Steppenwolf Fires Baby Actors From Tracy Letts' MARY PAGE MARLOWE

It's never too early to find out that show business is tough, but in all likelihood the three infants who were recently fired from the cast of Steppenwolf Theatre Company's premiere production of Tracy Letts' MARY PAGE MARLOWE will get through the experience unscathed.

The new drama, which opened on April 10th, required seven actors to play the title character at different stages of her life, one of them being a baby. Three fledgling professionals were hired to rotate performances.

But after playing it that way in previews, director Anna D. Shapiro decided that the presence of a real-life baby in a scene where parents were shouting and screaming might distract the audience.

"It pulled people out of the scene," Shapiro explains to the Chicago Tribune. The Tony-winning director (for Letts' Pulitzer and Tony winner, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY) discovered that audience members were worrying about the baby as a real baby rather than the fictional character.

The company's website, steppenwolf.org, describes the play thusly:

Mary Page Marlowe is an accountant from Ohio. She's led an ordinary life, making the difficult decisions we all face as we try to figure out who we really are and what we really want. As Tracy Letts brings us moments-both pivotal and mundane-from Mary's life, a portrait of a surprisingly complicated woman emerges. Intimate and moving, MARY PAGE MARLOWE shows us how circumstance, impulse and time can combine to make us mysteries... even to ourselves.

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