John Steppling (playwright)

John Steppling (Playwright) American playwright, born June 18, 1951, Burbank, California. Los Angeles native, John Steppling became a prominent figure of the Los Angeles theater scene in the 1980s. He has influenced a generation of playwrights including Jon Robin Baitz, Marlene Mayer, Kelly Stuart, and Michael Sargent. Los Angeles Times writer Richard Stayton noted that, “His oft-copied cinematic style--spare, elliptical, obscenity-spiced dialogue spoken by society's outcasts, framed in brief scenes between blackouts, archly paced--even spawned a critic's term: "Stepplingesque.”

EARLY YEARS

Born in Burbank, Steppling was raised in Hollywood and attended Hollywood High. His grandfather, John Steppling,was a silent-film actor; his father, Carl Steppling, a part-time actor and wardrobe assistant. His upbringing, at the fringe of the film industry, influenced his work, in particular, The Dream Coast.

NEW YORK

Steppling’s was influenced by New York's Off-Off Broadway. His interest in theater was sparked when he saw his cousin, James Storm, perform in the 1971 premiere of Sam Shepard's The Mad Dog Blues. During his time in New York, Steppling was introduced to the writers and actors associated with Theater Genesis, including Murray Mednick and Robert Glaudini.

PADUA

Back in Los Angeles, Steppling became a founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop and Festival founded in 1978 by Murray Mednick and Sam Shepard. Steppling remained involved in Padua for most of its 17-year-long run, other notable playwrights associated with the festival are Maria Irene Fornes, Jon Robin Baitz, Martin Epstein, Kelly Stuart, and John O'Keefe.

1980s

In the 1980s Steppling wrote the plays Neck, Eddie Cottrel at the Piano, Close, The Shaper, and The Dream Coast. The Mark Taper Forum took an interest in his work and many of his plays were developed in Taper sponsored workshops.

The Shaper, (1984) was chosen for the ''Humana Festival of New American Plays'', in Louisville, Kentucky and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Steppling was also hired to adapt Elmore Leonard‘s novel 52 Pick-Up, directed by John Frankenheimer.

In 1986, The Dream Coast, inspired by Steppling’s father and his cronies working on the fringe of the film industry, opened at the Taper, Too, the same day 52 Pick-Up was released. It was published in West Coast Plays the following year.

Robert Egan, former producing artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum, took a special interest in Steppling, While Steppling’s work was considered unsuitable for the Taper’s main stage, many of the playwright’s works were developed by the Taper’s new works program, the Taper, Too.

At the end of the eighties, Los Angeles Times critic Robert Koehler could write of Steppling’s growing reputation as potentially “the purest, finest poet of the stage that Los Angeles has produced in this generation.”

HELIOGABALUS

In the late 1980s, Steppling formed Heliogabalus with Theater Genesis alum Robert Glaudini. Steppling’s Teenage Wedding, winner of the PEN Center Literary Award for Drama in 1987, originated as a Heliogabalus production.

1990s

In the first years of the decade, Steppling wrote and directed The Thrill, Standard of the Breed, Theory of Miracles, and The Sea of Cortez.

Developed for the Los Angeles Theater Centre, Sea of Cortez, marked a turning point in Steppling’s critical reception. Sylvie Drake, of the Los Angeles Times, wrote that the play was “powerful yet difficult to embrace because it is so terminally despairing and virtually humorless.”

In 1991, Film director Barbet Schroeder, helped finance the New York production of the award-winning Teenage Wedding, in 1991 of which New York Magazine drama critic John Simon declared Steppling “an all-round no-talent.”

During this period, he continued leading workshops, instructing new groups of students in Padua-informed techniques and challenging them with a far-reaching reading list that went far beyond the narrow confines of dramatic literature.

In 1990, the late actor-director Rick Dean revived Steppling’s one-act, Neck (1982) which was a critical success. It had an extended run at The Lost Studio, run by Cinda Jackson.

CIRCUS MINIMUS

In the early nineteen nineties Steppling founded Circus Minimus with Mick Collins and Cinda Jackson. Workshops were conducted at Jackson’s The Lost Studio. Steppling told Jan Breslauer, of the Los Angeles Times, “This is about more than theater; it's about ideas, the nature of performing and the creative process.

Circus Minimus folded and was followed by Empire Red Lip, whose core members included former Padua students. Based in Silverlake, Los Angeles Empire Red Lip focused on collaborative projects, each stemming from intensive reading of a text, e.g., The Conquest of the New World, stemmed from the writing of Bartolome de las Casas; Murdered Sleep and White Cold Virgin Snow were oblique commentaries on plays by William Shakespeare.

As the 1990s drew to a close, Steppling supported himself with film and television jobs, including a staff position on the short-lived series Cracker, and a shared credit on Animal Factory, (2000) directed by Steve Buscemi.

2000s

At the beginning of the millennium, Steppling moved to Europe. After brief stays in Paris and London, he relocated to Poland, securing a teaching position at the The National Film School in Lodz. During his time at Lodz, Steppling did an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear featuring Marian Opania, and co-starring Mick Collins. The production was done in three languages: Polish, English, and Norwegian.

DOG MOUTH (2002)

Steppling returned to Los Angeles, briefly, to oversee the 2002 production of Dog Mouth, a play that was developed from a Taper workshop and was co-directed by the Taper’s Robert Egan.

Towards the end of the decade, Steppling moved to Norway where, in 2009, he wrote and directed a twenty minute film, Then They Recognized Me, with support of the Mid Nordic Film Commission. The film was shot in Russia, Norway and starred longtime collaborator, Lee Kissman.

RETURN TO LOS ANGELES

In 2010, Steppling moved back to Southern California and organized a new theatrical concern, Gunfighter Nation. The inaugural production, The Alamo Project, ran at The Odyssey Theater in West Los Angeles. The group’s second production The LA History Project, marked Steppling’s return to The Lost Studio.

Late in 2010, Steppling premiered Phantom Luck, Steppling cast his cousin, James Storm the lead role.

Recently married to Norwegian filmmaker Gunnhild Skrodal Steppling, he currently lives in Yucca Valley, California, conducting writing workshops in Hollywood and serving as the artistic director of Gunfighter Nation.

PUBLICATIONS

Absolute Disaster: Fiction from Los Angeles (Santa Monica Review Press and Dove Books), 1996; Sea of Cortez and Other Plays (Sun & Moon), 1999; West Coast Plays 21/22 (California Theater Council), 1987; Best of the West (Padua Hills Press), 1991; Los Angeles Under the Influence: 20 LA Writers, Their Influences and their work (Doublewide Press), 2002

External links

• http://gfnation.wordpress.com/