Steppenwolf Theatre

Where Architecture and Light Collide

By Randy Reid and Brian Hullfish

Act I: The Set-Up

The success story of one of the world’s most prominent theater companies sounds like some old Judy Garland movie sprung to life. You know the one: “Come on, kids! We’ve got old costumes up in the attic! And we can use the barn out back for a stage!”

But, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company isn’t fiction. It is a true American success story. In 1974, a small group of midwestern high school and college friends started a troupe in the basement of a Unitarian church. Nearly fifty years later, in November of 2021, this legendary theater company celebrated the completion of its multi-phase expansion of the Steppenwolf Theatre Campus in Chicago.

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

During the conversation between Steppenwolf Theater and the architect, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, a concept that drove the design evolved, that of the “collision of art as it relates to the theater.”

When it came time to light the building, the same underlying design concept held, this idea of collision. Says Avraham Mor, Principal of Morlights, “You know, there is a collision of the actors with the audience. You walk into the lobby and there’s more collision and discussion, and then you go home and have more discussion and collision.”

The lighting team’s first collision with reality came alongside its first renderings, based on what the team thought the client wanted at the time, “a luminous object behind glass.” Says Avi Mor, “Lots of architectural designs exist like this, so we thought that's where they wanted to go. We also did an interior rendering, with tape lights on every single mullion. We looked at it and thought, ‘No way! this is going to be the glariest, most uncomfortable lobby ever because of all this light from below. This is where they were starting, and we said, ‘This will not work.’” If Steppenwolf wanted the lighting to suggest collision, the team wasn’t going to be able to light it in a formal, traditional way.

So that posed the question: if not that, then what?

As is the nature of questions, this one overarching question spawned many, many more. According to Mor, “How do you show a light fixture that can create sharp lines? To answer that, we created a lot of mock-ups using ETC Source 4s and Mini Source Fours. Our next question was, how do you render that in AGi or in 3D Studio Max? We learned that you can actually make this happen in 3D Studio Max by putting things in front of the light to create sharp lines. But, you’re not testing an actual light fixture, you’re faking the image.” The team realized that in order to suggest collision, it would need to create sharp, intersecting lines.

The team then executed a mock-up to extend this idea. They took these little fiber optic heads that had barn doors on them, and they started pointing it at the model. They asked themselves what would work and tried many different ideas.

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

“That progressed into this side-by-side – a Mini Source4 on the floor showing these shafts of light, brushstrokes of light that were intersecting on the wall. Just this clean, solid line. We then applied this to the whole model. We created the whole model lit with fiber optic as a group of concepts," Mor added.

As anyone who has experience with large-scale design projects knows, the distance between a successful mock-up and a successful project is often vast. They had a lot of work to do.

Act II: Confrontation

Among the many questions regarding how to produce these ‘brushstrokes of light’ were these: How wide of a lens would produce the desired effect, and at what angle should it be placed? What the team learned through immense effort was counterintuitive – rather than a narrow light fixture, what they required was a very wide light fixture. “As for the lens tube, we had to figure out whether we needed 5-degree, 10-degree, 19-degree, 26-degree…36, 50, 70, 90 degrees? When you use a 26-degree beam, you get a certain circle. As soon as you start shuttering that down, you still have a line, but the circle is only so tall. If you take a 70-degree beam, you have a huge circle which you can then narrow down. It took time to think through and try all the options and finally decide that a 70-degree optic would get us what we want.”

The collision between problem and solution, question and answer, continued throughout the project. When the mounting detail markups got missed during construction, larger clamps to fit on the pipes had to be ordered to attach the fixtures.

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

Later, when all the exterior fixtures were installed, they discovered issues with how DMX was processed by them. DMX is a stable protocol as long as you follow the rules. These fixtures did not follow the rules and required an individual run from an opto-splitter to be stably controlled.

Next, they had to figure out what light fixtures to use for the exterior that could be pointed up into the architecture. The project called for fixtures that could withstand the extremes of Chicago weather, that could handle snow and ice and days ranging from over a hundred to well below zero. They needed to be full-color changing and shutters that could match the colors and the optics of the interior fixtures.

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

What was to be done when, after an exhaustive search, such a product didn’t exist?

Mor explains, “We said, ‘Okay, we’re going to punt. We know somebody will have something like this in a few years.’ We created a mock-up during construction where we took the interior light fixtures, because we knew what those were going to be ETC Source 4s, and mocked up the two different products that were available. The question was about optics, but also could we match the two products’ colors?”

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

Act III: Resolution

As the questions collided with answers, something serendipitous occurred – dueling optical illusions, of sorts. “We loved that, in this mock-up, the light fixture is actually bending around the panels, but it still looks like a continuous line.”

Not only were the light fixtures bending around the architecture, but in some areas where the architecture was bending, the light itself seemingly bent as well. “The architecture is sticking out, and the light fixture is pointed at such an angle that it can land on all those sides. Because the architecture is bending away, the light falling on it as it bends away makes it look like the light is bending around corners. It took a lot of finagling, like moving the fixtures down the pipe’s ETC Datatrack Backbone. It took a lot to get it right, but it sure looks cool."

When it came to controls, the lighting team played on the strengths of its clientele. Theater people know lighting inside and out, enabling the team to utilize one lighting control system that is split in two – one for the theater and one for the front-of-house, both running off the same system. Says Mor, “You have an educated user. They’re theater people. You couldn’t do that in a regular commercial establishment. You couldn’t do that in a conference center. Take advantage of their knowledge and give them the best system possible, and save a lot of money in the process. This is not done often. You’ll see lots of front-of-house spaces with a Lutron dimming system and then the theater itself with an ETC system, but back-of-house (the dressing rooms, the conference room) uses Acuity nLight for cost savings.”

After the lighting team had already designed and budgeted the project, it went on hold for about a year for fundraising. Typically, one year later, prices would have climbed significantly. “But, somehow,” says Mor, “We went to price-check everything, and everything was the same price. We actually saved money in that year we were off. That would not happen in today’s environment. That was around 2018, when LEDs were reducing in price, we maintained that budget through-and-through.”

Photo Credit: George Lambros Photography

The process of lighting the Steppenwolf Theatre at times seemed to mirror the world of the theater itself. It began with a question, not necessarily the question of theater, “How do we live?” but rather with the question, “How do we light?” There is a set-up, or mock-up, in Act I. In Act II, we see the confrontation, the collision, the problems and doubts and unresolved questions cropping up like weeds. Act III brings some manner of resolution, an accounting, a final say – the stage, a space transformed. In lieu of a standing ovation for these magicians of light, the accolades have come in the form of awards – the IES Chicago Award and the NLB Tesla Award, to name a few.

With that, we have reached, as they say, the final curtain. Cue uproarious applause and the stomping of feet. Riotous cheers of “Avi! Avi!” Avi Mor’s team take their bows and exit stage left. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture take their bows and exit stage right. That’s a wrap. Or, as theater people say, and as is typically indicated with the final instruction of a play…

Blackout. ■