When he was a kid growing up in Milwaukee, Eric Simonson recalls, “my dad came home one day with a cowboy hat and a pickup truck.” Simonson’s father, a real estate agent, announced that he’d had enough of city life. “He moved us to a farm in Eagle, Wisconsin, where he raised pigs. It was a culture shock. I’d been a city boy till that time. But I’m glad we did it. I got to see another side of life.”
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That same impulsive, open-minded spirit served Simonson well when he moved to Chicago in 1982, at age 22, hoping to work in the city’s off-Loop theater scene. “I went to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, for a liberal arts training,” says the Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member, whose new play Fake opens at Steppenwolf September 20. “I declared theater as my major in my junior year, but I was pretty much all over the map, studying whatever interested me. I didn’t get theater training per se, like you’d get at Northwestern. So coming to Chicago was probably not a very reasonable decision. I thought, ‘I’ll just try it out, and if it doesn’t work I’ll go on to something else.’”
By 1988, though, Simonson was tired of working day jobs to support his theater habit. He’d already decided to leave Chicago (“I probably would’ve taken a year off and traveled,” he says) when Steppenwolf invited him to audition for Frank Galati’s stage adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath. Playing multiple roles, Simonson didn’t exactly stand out in the 31-member ensemble, but the show—which went to Broadway in 1990—helped cement his relationship with Steppenwolf.
Simonson also directed Honest, another play he wrote about a hoax, for Steppenwolf’s First Look Repertory of New Work this summer. Given that he’s done only two other productions at the theater in the last 13 years, that’s a major commitment, and Simonson’s happy to be back. “This is where I cut my teeth,” he says. “If you had to ask me what my theater training was, I’d say Chicago.”
