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Steppenwolf Theatre Company's acclaimed Ensemble and Board of Trustees are pleased to host Steppenwolf Gala 2026, an unforgettable evening that continues the theater's 50th Anniversary celebration. This year's Gala will be held on Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 6:30 pm at Rockwell on the River, 3057 N. Rockwell St. in Chicago.

Join Steppenwolf's famed artists alongside civic and business leaders and raise a glass to the trailblazers and risk-takers that have come before and step into the next 50 years of bold and courageous theatre. The star-studded evening includes cocktails and a progressive dinner followed by a live auction featuring once-in-a-lifetime experiences with Steppenwolf's artists. Cap off the evening with an after-hours lounge, DJ and dancing. Luxe fashion-forward cocktail attire. Sneakers welcome. 

Steppenwolf's Gala generates vital funding to provide an artistic home for our Ensemble, bring bold and innovative theatrical experiences to the stage, and create educational programs that reach thousands of teens throughout the Chicago region.

This year's honorees include Douglas R. Brown and Rachel E. Kraft.

Steppenwolf Executive Director E. Brooke Flanagan comments, "It is our great honor to celebrate Doug and Rachel at this year's Gala. Their individual and collective impact on Steppenwolf and the larger Chicago theater community is an exemplary showcase of philanthropy, leadership and engagement. Their work has impacted a generation and will continue to make a lasting mark on the spaces where we make art, the artists who take our stages and our lasting position as a great treasure in American theatre."

Gala 2026 Co-Chairs include Aimee Graham and Nigel Caine, Christopher Keogh and Verett Mims.

Single tickets starting at $1,500 and sponsorships for 2026 Gala are currently available online here or by contacting Steppenwolf's Development Department at (312) 654-5690 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Title Sponsor: Zell Family Foundation.  Founding Sponsors: Douglas R. Brown and Rachel E. Kraft, CRC Group, Caroline and Keating Crown, Nancy and Steve Crown and the Crown Family, GCM Grosvenor, Christopher M. Keogh, GS Gives, Liz and Eric Lefkofsky, Northern Trust, Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Thoma Bravo, and Tishman Speyer. Innovators: 3.5.7.11, Allstate, Bluhm Family Foundation, Dennis and Karen Chookaszian, Rich and Margery Feitler, The Robert Kraft Family, Latham & Watkins, Verett Mims, MPS Law, Anne and Don Phillips, PNC, Deborah and Stephen Quazzo, and Tully & Associates 

About Steppenwolf Theatre Company:

Steppenwolf Theatre Company is the nation's premier Ensemble Theater with 50 members who are among the top actors, playwrights and directors in the field. Thrilling, powerful, groundbreaking productions have made this theatre legendary. From the 1980 phenomenon of Balm in Gilead, to The Grapes of Wrath, August: Osage County, Downstate, The Brother/Sister Plays, and now, the 2025 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Purpose, Steppenwolf Theatre has had a long-running and undeniable impact on American Theatre and Chicago's cultural landscape. Founded in 1975 by Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry and Gary Sinise, Steppenwolf started as a group of young people in their teens and early 20s performing in the basement of a church. Today, the company's artistic force remains rooted in the original vision of its founders: an artist-driven theatre, whose vitality is defined by its appetite for bold and innovative work. Every aspect of Steppenwolf is rooted in its Ensemble ethos, from the intergenerational artistic programming to the multi-genre performance series LookOut, to the nationally recognized work of Steppenwolf Education and Engagement which serves nearly 15,000 teens annually. While grounded in the Chicago community, more than 40 original Steppenwolf productions have enjoyed success nationally and internationally, including Broadway, Off-Broadway, London, Sydney, Galway and Dublin. Steppenwolf also holds accolades that include the National Medal of Arts, 14 Tony Awards, two Pulitzer Prize-winning commissions and more. Led by Artistic Directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis, Executive Director E. Brooke Flanagan and Board of Trustees Chair Keating Crown — Steppenwolf continually redefines the boundaries of live theater and pushes the limits of acting and performance.

Steppenwolf's Mission: Steppenwolf strives to create thrilling, courageous and provocative art in a thoughtful and inclusive environment. We succeed when we disrupt your routine with experiences that spark curiosity, empathy and joy. We invite you to join our ensemble as we navigate, together, our complex world. steppenwolf.org, facebook.com/steppenwolftheatre, twitter.com/steppenwolfthtr and instagram.com/steppenwolfthtr.

Theresa Rebeck’s Poor Behavior at Oil Lamp Theatre, directed by Lauren Katz, opens with the easy warmth of old friends reconnecting - only to reveal how quickly a shared history can curdle. Within minutes, the play exposes the messy, magnetic dynamics that will drive the evening off the rails.

Peter and his wife, Ella (Jack Morsovillo and Ksa Curry), have welcomed their longtime friends, Ian and Maureen (Sam Fain and Lauren Paige), to their getaway country home for what’s meant to be an easy, wine‑soaked weekend. At first, everything feels harmless enough: the four drift around the kitchen and dining area, chatting, teasing, negotiating snacks - Peter is fixated on getting ice cream, Maureen keeps the small talk humming - the kind of casual domestic bustle that suggests comfort and history. But the mood shifts quickly when Ella and Ian slip into a heated exchange. Their rhythm is so practiced, so charged, that it feels less like a friendly debate and more like a well‑worn battleground. The familiarity between them is startling; before the play has even fully settled, you can’t help but wonder whether these two are circling an old intimacy the others aren’t acknowledging.

Ella insists - almost with a kind of moral urgency - that there is still goodness in the world, that people are capable of generosity and grace if you’re willing to look for it. Ian, however, has no patience for her optimism. Once enamored with America when he first arrived from Ireland, he now sees the country through a far bleaker lens. Every example Ella offers is batted away; to Ian, America is a place that devours resources, exploits the planet, and disguises greed as virtue. His cynicism isn’t casual - it’s sharpened, almost weaponized - and the more Ella pushes, the more he digs in. The argument escalates until the air in the room feels charged and brittle, the kind of tension that makes everyone else freeze. And then, just as it threatens to tip into something truly damaging, they both pull back. Cooler heads prevail, apologies surface, and the group collectively pretends they haven’t just witnessed a fault line crack open beneath the weekend – for the moment.

Peter has known Maureen since childhood - his brother even dated her for a time - and that shared history lends their friendship an instinctive ease. Neither couple has children, a fact they use, somewhat conveniently, to justify how tightly they cling to one another’s company. But do they actually like each other as much as they claim? As the evening unfolds, small cracks begin to show. The conversation among the foursome is lively enough on the surface, yet it quickly becomes clear that each marriage carries its own quiet fractures. Then, when Maureen misinterprets a moment of consolation between Ella and Ian - whose father has just died, or so he says - the weekend tilts sharply off its axis. Accusations fly, lies multiply, manipulation takes root, and before long the polite veneer between these two couples is stripped away entirely.

(L to R) Sam Fain, Ksa Curry, Jack Morsovillo and Lauren Paige in POOR BEHAVIOR from Oil Lamp Theater. Photos by Gosia Matuszewska - GosiaPhotography.com.

At first, the “poor behavior” can be dismissed as simple drunkenness - after all, Ian has plowed through four bottles of wine on his own. But as the night wears on, it becomes clear that alcohol is only the accelerant, not the cause. Rebeck gradually peels back the layers on all four characters: Maureen, whose anxiety and emotional fragility leave her grasping for reassurance; Ian, who seems to relish stoking doubt and discomfort whenever the opportunity presents itself; Ella is idealistic but is clearly withholding something; it’s subtle, but the undercurrent of it hums beneath everything she does; and mild-mannered Peter, who defaults to denial, choosing avoidance over confrontation and clinging to the hope that he can simply walk away from the weekend as though nothing has happened. What begins as sloppy, alcohol-fueled bickering soon exposes the fault lines that have been waiting for the slightest spark to rupture.  

Sam Fain and Ksa Curry deliver two of the evening’s most arresting performances, their scenes pulsing with an undeniable, almost disarming connection from the get-go. Fain’s Ian commands the room with a dangerous charm, twisting conversations to his advantage while letting flashes of buried desire slip through the cracks, while Curry’s Ella meets him with a grounded emotional intelligence that reveals the deeper currents Rebeck threads beneath their exchanges. Lauren Paige brings a raw, aching vulnerability to Maureen, charting her spirals of insecurity with precision and empathy, and Jack Morsovillo anchors the chaos as Peter, his quiet restraint and mounting frustration giving the play its moral center.

The arguing is relentless, and the tension feels startlingly real. Under Lauren Katz’s direction, the world of Poor Behavior becomes a room primed to combust with every glance, pause, and interruption calibrated to reveal the messy, volatile dynamics between these four characters. Katz cultivates a realism so precise that the uncomfortable moments become genuinely unsettling, keeping us on our toes as we anticipate what might unfold next - good or bad. And though we may root for these couples to find their way back to solid ground, the production holds us captive with the stark authenticity of their unraveling, a truthfulness that makes the prospect of reconciliation feel increasingly remote. Rebeck’s script raises thorny questions about the strength of relationships, the dangers of complacency (or not – for some), the limits of tolerance, and the moment when “enough” finally becomes enough - and Katz ensures those questions echo long after the final scene.

The thoughtfully crafted set serves this play perfectly, which strengthens the production’s overall effectiveness. Trenton Jones shapes a kitchen‑and‑dining‑room layout that feels like a genuinely lived‑in countryside home. A staircase rises toward the suggested upstairs bedrooms, while just beyond the kitchen refrigerator sits the entrance to a ground‑floor guest room. The result is a spacious‑looking design that expands the world of the play and works remarkably well on Oil Lamp’s intimate stage.

Oil Lamp Theater’s well-paced Poor Behavior succeeds because every element - Rebeck’s incisive writing, Katz’s sharply attuned direction, and a quartet of deeply committed performances - works together to illuminate the muddled, contradictory ways people love, wound, and misread one another. The staging embraces discomfort without sacrificing its humanity, inviting us to recognize uncomfortable truths about ourselves in the chaos onstage. By the time the lights fade, we’re left with the uneasy understanding that relationships don’t always resolve neatly, yet the effort to navigate them is what makes us unmistakably human. It’s the kind of play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theater.

Poor Behavior is being performed at Oil Lamp Theatre through May 10^th. For tickets and/or more show information, click here.

Highly recommended.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com.