“Does an underground mafia of Viet Nam vets really exist hoboing around on the rails and is it as large and powerful as it is portrayed by journalists - or is it a media creation drawing the heat for every murder on the rails from Arizona to California? And has the leader of this group become a changed man - and dedicated to his nineteen year old pregnant girlfriend? Or is he an unrepentant racist criminal bent on plotting to murder a rival over a deal that went sour. When he visits a black man -  is it to buy a dog or to kill him?   These are the things that come up in John Steppling’s dark and controversial play 'Dogmouth'. The fact that he also deftly manages to place ruminations on death and dying, the brutality of existence and the survival of the fittest on the streets of Phoenix, not to mention the breeding of dogs - in the middle of it -  is what makes this play dark and riveting, and which takes us far beyond just dog fighting and mysterious murders on the rails....” Stephan Morrow, Director 
"Art is not your friend". - John Steppling

John Steppling, Playwright:

John Steppling was first championed by Robert Egan at The Mark Taper Forum with his play “The Shaper” and the Taper did produce Steppling's The Thrill in one of its new-works festivals.  His characters were from, and remain in, the margins of society, not unlike Steppling himself. Steppling's other plays include Teenage Wedding, The Dream Coast and Neck.  He mentored Jon Robin Baitz at the beginning of his playwriting career.  Steppling also adapted Elmore Leonard's 52 Pickup for director John Frankenheimer. He has just completed an 11-year stint in Poland (where he taught screenwriting at the Polish National Film School in ód). and created his own adaptation of King Lear which he describes as a sliced-back and ‘fairly traditional’ version ( - with Goneril and Regan spoken in Norwegian and the other roles in either Polish or English. ) He has also presented an adaptation of  a modern day ‘Faust’ at Los Angeles Theater Center. Steppling is currently Artistic Director of  the theater company Gunfighter Nation and has had a new play, Phantom Luck produced last fall in Los Angeles.

Director - Stephan Morrow is a proud veteran of the Off Off Bway arena where he finds the work most compelling, directed Mario Fratti’s (‘Nine’) acclaimed production of ‘Trio’ at Theater for the New City in Oct. 2010. That led to his being invited by Mr. Fratti to direct a sequel - ‘Quartet’ also at Theater for the New City in June 2011. That production came fast on the heels of his production of ‘Triangle - The Shirtwaist Triangle Factory Fire’ by J. Gilhooley  which Stephan directed @ 59E59St Theaters  in a sold out run.  Between the two Fratti productions he also directed two staged readings of ‘Wall St. Fandango’ by Murray Schisgal at The Actor’s Studio and Theater for the New City.

In 2009 he directed a month long run of a ‘performance on book’ of ‘The Deer Park - or Hollywood Goes to Hell’ by Norman Mailer at The Nuyorican Poets Café which he also acted in and on the basis of that work received ‘Wall Street Fandango’ from Murray Schisgal. The next season he directed the first ‘performance on book’ of ‘Wall Street Fandango’ at 45 Bleecker Street Theater with a cast that included Peter Riegert and Rosie Perez.

In March 2007 he acted in and directed a staged reading of ‘The Deer Park or Hollywood Goes to Hell’ by Norman Mailer which Mr. Mailer attended and on the basis of that work invited Stephan to co-direct and perform in, a film of ‘The Deer Park’. His long collaboration with Norman Mailer began with his performance as Rod, stuntman, in ‘Strawhead - A memory play of Marilyn’ at The Actor’s Studio and he can be seen in Mailer’s cult classic ‘Tough Guys Don’t Dance’ playing ‘Stoodie’ -  tattoo artist and P Town ne’er do well.

Over the past couple of seasons in New York Stephan has been very active in the developmental arena of staged readings as both actor and director : Playing idealistic if closeted politico, Allard Lowenstein in a reading of Hank Myerson’s play ‘Allard’.   At the Lark Theater, in a rehearsed reading of ‘Perfidia’ by Joanne Tedesco -  in addition to directing a cast of seventeen actors, he also performed in the lead role of Fritz, the de facto leader of the Italian American internees in a POW camp in upstate New York during WWII.  He then created the role of ‘The Man’, a tortured southern farmer who channels some of the relatives of his past and is saved from suicide by a black woman refugee, in Jordan Buck’s apocalyptic play ‘Refugees’ in a workshop performance at The Red Room.   Finally, he had the privilege of performing in the American premier of renowned Italian playwright Marco Calvani’s controversial play ‘Beneath the City’ in a staged reading at The Sage Theater as the leader of an Arab Muslim conspiracy in a city similar to Sarajevo who is caught and murdered.

As Artistic Director and founder of The Great American Play Series he has had the pleasure of resurrecting neglected American classics in ‘performances on book’ such as ‘After the Fall’ by Arthur Miller with Rebecca DeMornay and Mark Rydell, Barry Primus, Lyle Kessler and Sally Kirkland, ‘The Price’ by Arthur Miller with Barry Primus, Lyle Kessler, Paul Mazursky and Judith Light, his own adaptation of ‘Ten Blocks on The Camino Real (+1)’ by Tennessee Williams with Betsy Von Furstenberg. Most notably he has had the honor of being personally backed by Arthur Miller for his work on ‘Incident at Vichy’ - a three year mission to get it to a major venue. He staged four ‘performances on book’ with casts that included with F. Murray Abraham, Richard Dreyfuss, Fritz Weaver, Peter Weller and Fisher Stevens among others.

Recently he had the pleasure of putting together and hosting a Playwright’s symposium ‘Are small theaters from Off to Off Off Broadway Becoming an Endangered Species in N.Y.?” at 45 Bleecker which included Israel Horovitz, Murray Schisgal, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Mario Fratti, Diane De Mateo, Richard Vetere and Quincy Long. That symposium turned out to be all too prophetic when  45 Bleecker St. Theater shut down less than four months later.....  stephanmorrow@juno.com