Incoming Artistic Director Anna D. Shapiro Will Direct Tracy Letts' New Play at Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf Theatre Company has announced that incoming artist director, Anna D. Shapiro, will helm the world premiere of Tracy Letts' new play MARY PAGE MARLOWE. The production will run March 31 - May 29, 2016 in the Downstairs Theatre.

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.

Letts was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play for August: Osage County, which premiered at Steppenwolf in 2007, played on Broadway, London's National Theatre and the Sydney Theatre. Steppenwolf also produced the world premieres of Letts's Superior Donuts (transferred to Broadway in 2009); and Man from Nebraska (premiered at Steppenwolf in 2003, Pulitzer Prize finalist). Letts received a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for Steppenwolf's production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He has been an ensemble member since 2002.

Shapiro received the 2008 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Direction of a Play for August: Osage County by Tracy Letts. Her work on Broadway includes the critically acclaimed revival of Steppenwolf's production of This Is Our Youth; Larry David's Fish in the Dark; and the Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men. She was nominated for a 2011 Tony Award for her production of Stephen Adly Guirgis's award-winning play, The Motherf**ker with the Hat, which she also directed at Steppenwolf to critical acclaim. She began working with Steppenwolf in 1995 and became an ensemble member in 2005, where her directing credits include Up, The Crucible, The Unmentionables and Tracy Letts's Man from Nebraska, (named by TIME Magazine as one of the Year's Top Ten of 2003), among others.

Photo by Walter McBride