Born and raised in the small town of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, Batavian Steve Delchamps has aspired to perform Shakespeare since seeing Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet in the 8th grade. And yet, somehow it never happened until this past summer, when Steve took on a small role in Shakespeare on Clark’s Taming of the Shrew, under the direction of Julane Sullivan. Just after that show closed, Steve appeared as Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing with Acorn Shakespeare in Warrenville, under the direction of Tony Kortas. Steve is currently delighted to be playing four small roles in David Soria’s production of MacBeth with GreenMan Theatre Troupe, and he hopes to do more Shakespeare in the future. Once employed as a professional experimental physicist at Fermilab, Steve returned to graduate school in the 1990s, completing his second Ph.D., this time in English, at NIU in 2000. Steve’s doctoral focused on British poetry from the Middle Ages onward, and he is a keen student of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater and its fascinating language, which represents a period in which English was in a state of great flux and experimentation. Steve was a member of the Theatre Building Chicago musical writers’ workshop from 2004 through 2009, during which period he wrote the book and lyrics for a musical adaptation of Stephen Metcalfe’s play Strange Snow, with music by Doug Voegtle. In addition to acting and writing for the theater, Steve enjoys jogging, writing poetry and songs, and gazing through his telescope at the wonders of the heavens.
