John Steppling

At the beginning of the millennium, Steppling relocated to Europe. After sojourns in Paris and London, he relocated to Poland to teach at National Film School in Łódź. During his stay in Łódź, Steppling did an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear featuring Marian Opania, and co-starring Mick Collins. The production was done in three languages: Polish, English, and Norwegian.

Steppling wrote the non-fiction book Aesthetic Resistance and Dis-Interest: That Which Will Not Allow Itself to Be Said, which was released in 2016 by Mimesis International.

In 2010, Steppling moved back to Southern California and with his son Lex, organized a new theatrical concern, Gunfighter Nation. The inaugural production, The Alamo Project, ran at The Odyssey Theater in West Los Angeles. The group's second production The LA History Project, marked Steppling's return to The Lost Studio.

Late in 2010, Steppling premiered Phantom Luck, Steppling cast his cousin, James Storm in the lead role, and which won LA Weekly's best play award.

Toward the end of the decade, Steppling moved to Norway where, in 2009, he wrote and directed a twenty-minute film, Then They Recognized Me, with support of the Mid Nordic Film Commission. The film was shot in Rissa, Norway and starred longtime collaborator, Lee Kissman.

Steppling returned to Los Angeles, briefly, to oversee the 2002 production of Dog Mouth, a play that was developed from a Taper workshop and was co-directed by the Taper's Robert Egan.

Film director Barbet Schroeder, helped finance the New York production of the award-winning Teenage Wedding, in 1991 of New York magazine.

During this period, Steppling continued leading workshops. In 1990, the late actor-director Rick Dean revived Steppling's one-act, Neck (1982) which was a critical success. It had an extended run at The Lost Studio, run by Cinda Jackson.

The 1990s also saw Steppling undertaking film and television, including a staff position on Cracker and wrote the screenplay for Animal Factory, (2000) directed by Steve Buscemi, based on the Edward Bunker novel.

In 1986, on the day of the theatrical release of 52 Pick-Up, The Dream Coast, inspired by Steppling's father and his cronies working on the fringe of the film industry, opened at the Taper, Too. The play was published in West Coast Plays the following year.

The Shaper, (1984) was chosen for the Humana Festival of New American Plays, in Louisville, Kentucky and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. At this time Steppling also worked as a writer for hire for Hollywood, notably adapting Elmore Leonard's novel 52 Pick-Up, directed by John Frankenheimer.

In the 1980s Steppling wrote the plays Neck, Eddie Cottrel at the Piano, Close, The Shaper, and The Dream Coast. The Mark Taper Forum took an interest in his work and some of his plays were developed in Taper sponsored workshops.

In this era, the word "Stepplingesque" entered the parlance of Los Angeles theatre world. At the end of the 1980s, Los Angeles Times critic Robert Koehler could write of Steppling's growing reputation as potentially “the purest, finest poet of the stage that Los Angeles has produced in this generation.”

In the late 1980s, Steppling formed Heliogabalus. Steppling's Teenage Wedding, winner of the PEN Center Literary Award for Drama in 1987, originated as a Heliogabalus production. It was later staged in New York, as was Sea of Cortez (At Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art).

Returning to Los Angeles, Steppling became a founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop and Festival in 1978 along with Murray Mednick and Sam Shepard. Steppling remained involved in Padua for most of its 17-year existence, among other notable playwrights associated with the festival such as Maria Irene Fornes, Jon Robin Baitz, Martin Epstein, Kelly Stuart, and John O'Keefe.

Steppling's introduction to theater came from New York's Off-Off-Broadway stage in the 1970s, where he saw his cousin, Jim Storm, perform in the 1971 premiere of Sam Shepard's The Mad Dog Blues. During his time in New York, Steppling moved in the circles associated with the writers and performing artists of the group "Theater Genesis", including Murray Mednick

John Steppling (born June 18, 1951 in Burbank, California), is an American playwright, screenwriter and teacher. Steppling's plays have been produced in the United States and Europe. He received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a residency at the McDowell Colony and has received PEN-West, LA Weekly and Dramalogue awards for his theatrical work.