Another new theater is coming to Chicago’s Far North Side, this one with the help of much foundation support and an unusually generous $4 million in City of Chicago funding. It will be located inside a former Christian Science Reading Room at 1044 W. Berwyn Ave., just up the street from TimeLine Theatre’s impressive new building.
Steep Theatre will soon take up residence in its more modest, $7 million home as it prepares for its first major production there in January — Simon Stephens’ “A Slow Fire,” the latest installment in a long and artistically productive relationship between the artistically elite Steep and the famed British playwright, director and screenwriter.
Although largely gutted on the interior, the preserved exterior of the building dates back to 1998 and will feature a black-box theater of about 1,000 square feet that seats around 75 patrons, as well as a lobby with a bar, a green room, dressing rooms and production facilities.
“We want to be able to produce our shows and then host the community afterwards,” said artistic director and ensemble member Peter Moore, as he showed a reporter around the almost completed space. “The refrain we kept hearing from our patrons is that they really want to be able to talk to our ensemble members when they come to our theater.”
The nonprofit Steep has, in effect, been homeless for more than five years and has not produced at all since January 2025. Its notably loyal audience has been deprived of its signature style of dramatically intense works acted to within an inch of their lives in a confined space, wherein the audience felt part of the action.
Past Steep Theatre hits over its 25-year history across two different homes and various rented digs include Ayad Akhtar’s “The Invisible Hand,” Stephens’ “Harper Regan,” Mike Bartlett’s “Earthquakes in London,” Laura Wade’s “Posh” and Samuel D. Hunter’s “The Few” among many others in a repertoire that has specialized in edgy British writers otherwise unlikely to have been produced in Chicago. Noted Steep ensemble members include Jonathan Berry, Alex Gillmor, Caroline Neff, Julia Siple, Kendra Thulin, Brandon Rivera and Robin Witt, among others.
The new theater, designed with a new wood floor by the theater consultancy Charcoalblue, is intended to preserve Steep’s intimacy, although its 16-foot ceiling should also allow for more expansive lighting and scenic design. “It feels like the right size for us,” Moore said, noting that the architecture has been described as a “fake Frank Lloyd-Wright,” a reference to its faux-Prairie style, as created for the church. Moore said that the building had almost gone to another bidder but that he believes an anonymous someone within the church hierarchy liked the idea of it becoming a theater, and had pushed negotiations in Steep’s direction.
Now, some expansion of staffing is necessary; Steep currently is hiring for a development and operations manager.
A new marquee also is in the works, albeit one the theater deems sufficiently subtle as to be appropriate for the residential neighborhood.
More Top Picks Ladder
All that remains is a final push, Moore said, to raise a modest $150,000 to fully outfit the technology required for a deftly scaled new home for a much-admired Chicago theater company with a quarter century of distinguished work already under its belt, albeit performed in unfussy theaters.
Moore pushes a backstage door open. “Our first shower,” he announces with some pride.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic