On Tuesday morning, I sat upstairs at the Steppenwolf Theatre in the middle of a huge group of urban high school students. We were all watching “A Separate Peace,” Nancy Gilsenan’s adaptation of the 1959 novel by John Knowles. It’s set in 1942 in an exclusive boys boarding school in New England, modeled on Knowles’ experiences at Phillips Exeter Academy. The characters, all played by handsome young actors, were speaking of swimming, badminton and skiing.
Most of the students around me were sunk down in their seats. Some were snoozing.
I was seized with an irrational impulse to jump up on the stage and tear down that little set. And then I wanted to call up Phillip James Brannon, K. Todd Freeman, Glenn Davis and the rest of the actors in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brother/Sister Plays” and tell them to get themselves to the theater immediately and report for duty.
There were students who needed to see them.
Let me stipulate that Jonathan Berry, the director of “A Separate Peace,” is one of Chicago’s most talented young directors. Hallie Gordon, who runs the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program, is a dedicated, capable artist. This program has produced a diverse array of shows these last few years — by no means have they all been set in upscale boarding schools — and it has to serve many kinds of high school students. All of that is true. And it’s true that “A Separate Peace” is a respected (and curricularly friendly) coming-of-age novel about young men facing war and adulthood.
But it’s also true that some stories have been repeated more than others. Theater has its biases. And that boys-coming-of-age-at-boarding-school trope has had more than its share of exposure. It is overexposed.
I’ve always been wary of arguing that audience members, young or old, need to see actors or characters who look like themselves. We can all relate to people from different eras, different circumstances, different worlds. That’s why we go to the theater.
But you couldn’t have been sitting where I was sitting Tuesday and ignored the self-evident truth that neither this production nor this material was making itself essential for its intended audience. The students were staring out at a world very different from their own, and nobody was giving them a connection.
High school groups can be tough audiences. But the issue Tuesday was not a lack of respect for the theater. On the contrary, these students were clearly excited to be at Steppenwolf. Who wouldn’t be? They just needed to be grabbed by a theatrical story.
Had they shown up in the evening in that very theater, they would have found three such stories in “The Brother/Sister Plays.” They’d have been blown away. McCraney is a new, young voice. He’s a few years older than these kids, sure, but he understands this generation. His work demands attention.
In an interview a few weeks ago, McCraney told me that he’d decided that there needed to be more stories about African-Americans. New stories. And more of them. McCraney went out and wrote them. He wrote about young people.
The American theater is hierarchical and often less than flexible. There are adult shows and young person’s shows. “The Brother/Sister Plays” is a marquee attraction with, arguably, themes that would challenge teenagers (although I think my seatmates would have done fine).
Schools have schedules. Buses must be booked. Actors can’t be expected to work day and night. All this I understand.
But on Tuesday morning, I wished the world were different, that artists and educators could turn on a dime, and all those buses could return to Steppenwolf and that those students could hear the voice of a young woman, running, running, through McCraney’s feverish imagination and coming of age with a very different vocabulary.
I bet nobody would have been asleep.
• “A Separate Peace” runs through March 14 in the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; Tickets $20 at 312-335-1650 and steppenwolf.org
• “The Brother/Sister Plays” run through May 23 in the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre. “In the Red and Brown Water” is in rotating repertory with a double-bill of “The Brothers Size” and “Marcus.” Tickets $20-$70 (per show)
cjones5@tribune.com
