Making a keen Steep

KINGS FOR A DAY Moore, rear center, and In Arabia cast members celebrate their Jeff win earlier this month.

Photo: Johnny Knight

Peter Moore plays three parts in Howard Korder’s The Hollow Lands: a grocer hiring fellow Irish immigrants in early-19th-century New York, a frontiersman exploring the Missouri River Valley and a “whackjob” (Moore’s word) cult leader in the deserts of Utah. The multiple roles are a necessity in Steep Theatre Company’s production, with 14 actors tackling the 36 characters in Korder’s epic retelling of American history.

The New Mexico–based playwright recently visited rehearsals—Steep is only the second company to attempt the nine-year-old work—and offered Moore a bit of fine-tuning. The actor had been emphasizing the social distance between the grocer, Mr. Chase, and his employees. The key, Korder pointed out, was to understand Chase as no more than half a step above the new arrivals. Korder’s early America is a Darwinian landscape in which characters grimly struggle to find and hold any potential advantage.

Steep knows something about carving out a niche in a difficult ecosystem. Formed eight years ago by Moore, Alex Gualino and Alex Gillmor, the ensemble (which now boasts 15 members ranging from their 20s to 50s and including actors, directors and designers) initially pursued a familiar course for young storefront start-ups, peripatetically staging gritty, actor-driven dramas in venues such as Strawdog and the Chopin Theatre. One of the earliest productions was another Korder play, the more frequently mounted Search and Destroy. Moore credits this 2001 effort as demonstrating that the company had the potential to stick around: The closing weekend drew crowds that challenged the Chopin’s capacity. Steep’s early success soon led it to find its own Lakeview space.

The critical and popular success enjoyed there by back-to-back productions of Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy and Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days in 2005 underlined the troupe’s ability to re-create complex social environments, whether a POW camp or a Midwestern town riven by a murder, within the confines of a Chicago storefront. That flair for panoramic views of complexly interrelated communities, rooted in careful ensemble work, has become something of a Steep trademark.

Another milestone was a celebrated 2007 version of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui under the direction of Jonathan Berry (who also helms The Hollow Lands); after pitching a pile of scripts, Berry says the group’s response was, “Let’s do that Chicago gangster one with the Italian name.” And this year’s potent staging of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s In Arabia We’ll All Be Kings became the group’s most commercially successful production, earning the Jeff Award for best ensemble to boot.

Hollow Lands concludes Steep’s inaugural season in its new space at Berwyn and Broadway, both roomier (seating up to 60, up from 40) and happily removed from the next-door bar band that accompanied productions at the old digs. The move helped to convince the company that Korder’s play, which traces the westward trek of Irish immigrant James Newton against the backdrop of manifest destiny, was feasible.

South Coast Rep spent $750,000 on the play’s 2000 debut; Steep’s production budget is rather more modest at about $10,000. But “what seemed initially like a detriment turned out to be an asset,” says Berry, as his production’s tight focus amps up the intensity of Korder’s stark vision. At a recent tech rehearsal, Berry and fight designer Matt Hawkins meticulously choreographed shootings, fistfights and a public execution. “Make it a coward’s death,” Berry advised Moore. “That’ll give you the opportunity to squeeze your blood bag.”

The Hollow Lands opens Thursday 25.

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