Alumni and faculty members of Columbia College Chicago are in the cast and creative team for Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s remount of Bug, the creepy-crawly psychological thriller by Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning Steppenwolf ensemble member Tracy Letts. The show runs November 11 through December 12 at Steppenwolf, located at 1650 N. Halsted in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
David Cromer
The show, described as “a luridly funny tale of love, paranoia, and government conspiracy,” is directed by former Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department student and faculty member David Cromer HDR ’17 — recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Columbia College in 2017 and winner of the 2018 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for The Band’s Visit.
Randall Arney
Victor Holstein
The show’s cast includes Columbia College alum Steve Key ’88, a graduate of Columbia’s art and design program. Also in the cast is former Columbia College Theatre Department faculty member Randall Arney, a Steppenwolf ensemble member. And the understudy for both Key and Arney is Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumnus Victor Holstein ’04, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting.
Heather Gilbert (Photo: Philip Dembinski)
The lighting designer is Columbia College Theatre Department faculty member Heather Gilbert, a teacher in the Theatre Department’s Theatre Design program, who recently designed the lights for Cromer’s Broadway staging of The Sound Inside. And former Columbia College Theatre Department teacher Gigi Buffington is the company voice, text, and dialect coach.
Set in a seedy Oklahoma motel room, the play concerns a lonely waitress and a young drifter whose unexpected love affair is disrupted by paranoid visions of a government conspiracy. As previously reported in this blog, David Cromer’s staging of Bug was first produced at Steppenwolf in January of 2020. The show’s run was cut short by the pandemic shutdown in March of 2020. Steppenwolf is bringing the production back as the opening production of its 2021-22 season return to live performance. For more information and tickets, click here. For information on student discounts, click here.
