With its 20th anniversary season set to begin next September and subscriptions down, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is changing its artistic leadership. On August 31, Randall Arney will step down after eight years as the company’s artistic director. He has held the post twice as long as any predecessor. In announcing his resignation, Arney, who’ll remain a Steppenwolf ensemble member, expressed a desire to pursue more acting and directing jobs than he had been able to accept while at Steppenwolf’s helm. But there seems to be more to Arney’s resignation than merely his wish to explore other interests.
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With its subscriber base slipping and an expensive new theater complex to maintain, the Steppenwolf ensemble appears to be seeking a more clearly articulated–and hopefully more appealing–artistic vision. To temporarily fill Arney’s position the ensemble has chosen Martha Lavey, a Steppenwolf artistic associate and an ensemble member for the past two years, as acting artistic director. Lavey, 38, has worked with Arney operating the Steppenwolf studio theater over the past several months, but she comes to her new job with only minimal administrative experience. Though a relative newcomer, she’s a respected member of the troupe and the first woman to be named artistic director.
The Steppenwolf operation Lavey takes over is a much larger, more prestigious, and, in some respects, more unwieldy operation than the one Arney assumed artistic control of eight years ago. The company’s work, including the Tony Award-winning The Grapes of Wrath and more recently The Song of Jacob Zulu and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, has appeared several times on Broadway. In 1991 Steppenwolf moved from a tiny, poorly equipped space into an $8-million state-of-the-art facility at 1650 N. Halsted. Over the past eight years Steppenwolf’s annual operating budget has ballooned from $1 million to $5 million, and the ensemble has grown from 21 members to 30, many of whom now reside far from Chicago. Familiar names that have gone on to great success in films and television include Sinise, Malkovich, and Kinney, along with Laurie Metcalf, Kevin Anderson, Gary Cole, Joan Allen, and Glenne Headly. Because many in the Steppenwolf ensemble are frequently busy with other projects, in recent years Arney has struggled to organize Steppenwolf seasons around their hectic schedules, a problem Lavey will face if she’s chosen to fill his position on a permanent basis.
