William Petersen, Sally Murphy, John Mahoney & More Sign On for Steppenwolf's 2011-2012 Season
The 2011-2012 season at Steppenwolf Theatre Company will include productions featuring C.S.I. original star William Petersen, company members including Sally Murphy and John Mahoney, and a starry slate of directors, including Amy Morton, Austin Pendleton, Frank Galati and Anna D. Shapiro.
First up is Bruce Norris’ acclaimed drama Clybourne Park, will run September 8-November 6, directed by Amy Morton and featuring James Vincent Meredith. On two separate afternoons, 50 years apart, a modest bungalow on Chicago’s northwest side becomes a contested site in the politics of race. In September 1959, white owners sell the house to the neighborhood’s first black family, igniting a community showdown. In September 2009, a gentrifying young white couple buys the house with plans for a radical renovation. After an off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons, Clybourne Park opened in London in an Olivier Award-nominated production.
Tony winner John Mahoney (The House of Blue Leaves; TV’s Frasier) will star in Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s Penelope, running December 1-February 5, 2012, also directed by Morton. On a sun-scorched island off the coast of Greece, beautiful Penelope awaits the return of her husband from war. Beneath her window, four Speedo-clad men camp in an empty swimming pool, a cockeyed internment where both provisions and time are running low. In a do-or-die competition to win Penelope’s love, they preen and posture and connive in a last ditch effort to cheat a grisly fate.
Kicking off the new year, Sally Murphy and Francis Guinan will star in Donald Margulies’ Tony-nominated drama Time Stands Still, directed by Austin Pendleton and running January 19-May 13. For photojournalist Sarah Goodwin, happiness is rushing from hotspot to hotspot capturing images of global conflict. When she barely survives a bomb blast in Iraq, she’s forced to return home in the care of her lover, James. She’s caught off-guard by James’s desire for family and by the simple domestic life pursued by Richard, her editor, and his much younger girlfriend, Mandy. The play debuted off-Broadway and later returned for a second engagement, both staring Laura Linney and Brian d’Arcy James.
William Petersen and a large cast of Steppenwolf ensemble members will star in The March, a stage adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel written and directed by Frank Galati. The epic Civil War drama, running April 4-June 10, centers on the effects of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s march through Georgia. In addition to Petersen, the cast will include Alana Arenas, Ian Barford, Tim Hopper, Martha Lavey, Mariann Mayberry, James Vincent Meredith, Yasen Peyankov, Alan Wilder, Will Allan, Patrick Clear, Stephen Louis Grush, Michael Mahler and Shannon Matesky.
The season will close with Tracy Letts’ adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, running June 28-August 26 and directed by Letts’ August: Osage County collaborator Anna D. Shapiro. The Prozorov family chafes at the constraints of life in their small provincial town, once a bustling army garrison where their late father served as general. Attempts to shore up their crumbling social status lay bare the larger forces of unrest that will soon engulf them all. The cast will include Ian Barford, Ora Jones and Sally Murphy.