Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble first began performing in the mid-1970s in the basement of a Highland Park, IL church, the ambitious brainchild of three high school and college friends: Jeff Perry, Terry Kinney, and Gary Sinise. Fast forward 40 years, and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company has become the nation’s premier ensemble theatre—redefining the landscape of acting and performance. The ensemble has grown to 49 members who represent a remarkable generation of actors, directors, and playwrights. Thrilling, powerful, groundbreaking productions from Balm in Gilead and Grapes of Wrath to August: Osage County—and accolades that included the National Medal of Arts and twelve Tony® Awards—have made the theatre legendary.
Approaching its 50th Anniversary, Steppenwolf reached out to TDAG to organize, preserve, digitize, and create its digital archive. The materials included film, slides, photographs, Playbills, programs, oversized posters, and media. All assets were digitized at high resolution with OCR applied to printed materials for ease of search within a new digital asset management platform.
