By Michael Frayn
Directed by ensemble member Anna D. Shapiro
A Co-Production with Geffen Playhouse
Featuring ensemble members Audrey Francis, Francis Guinan,
Ora Jones, James Vincent Meredith and Karen Rodriguez

Sep 12 – Oct 27, 2024
In the Downstairs Theater

The cast and crew of Nothing On are scrambling to prepare for opening night, but despite their earnest efforts, the production is an absolute mess. Line flubs and lost props and missed cues, oh my! Can this beleaguered ensemble overcome egos and jealousies to pull the show together in time?

Onstage antics collide with offstage foibles in Steppenwolf’s production of Noises Off, the classic comedy that writes an ingenious, slapstick and zany tribute to “theatre-people” everywhere. By the end of this dizzying play-within-a-play, you won’t know stage right from left.

By Ngozi Anyanwu
Directed by Awoye Timpo
Featuring ensemble member Jon Michael Hill

Oct 24 – Dec 15, 2024
In the Ensemble Theater

Two lost souls meet at a crossroads, in the dead of night, deep in the Mississippi of it all. With a yearning guitar between them, they tell secrets and conjure a sound once forgotten—a tune pitched with Leroy’s longing and the sweet purr of Lucy’s desires. In this sultry world premiere, a play with music from Ngozi Anyanwu, the Delta Blues fills the air, the future lies just down the road, and we are everywhere and nowhere all at once.

By Sam Shepard
Directed by Jeremy Herrin

Jan 30 – Mar 16, 2025
In the Downstairs Theater

In a sweltering motel room in the Mojave Desert, May and Eddie lick their wounds and get ready for another relentless round. This brawl is eternal and infernal. And the Old Man is always watching.

Perhaps the sexiest, most haunting play of the 20th century, Fool for Love is a twisted and tequila-soaked love letter from Sam Shepard, one of the greatest American playwrights, indulging the need to get inside someone just to tear them apart. 

By Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Steve H. Broadnax III
Featuring ensemble member Glenn Davis

Mar 27 – May 18, 2025
In the Ensemble Theater

Grace looks for the good in everything: in her husband’s rules, in the border he patrols, in the return of his estranged son. But a want for goodness cannot unwind the past, as this taut family reunion explodes in all directions.

The Chicago premiere of Suzan Lori-Parks’ The Book of Grace is an incendiary family portrait from the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Topdog/Underdog. Witness this startling reminder that the search for common ground can be bloody and brutal, leaving casualties on every side of the divide.

By Noah Diaz
Directed by Artistic Director Audrey Francis
Featuring ensemble members Cliff Chamberlain, Amy Morton and Namir Smallwood

Jun 5 – Jul 13, 2025
In the Downstairs Theater

A young man with a secret. An older woman who will listen. A predatory flock of birds. An upcoming audition for The Wizard of Oz. Welcome to You Will Get Sick, a wildly imaginative new play that traces the touching, hilarious, heartbreaking saga of one man’s illness and his unlikely caretaker’s pursuit of her dreams.

Admired as “lively, surreal and surprising” by The New York Times, Noah Diaz’s Chicago debut is equal parts comedy, form-bending experiment and sober meditation on mortality. Renowned ensemble member Amy Morton (a Tony nominee for August: Osage County and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) returns to the Steppenwolf stage for the first time in over a decade, making this season finale a must-see experience!