Suzan-Lori Parks is known for writing plays about the inner lives of Black Americans. The Book of Grace is a companion to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Topdog/Underdog, where brothers Lincoln and Booth live out […]
The script of Sam Shepard’s romantic drama Fool For Love begins with the stage direction, “This play is be performed relentlessly, without a break.” The superb actors at Steppenwolf Theatre […]
Can you hear it? That finely tuned purr? It’s not the sound of a Rolls-Royce or Jaguar in the garage—but instead that other pinnacle of British engineering, Michael Frayn’s classic […]
When bad things like a pandemic cause me to despair, I try to find a logical explanation, remember that heroes appear in unusual situations, and know there is a deeper […]
In Chicago theater, the return of a great—not to mention famous—ensemble actor to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is an event exciting enough to register on the Richter scale. Particularly when […]
The American theater business and society in general offer plenty of opportunity for criticism of “wokeness” and efforts to satisfy all sides—both in the arts, in other nonprofits and in […]
Purpose, a new play written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by legendary actor Phylicia Rashad, follows in the theatrical legacy of plays like August Wilson’s Fences and The Piano Lesson, dealing with the […]
Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land is meticulously staged and performed by an excellent cast. Director Les Waters’ four actors do a masterful job with Pinter’s puzzling 1974 script. […]
You may recognize aspects of your own marriage or that of a friend or relative in Another Marriage, Steppenwolf Theatre’s world premiere play. The script by actor Kate Arrington succeeds on many […]
It’s appropriate that True West: Sam Shepard’s Life, Work and Times by Robert Greenfield ends with the 2019 Broadway staging of True West, Shepard’s iconic play about the American West, manhood and brotherhood. […]
Last Night and the Night Before at Steppenwolf Theatre is a tale of complex family relationships crippled by drug use and violence—but with love as the overriding theme. Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ […]
I suspect that for Cambodians and Cambodian Americans, the racist and genocidal history of the Khmer Rouge is a stain on their history just as slavery, racism and the Civil […]