black theatre
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Grab your Tickets for The Root 100 Gala
Join us at the historic Apollo theater in Harlem, New York City for our year-end celebration of Black Excellence,
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Get Your Tickets Today!
Tickets to The Root 100—an evening of comedy, music and inspiration—are on sale now. Join us on December 5 at NYC's iconic Apollo Theater.
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Join Us at The Apollo on 12/5 for Our Year-End Celebration of Black Excellence
For the second year in a row, The Root 100 event is open to everyone. Get the latest lineup news and your tickets today!
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Speak on It! Fannie Lou Hamer's Legacy Takes the Chicago Stage With a 9-Venue Outdoor Run—and a Voting Drive
To vote or not to vote this November seems a fairly absurd question to many of us facing what is likely the most crucial election of our lifetimes. But if you’re still on the fence about participating in our (admittedly problematic) electoral process at this point, may I, in all irony, quote the Oompa Loompa-in-Chief…
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Love, Loss, and Living to Tell the Tale: Lindiwe Is a Celebration of Song Wrapped in a Familiar Story
Perhaps the best way to approach a play like Lindiwe, a Love Story is not to ask it to be a play at all—at least, not in the conventional sense. After all, the script was largely written to reunite legendary music group Ladysmith Black Mambazo with the equally famed Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago; a relationship…
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In a New Revival of Oedipus Rex, Ancient Greek Gets a Relevant Refresh
It’s been a year full of revivals in Chicago, and in an era where the Greek chorus has been replaced by the legions on Black Twitter, some might wonder what relevance a revival of Sophocles’ circa-429 B.C. tragedy, Oedipus Rex, holds for contemporary audiences. But as a new production at the University of Chicago-based Court…
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Brother’s Keeper: Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size Explores the Mythology and Painful Reality of Brotherhood
To say Tarell Alvin McCraney is masterful at articulating black male coming-of-age stories in America would be an understatement. His play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue (now better known as the 2017 Academy Award-winning screenplay Moonlight) gave us a lens onto a black boy’s reckoning with emotional abandonment and his burgeoning sexuality in the…
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Homecoming: A Powerful Pair of Revivals Prove Chicago a Mecca for Black Theater
There was palpable energy in the theater on the opening night of Drury Lane Theatre’s revival of The Color Purple—and a hallelujah chorus of shouts and co-signs from the audience, no doubt a rarity in the predominantly white suburb of Chicago known as Oakbrook Terrace. But the black theatrical community was out in force to…
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'There Is Rhythm in the Language': Actress Christiana Clark Finds the 'Jazz' in Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale
There’s a moment during Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale when pivotal character Paulina pauses in the midst of imploring an obstinate king for compassion to roar at the lords attempting to restrain her, “What needs these hands?” before resuming her pleas. As played by Christiana Clark (opposite Dan Donahue as King Leontes) in the Goodman Theatre’s…
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Behind Picket Fences: In Sam Kebede’s EthiopianAmerica, the American Dream Masks a Common Nightmare
There is palpable energy prior to a theatrical production; a current of excitement that buzzes through an audience anticipating new work on the stage. At the press night for EthiopianAmerica, the newest production from the Chicago-based Definition Theatre Company staged at Victory Gardens, there was also a profound feeling of family, as several members of…