Breathing Corpses Trailer

Video compliments of Jim Poole Creative Productions
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"By turns darkly comic and harrowing, the one-act nails the anguish of dysfunctional relationships in which trust and passion have turned into tedium and rage."
- Chicago Reader

"Recommended: A Must-See Show!"
- Center Stage

"FOUR STARS!"
- Time Out Chicago

"Steep is deep in talented actors guided by the experienced director Robin Witt."
- Windy City Times



Now playing at Steep Theatre
Thurs., Fri., Sat. @ 8PM

thru March 22
312 458-0722

This Brisk Steep Production

Christopher Piatt weighs in on Breathing Corpses

It’s a mean trick, really. The five out-of-sequence scenes in Laura Wade’s clever dread-mystery Breathing Corpses fit together like the large, chunky pieces in a harmless jigsaw puzzle for infants. Once you’ve assembled them, however, the doomsday picture you see is grisly enough to make adults look away. Like Schnitzler's La Ronde with murder where the sex should be, Wade ties a daisy chain of tangentially related encounters into a single loop, showing us that the average joe's subconscious despair is knotted up in everybody else's. (Imagine a chart tracing how a virus gets transmitted from stranger to stranger, only with angst.) And yet in this brisk Steep production, director Robin Witt handles the material by young British scribe Wade the way British mysteries are best delivered: tart and lively, even with all the dead bodies lying about.

We first encounter a welcome stereotype; Julia Siple is keen as usual, playing a plucky chambermaid with low self-esteem who discovers a dead body in one of her rooms. (It gets her down, doncha know, because it seems like she’s the only girl on staff who ever finds cadavers on the job.) But in the next scene, Wade’s comic voice subsides with a look into the domestic life of a man panicked by the putrid stench wafting from one of the storage units he rents out, and uglier still when the play then cuts to a violent squabble between a yuppie couple (dynamic work from Jonathan Edwards and Lucy Carapetyan) whose weekend routine has been shattered when they discover a murdered girl’s body in the park. The playwright then winds us back to where we started, demonstrating en route how laughs, terror and grief often grow from the same root. With nary an underqualified actor, and a creepily impersonal wrap-around aluminum-siding set from Marcus Stephens, Steep takes us on a journey that’s also something of a trip.

We Made USA TODAY

Check out the "10 Tips for Chicago Tourists" article here.

WE ARE GROWING!

We are proud to welcome three new members to our ensemble:

Caroline Neff - actor - A recent graduate of Columbia College, Caroline most recently captivated audiences at Steep as Gwen in Coronado,and as Curley's Wife in Of Mice and Men. Her charisma and charm have cast her in numerous productions in Chicago and abroad, among them Mary-Arrchie Theater and Infamous Commonwealth.

Egan Reich - actor and playwright - Recently Egan's play, The Most Liquid Currency in the World was produced by Pinebox at the Building Stage in November, 2007, and General Desdemona (originally produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004) is being produced at Proctor's in Albany, NY, in the spring of '08. At Steep, he was seen as Judas in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and Boyd in Book Of Days.


and
Melissa Riemer - actor - Trained at the Drama Studio London, Melissa has performed in Jeff Nominated Book Of Days as Martha Hoch, in Catch - 22 as Luciana, and the Steep Family Reunion in a variety of hilarious roles. She brings dynamic skill and experience working throughout Chicago Theater, including the Griffin Theater, Piven, Side Project and Backstage.

We are very excited about our future together at Steep and invite you to join us this year.

Watch what we do next!

In The Press

Steep Sets First Capital Goal

BY Jonathan Abarbanel

At its annual fundraiser last November, 5-year old Steep Theatre Company launched its first-ever capital campaign, aiming to raise $30,000. It’s a modest goal, but it will be enough to build out a new home space for the troupe, says executive director Peter Moore. At present Steep occupies a storefront on Sheridan Road near Irving Park, but Moore says the sound bleed from the live bands playing at the next door bar is driving them bonkers. He said Steep would be happy to pick up a few more seats and a little more lobby and backstage room, but essentially they want to duplicate what they have now. Steep is looking north of Irving Park Road and east of Lincoln, which covers a large swath of Chicago’s North-Northwest Side. Ideally, Steep will open its 2008-2009 in the new home come September.

From the 2/1/08 issue of Perform Ink in the Behind the Curtain column.