Chicago writer Tanya Saracho and New York-based writer Lisa D’Amour (who grew up in West Virginia and New Orleans) will each write two new plays for the Steppenwolf ensemble over the next two years. Two more playwrights will be added in the future.

Saracho is already a fixture in Chicago theatre. She was a founder and co-artistic director of Teatro Luna and received two Jeff nominations for best new work last year for Kita y Fernanda, produced by 16th Street Theater in Berwyn, and for Our Lady of the Underpass, produced by Teatro Vista . The latter is being remounted by 16th Street in April. She also wrote an adaptation of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street for Steppenwolf for Young Adults, produced in fall of 2009.

D’Amour is new to Steppenwolf and Chicago, but has known Polly Carl, Steppenwolf’s director of artistic development, for several years, stretching back to Carl’s long tenure at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis prior to joining Steppenwolf in the fall of 2009. But audiences won’t have to wait two or three years to see D’Amour’s work on stage on Halsted Street. Her play Detroit, written before she received the Mellon commission, kicks off the company’s 2010-11 season.

Lisa D'Amour

“I gave that play to Polly right after I got the commission,” says D’Amour. Carl and artistic director Martha Lavey liked it enough to put it in the lead-off slot for the season, which is devoted to the theme of public and private selves.

In a phone interview with Performink, D’Amour describes Detroit as “a great match for Steppenwolf. There are four really great parts for actors.” (Ensemble members Kate Arrington and Robert Breuler have already been cast.) Set in an older suburb just outside the troubled Motor City, the play follows the interactions between a seemingly perfect couple, Ben and Mary, and the new neighbors in the long-abandoned house next door as they get to know each other in a backyard barbecue. D’Amour, who has created many site-specific interdisciplinary pieces as well as plays, discussed her work with Steppenwolf director and ensemble member Tina Landau in a podcast, and described her fascination with how the external world reflects and affects what happens inside characters.

“There is a very surreal state in my plays between the characters and the world they live in,” D’Amour told PerformInk. “That’s connected more to the interdisciplinary work I’ve done. I love the very alive space of the theatre.”

The Mellon commissions are specifically geared to create plays for the ensemble. D’Amour says that on a recent trip to Chicago, she sat in on readings of her earlier plays with many of the ensemble members. (In the podcast interview, D’Amour mentions that some of the actors were “intentionally miscast” in the roles, which allowed her to see how broad the range of the Steppenwolf ensemble is.) She will be spending much more time with the ensemble during the rehearsals for Detroit. Writing for a specific ensemble isn’t new for D’Amour—her play Hide Town was created for the now-defunct Infernal Bridegroom ensemble in Houston.

D’Amour says it’s a little early to discuss the first play she’s writing under the Mellon commission, but she hopes to have a first draft in hand when she comes to Chicago over the summer for Detroit rehearsals.

“The beauty of the two-play commission is that with the first one, I’ve met everybody, but I won’t have lived with the company yet. But by the second one, I’ll know a lot more about how Steppenwolf works and about Chicago. It will be interesting to see how that influences my second play.”

D’Amour has 15 plays to her credit, and received an Obie Award in 2003 for Nita & Zita, a piece she created in collaboration with Katie Pearl (with whom she has frequently created new work) and Kathy Randels. And though it’s too early to know what she’ll cook up for Steppenwolf, D’Amour says, “I think when you look at a lot of my plays, somehow they have a really specific take on the relationship between the actor and the audience in terms of there being direct address or people breaking into song. That sense of the actor not pretending to be in a separate world comes from my interdisciplinary work.”

In addition to D’Amour’s play, Steppenwolf’s 2010-11 season includes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, featuring Tracy Letts and Amy Morton as George and Martha; Lookingglass Theatre ensemble member Laura Eason’s Sex With Strangers; Tina Landau’s new staging of Lanford Wilson’s The Hot L Baltimore; and a new work by Will Eno, author of Thom Pain (Based on Nothing), directed by Les Waters and featuring ensemble member Alana Arenas. Steppenwolf’s season will also extend to Washington, D.C. Virginia Woolf? will transfer lock, stock and cast to Arena Stage just after it closes on Halsted Street on Feb. 6.