Steppenwolf's next season to feature works by Adam Rapp, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre will stage two world premiere plays next season, including “Night Fawn” by the Tony-nominated and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp.

Wednesday's announcement for the 2026-2027 season comes on the heels of the theater’s landmark 50th season featuring a show directed by Robert Falls and a premiere from “Moonlight” writer Tarell Alvin McCraney.

With its next season, artistic directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis said Steppenwolf is eager to maintain its reputation as “the place” to see the next big thing in American theater.

“Steppenwolf has been known over the years for producing some pretty innovative work,” said Davis. “The last few years we’ve continued to send shows to other markets, whether Los Angeles or New York, that started in Chicago. We’re really proud of the audiences that we have here, but its also important that we stay in the national consciousness.”

Rapp's haunting “Night Fawn” will star ensemble member Cliff Chamberlain as a man who has lost his job, ended his marriage and is now heading home to rural Illinois to settle the affairs of his late mother.

“Reading that play, just reading it as an experience, I thought, ‘This is like a novel on stage,’” Francis said of the brooding script. “How lucky for us to get the opportunity to deconstruct what a play can actually be and what the written word can be.”

Francis herself will star in the second world premiere, “Adirondack Chair Circle,” by Chicago playwright Stephanie Alison Walker. The comedy will be directed by Tony Award-winner Pam MacKinnon. Francis said she’s excited to be working with “two powerhouse women.”

“What I love about the play so much is that Stephanie has written a really funny script that has a beautiful tone of satire and absurdity and also biting comedy,” said Francis. “But at the same time she is calling our moral identity into question. In true Steppenwolf fashion, we've programmed a comedy that is a catalyst for your moral compass to betray itself.”

Davis will also take the stage in the 51st season. He will go toe-to-toe with Namir Smallwood, who is currently on Broadway in Steppenwolf’s “Bug” opposite Carrie Coon, in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Topdog/Underdog.”

“It's like a cage match,” said Davis, who also had a recent run on Broadway with his role in “Purpose,” a performance that earned his first Tony nomination. “Two actors in there, and they're just like, ‘Go’. The language is so beautiful and so visceral, it feels like one of those plays that could have been born out of the Steppenwolf ethos and philosophy of pushing your partner and pushing the boundaries of what theater is capable of.”

The season will also feature the Chicago premiere of “The Comeuppance,” by Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, the Tony award winning writer of “Purpose,” and the English language premiere of the psychological thriller “Ellen B.,” which will be helmed by Chicago native and Tony-nominated director Whitney White.

This marks the sixth season that Davis and Francis have led the theater's artistic team and the fourth season that they programmed.