The Steppenwolf Theatre - Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Arts and Education Center

By day, the modern, airy Steppenwolf Arts and Education Center — a creative space where students in theater classes and actors out of rehearsal meet in a hallway to exchange ideas — is a compelling architectural structure mainly lit by daylight. By night, Steppenwolf becomes a showy, spectacular monument transformed by light that commands curiosity and invites the public into the experience.

Our team worked through an exhaustive series of renderings, mockups, and scale models to create precise beams that would illuminate the facade’s irregular geometry with a series of abstract brushstrokes. Using 70 lenses to span the building’s size, precisely focused wide beams curate clean, angled lines that bend the light around the exterior paneling of the theater.

Those beams playfully collide throughout interior lobby walls, creating the effect of continuous lines of light, sparking continuity, and intertwining the interior and exterior lighting throughout the theater. In the interior spaces, we created systems that can be broken down, reassembled, and expanded to meet the needs of each new production, reflecting the constantly changing nature of theater.

Thanks to DALI and DMX controls, the front-of-house control system is integrated with the lobby lighting, while back-of-house spaces are a separate system.

The collision of highly technical and thoughtful production lighting that we achieved at Steppenwolf reflects the artistry of the ensemble theater that redefined the landscape of acting and performance in Chicago. Lighting throughout was as collaborative, from indoor to outdoor illumination, as the theater it revealed.