In August, John asked me if we should subscribe to one of the local theaters for the 2011/2012 season. Wow, I thought, this must be a serious relationship. A subscription series usually starts in September and runs through May. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

All the theatre and arts marketing organizations must have had John’s address. (Maybe he gave a small donation to WFMT once and his name was added to the ranks of arts patrons in perpetuity.) In anticipation of the fall season, I think brochures from The Goodman, Steppenwolf, Raven, Lifeline, and Writers Theatre all turned up in his mailbox. Steppenwolf had a specially priced mid-week series that seemed like a good investment in our cultural development. We liked the ongoing involvement of Steppenwolf alumni, some of the country’s most accomplished actors and directors. Prior to the opening of the first scheduled play, the theatre invited new subscribers to an open house. It was a chance to get a backstage tour and sample dishes from local restaurants that wanted to woo theatre patrons into booking standing reservations for performance nights.

The Steppenwolf seemed to be pros when it came to hospitality marketing. They planned their welcome open house to make new subscribers feel good about the charge that would show up on their next credit card statement. We were greeted at the door, introduced to a pair of bright-eyed interns stationed at the subscriber services office. There, we were handed an arty coffee table book, a thank-you gift that catalogued some impressive Steppenwolf history, and drink vouchers, redeemable for generously poured glasses of generic wine served at several bars in the main building. We were advised where different restaurants had set up their sampling lines. We were told when and where backstage tours would begin and when the director and cast members of the season’s first production would hold a talk at the main stage.

The tour was interesting and fun. We saw the small footprint but extremely high-tech and high altitude backstage area and learned how they stored and coordinated their wealth of scenery. (They proudly boasted having an eighty foot tall fly, the backstage area where flats and scrims were suspended, to be lowered onstage and neatly whisked away.) We saw the green room, where actors waited for their cues or where they just hung out. We saw the microwave and vending machines where they got their snacks – just like us regular people would. The costume mistress explained how character costumes were designed, sewn, fitted, and washed. (Somehow, I had never thought that there would be a washer and dryer in the basement of the Steppenwolf.) She showed us a “pregnant” tummy that she actually sourced from a costumer in Baltimore, a padded belly harness that made an actress appear to be in a realistic mother-to-be state. After the tour, we sat in on the discussion with the director and actors of Clybourne Park, the first production of the series.

John and I were excited when our first Theatre Tuesday came up. Intrigued by director Amy Morton’s comments on new subscriber night, we read the Playbill notes as soon as we took our seats. The play was based on an interesting conceit. It told the story of the family that sold their house in a white Chicago neighborhood during the fifties to the black Younger family in Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun. The focus then shifted from this troubled white family to the property itself. In a way, the play led the audience to look at themselves and the process of neighborhood gentrification that the theatre itself was right in the middle of.

We watched as the characters occupied the same space we had looked at only weeks before as tourists. When we went on our backstage tour, we could see how the actors entered the stage from stairs and doorways that basically led to nowhere, to a world outside of the reality we committed to as an audience. When we saw the young pregnant woman in the play, we actually knew she was not pregnant. She wore a padded tummy made in Baltimore. We could have considered that a cast member extracted a Snickers bar from the vending machine a half hour before curtain…but we didn’t.

Being able to go backstage and see the mechanics of a work of art without losing any of the magic the experience itself embodies is no small thing.