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© 2018 Shannon Epplett THE STEPPENWOLF SCENARIO: ESTABLISHING THE HABITUS OF CHICAGO’S OFF-LOOP THEATRE COMMUNITY BY SHANNON EPPLETT DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Valleri Robinson, Chair Professor and Dean Emeritus Robert Graves Professor Kirsten Pullen Associate Professor Stuart J. Hecht, Boston College ABSTRACT This study focuses on the history, development, and structuring elements of Chicago’s Off-Loop theatre community. My research, grounded in Diana Taylor’s concept of scenarios and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, takes a sociological lens to the historical antecedents and theatrical predecessors of Chicago’s Off-Loop theatre community to find the origins and bases of the qualities which structure the contemporary theatre scene. These qualities; which I identify as community, collegiality, ensemble, hard work, perseverance, small stages, converted spaces, and contemporary and realistic plays; became the dispositions of the habitus that created the Off-Loop theatre scene. Starting in 1969, this scene developed and grew quickly, and within a matter of fifteen years, a motivating mythology – which I term “the Steppenwolf Scenario” – had emerged. This scenario, centered on the story of Steppenwolf Theatre, drives and structures the city’s theatre scene to the present day. The Off-Loop theatre scene began in 1969 with the founding of Body Politic and Kingston Mines theatres, but the conditions and ideas (in Bourdieu’s terminology dispositions) that created the Off-Loop theatre habitus in some cases date to the end of the nineteenth century, and evolved and coalesced slowly over time. This study looks at the history of non- commercial and non-profit theatre efforts in Chicago, breaking it into three eras divided by the World Wars, leading up to the establishment of the Off-Loop theatre scene. In each era, I trace how the dispositions that serve as the basis for Chicago’s Off-Loop theatre habitus became incorporated into the evolving habitus of the city’s theatrical practitioners. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the social, political, cultural, aesthetic and economic conditions had become ii favorable for Chicago’s alternative theatrical scene (now dubbed “Off-Loop theatre”) to burst into existence. Within a period of fifteen years, this once alternative theatre scene had become hegemonic, due in large part to the well-established habitus and the development of the Steppenwolf Scenario. While the scenario that I identify bears Steppenwolf’s name, this is not a study of Steppenwolf Theatre – rather, it is the story of a theatre community spinning itself into existence over time, and generating a story to perpetuate itself into the future. This study looks at, to use Diana Taylor’s words, “the ghosts, the images, the stereotypes” that constituted the habitus that created the Off-Loop community, and the scenario that subsequently carries the Off-Loop community forward. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my committee: Dr. Stuart J. Hecht, Dr. Kirsten Pullen, and Dr. Robert Graves for their feedback, support, encouragement, and enthusiasm for my work. I would especially like to thank my advisor, Dr. Valleri Robinson, for stepping in at a critical moment and helping me to see my work in a new way, as well as for being enthusiastic about it at a point where I really needed that. I would like to thank Dr. Peter Davis, for guiding my research and writing in its formative stages. Dr. Ann Haugo at Illinois State University deserves special thanks for encouraging me to pursue a PhD, and for helping me find (or rather, telling me I had found) my thesis and dissertation topic. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Bruce Birningham of ISU; first for shepherding me through the thesis process and secondly because it was in his Performance Studies class that I wrote the first version of this work as a research paper. I would like to acknowledge the late Dr. Arvid “Gus” Sponberg of Valparaiso University, as well as the cohort of Chicago theatre history people who have coalesced at MATC and ATHE panels: Megan Geigner, Cat Gleason, LaRonika Thomas, and Stuart J. Hecht. Gus showed me that Chicago theatre history was a field unto itself; the others let me know that I am not standing in the field all alone, and that – like Chicago theatre itself – we work best when we work together. I would like to thank Larry Russo for serving as my personal tour guide to Chicago theatre and sharing his first-hand knowledge and experience of working in Off-Loop theatre’s formative years. I would especially like to thank Mr. Rich Oman, my theatre instructor at Muskegon Community College, for seeing that I had something to offer the world of theatre, iv even if it would take me a very long time to figure out what that was exactly. I guess it is this. Thanks Rich! I have been fortunate to receive financial support from the Graduate College Distinguished Fellowship and the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois fellowship. I have also received support from the American Indian Graduate Center, and my own tribe – the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians - to pursue my studies and research. I would like to thank the Newberry Library in Chicago for two summer fellowships: the Newberry Consortium of American Indian Studies fellowship and the Susan Kelly Power and Helen Hornbeck Tanner Fellowship, which enabled me to do research and conduct interviews in Chicago. In addition to financial support, I would like to thank Ave Alvarado and the staff at the Graduate College, and Beverly Smith, Jamie Singson, and the staff at Native American House for providing the other kinds of support one sometimes needs as a graduate student. I want to thank my grandparents, Calvin and Lola Epplett, for being a source of stability in my life. Finally, absolutely none of this would be possible without my wife and partner, Tanya Picard. Thank you for the support, patience, tolerance, feedback, critique, encouragement, advice, and love. I could not have completed this without it. Thank you. Chi-Miigwitch. v For Tanya vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Justification and Significance………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Theory………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13 Positionality………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….31 Methods and Procedures……………………………………………………………………………………………..34 Limitations……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………35 Feasibility……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..40 Overview of Remaining Chapters………………………………………………………………………………….41 Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………………………………………43 The Steppenwolf Scenario and the Habitus of Chicago’s Off-Loop Theatre Community 50 CHAPTER 2: 1890s – WORLD WAR I………………………………………………………………………………………… 54 Hull-House Theatre………………………………………………………………………………………………………60 Anna Morgan……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….75 Endowed Theatre in Chicago………………………………………………………………………………………..88 The New Theatre………………………………………………………………………………………………………….96 Donald Robertson………………………………………………………………………………………………………103 The Chicago Little Theatre………………………………………………………………………………………….121 Other Efforts: The “Uplifters”……………………………………………………………………………………..135 Kenneth Sawyer Goodman……………………………………………………………………………..136 Arthur and Mary Aldis and the Lake Forest Players…………………………………………140 The Players’ Workshop and The Philistine Theatre………………………………………….146 The B. Iden Payne Company and the Chicago Theatre Society………………………..151 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….155 CHAPTER 3: CHICAGO THEATRE BETWEEN THE WARS……………………………………………………………159 Hull-House Theatre…………………………………………………………………………………………………….162 Alice Gerstenberg……………………………………………………………………………………………………….170 The Goodman Memorial Theatre……………………………………………………………………………….193 The Chicago Federal Theatre Project………………………………………………………………………….206 Minnie Galatzer and The Actors Company………………………………………………………………….218 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….232 CHAPTER 4: WORLD WAR II – 1968………………………………………………………………………………………..234 Mayor Daley and the City That Works………………………………………………………………………..237 Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and Off-Loop…………………………………………………………244 The Regional Theatre Movement in Chicago………………………………………………………………250 A Program for the Arts in Chicago, 1966…………………………………………………………………….253 John Reich and the Goodman Theatre………………………………………………………………………..266 Bob Sickinger and Hull-House Theatre………………………………………………………………………..284 Paul Sills: from Playwrights Theatre Club to Body Politic…………………………………………….303 vii June Pyskacek…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….331 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….346 CHAPTER 5: OFF-LOOP THEATRE, 1969 – 1984……………………………………………………………………….349 The Habitus of Off-Loop Theatre………………………………………………………………………………..359 Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1976 – 1984……………………………………………………………..371 The Steppenwolf Scenario………………………………………………………………………………………….376 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….392 Future Research…………………………………………………………………………………………………………395 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….397 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Even when we are unaware of our history, it acts upon us.1 Todd London, An Ideal Theatre . in each of us, in varying proportions, there is part of yesterday’s man; it is yesterday’s