Steppenwolf Theatre Company Artistic Directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis and Executive Director E. Brooke Flanagan announced the 2022/23 Season on April 19, 2022. With six Steppenwolf Membership Series productions and two Steppenwolf for Young Adults (SYA) productions, the 47th season is the storied company’s first full season in its expanded home—welcoming audiences back to experience the next chapter of Steppenwolf’s bold, visceral and muscular work, while celebrating a dynamic range of exciting new voices and Steppenwolf legends.
This year, Steppenwolf unveiled its 50,000-square-foot Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center, designed by world-renowned architect Gordon Gill FAIA of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and featuring the new in-the-round Ensemble Theater in Honor of Helen Zell, with theater design and acoustics by Charcoalblue. Steppenwolf’s first-ever dedicated education space, The Loft, encompasses the entire fourth floor of the new building, and two new full-service lobby bars designed by fc STUDIO, inc. offer additional spaces for socializing alongside the popular Front Bar. The 2022/23 Season continues this transformative moment with four world premieres and three Chicago premieres bursting with vital stories and questions for our times.
World premieres for the 2022/23 Season include: Vichet Chum’s Bald Sisters, a story of sisters reconciling their family’s Cambodian heritage with its complicated American present, directed by Patricia McGregor; ensemble member Kate Arrington’s playwrighting debut with Another Marriage, an intimate and beautifully rendered portrait of marriage that upends the typical romantic comedy, directed by ensemble member and co-founder Terry Kinney; the SYA production of 1919, adapted by J. Nicole Brooks from Eve L. Ewing’s collection of luminous and searing poems about the killing of Black teenager Eugene Williams off the segregated 1919 Chicago lakeshore and how this tragedy reverberates today, directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent and Tasia A. Jones; and the SYA production of Chlorine Sky, directed by Ericka Ratcliff and adapted by Mahogany L. Browne from her popular young adult novel of the same title, an intimate coming-of-age story about two friends told in verse.
Three Chicago premieres bring more exciting new voices to Steppenwolf: James Ijames’ fantastical play The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, a fever dream about the dying “Mother of America,” directed by Whitney White and featuring ensemble member Celeste M. Cooper; ensemble member Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, a sweeping and arresting epic that follows the unlikely lives of seven Russians as they unearth mysteries buried by decades of history and fiction; and Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ stunning, poetic and heartbreaking portrait of Black love, Last Night and the Night Before, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton and featuring ensemble member Namir Smallwood.
Concluding the 2022/23 Season, Steppenwolf returns to Harold Pinter’s modern masterpiece No Man’s Land, directed by Obie Award winner Les Waters and featuring ensemble member Austin Pendleton and ensemble member and co-founder Jeff Perry in an alcohol-fueled evening that is at turns a generational power struggle, a tug of war between expert wordsmiths, and a maze of murky meaning—or perhaps just two old English sots waxing nostalgic and waiting for the sun to rise.
2022/23 Classic Memberships are now on sale starting as low as $125 and include all six Membership Series productions—three plays in the Downstairs Theater and three plays in the new Ensemble Theater. Classic Members get to choose their seats along with full membership benefits, including unlimited ticket exchanges. Flex Memberships offer six ticket credits that allow patrons flexibility in when and how they see shows at Steppenwolf. For patrons under 30, RED Card Memberships offer six ticket credits for just $100. All members can secure their seats to Steppenwolf for Young Adults performances before they go on sale to the public. Discounted packages for students and teachers and accessible packages are also available. For more information and to purchase Memberships, visit Audience Services at 1650 N. Halsted Street, call 312-335-1650 or visit steppenwolf.org/memberships.
