Sandro

Austin Pendleton began working with Steppenwolf in 1979 when he directed the Ensemble in Say Goodnight, Gracie by Ralph Pape. After that he returned to direct Loose Ends by Michael Weller, Three Sisters and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Then he was cast opposite Laurie Metcalf in Educating Rita, directed by Jeff Perry, and on the first day of rehearsal he was asked to join the Ensemble officially. Since then, he has acted and directed at Steppenwolf frequently, and most recently acted on Broadway in the Steppenwolf-originated The Minutes by Tracy Letts, directed by Anna Shapiro. He has acted over the years in several Broadway shows (the first being the original production of Fiddler on the Roof, in which he was the first Motel, the Tailor), and many off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway shows. He has also directed in these venues, winning a Tony nomination for The Little Foxes (with Elizabeth Taylor) and an Obie Award for Three Sisters (with Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal). He’s appeared in about 300 movies, and on TV in recurring roles in Oz and Homicide. He has written three plays: Orson’s Shadow (which started at Steppenwolf, in the production, directed by David Cromer, that moved to off-Broadway and ran for a little under a year); Uncle Bob (the second production of the play, after its New York premiere); and Booth, which, after its New York premiere played at Writers’ Theater in Glencoe. He was also commissioned by Writers’ Theatre to write the libretto for A Minister’s Wife, a musical adapted from Shaw’s Candida, with music by Josh Schmidt and lyrics by Jan Tranen, which then moved to the Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York. All these works are published and have been frequently produced around the country, and in the case of Orson’s Shadow, in London, and in the case of Uncle Bob, in Paris, translated by Jean-Marie Besset

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Gary Sinise is a co-founder of Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He is a three-time Tony Award nominee, twice for acting in Steppenwolf’s productions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Grapes of Wrath and once for Best Director of Buried Child. His many acting credits at Steppenwolf include A Streetcar Named Desire, The Caretaker, Loose Ends and Balm in Gilead . Gary has also directed some of Steppenwolf’s most notable productions, including Orphans, the Vietnam veteran drama Tracers and Sam Shepard’s True West, which he also performed in with John Malkovich Off Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre and received an Obie award for Best Director. He’s appeared in many films, including Of Mice and Men, Apollo 13, Ransom, Snake Eyes and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting actor for Forrest Gump. On the small screen, he’s won the Emmy and SAG awards for Best Actor in George Wallace and a Golden Globe and SAG award for Truman. For nine seasons he appeared as Detective Mac Taylor on the CBS hit series CSI: New York.
He plays electric bass in his band, Gary Sinise and The Lt. Dan Band, a program of the Gary Sinise Foundation which he founded in 2011 to serve and honor the needs of active duty military, veterans, first responders and their families. His first book, Grateful American: a journey from self to service was released in February 2019 and is a New York Times Best Seller. Among many awards for his humanitarian work, in 2008, he was awarded the Presidential Citizen Medal, the second highest honor an American can receive.

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MARTHA LAVEY, FEBURARY 1957 - APRIL 2017
Martha Lavey became a Steppenwolf ensemble member in 1993 and served as Artistic Director from 1995 to 2015. Under her transformative leadership, Steppenwolf became a national leader in producing new plays and commissioning playwrights, doubled the size of its ensemble and diversified its base of artists, added two performance spaces, expanded and deepened its partnerships in public schools and the community, created Steppenwolf for Young Adults, and instituted a platform for engaging audiences after every performance. She oversaw the production of hundreds of plays and transferred dozens of Steppenwolf productions to Broadway and abroad, gaining national and international recognition for the company and Chicago as a vital theater destination. During her tenure, Steppenwolf was awarded the National Medal of the Arts, the only theater to ever receive the honor, as well as the Illinois Arts Legend Award, Equity Special Award and nine of the company’s 12 Tony Awards. Lavey catapulted Steppenwolf to the forefront of new play development and production with a robust commissioning program that cultivates ongoing creative relationships with some of the most compelling playwrights today.

Read more at Steppenwolf.org

Tarell Alvin McCraney (he/him) is Artistic Director of Geffen Playhouse. McCraney is best known for his acclaimed trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays. His script In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue is the basis for the Oscar–winning film Moonlight directed by Barry Jenkins, for which McCraney and Jenkins also won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. He is an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre and a member of Teo Castellanos D-Projects in Miami, a graduate of New World School of the Arts, The Theatre School at DePaul University, and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Warwick. He is an associate at the Royal Shakespeare Company, London, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Writers Branch).

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