and collaborative. We were drawn to plays of family and tribe and subculture. From Arthur Miller's Death and the Salesman to the twenty six or so losers who refuse to lose in Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead to the population forced off their land in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (which transferred from Chicago to the National in 1988. In different ways these are all families. And here we are at the National theatre as an extended family in August: Osage County. That's been an unbroken theme of our play choices throughout the years. We've got a tiny bit more intellectual and political. We started out with a great love of visceral and instinctive writers such as Sam Shepard. We did No Man's Land and for reasons of admiration and enjoyment a third of our work was from the United Kingdom for a long time. That's continued with a strong percentage of our play choice because the writing's so darn good.
A memorable Menagerie
Our first artistic director Rick Argosh did a production of The Glass Menagerie and it represented another high point of work that I love and most actors love: the re-appreciation, the reimagining of work that has been around a long time. This is a little production in a basement. The Glass Menagerie is probably done a hundred times around the world in a year. It had become overly sentimentalised, but in our little neck of the woods there was a re-imagining of the play. Amanda was pretty desperate and ruthless. Laura was like the short story that preceded her creation: A Portrait of a Girl in Glass. She was the autobiographical sister of Tennessee Williams portrayed by Laurie Metcalf as destined to be incarcerated in a mental institution. John Malkovich portrayed Tom as someone aggressively hiding his homosexuality and Terry Kinney portrayed the gentleman caller as someone who had kindness in him but also a certain unthinking ruthlessness in him.
Gina Landow did the same thing with William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life in 2002 and 2005 which we did in Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. That proved to be a really interesting strain of work where we came to a certain personal, passionate connection to the work that simultaneously blows the dust off. There's no reason to revive something unless we can make it exciting.
New American plays
I'm really excited by a lot of the work that Bruce Norris has been doing. I like The Pain and the Itch a great deal. I thought Adam Rapp's Red Light Winter was really interesting and Stephen Adly Guirgis, the guy who wrote Jesus Hopped the A Train.
UK vs US audiences for August: Osage County
A tiny example: the patriarch has a line ‘my wife is cold blooded. In the metaphorical sense.' In a lovely way the british audience doesn't really need the second half of the line. They take the tone in the metaphorical line [whereas Americans] are generally used to a more literal line. Chicago and New York [audiences] are quicker to hoot and holler and get to their feet. You get a kick out of knowing you have to earn it with British audiences. A lot of the laughs are very similar. There is truth in the national cliché of the british audience being more reserved.
When I first read August: Osage County...
I was tremendously excited. The structure of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? reverberated. This was a fellow company member whose plays I'd very much dug but were in the 90 minute category. My overwhelming feeling was he's going from sonata to symphony. Not only does it play better than it reads, some of the reasons why its so honest are not immediately appararent. When we worked on the ensemble piece that is the extended dinner scene in the second act I giggled. It was deeply funny and just about made you cry. This is ridiculously well written ensemble terriotory. Its what we've practised 20-30 years to do. I look around the table and we've grown up together.
Jeff Perry is part of the ensemble in August: Osage County, playing in the Lyttelton until 21 January
To buy the playtext of August: Osage County cick here.
For more information on Jeff Perry and Steppenwolf click here.
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