Theaters Missing Black Patrons

By: Jocelyn PrinceThe ticket prices, location and programming of Chicago theaters might be keeping blacks away, according to members of Chicago’s theater community.

Most of the city’s theater spaces are located on the North Side, according to lists of known theater spaces in Chicago provided by The League of Chicago Theatres and the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Department of Buildings.

“It’s difficult to get African Americans to show up at theaters and watch plays,” said Aaron Freeman, a longtime Chicago actor and improviser who is black.

But some say more African Americans would go to theaters if more were located in their communities, performing black-themed shows with black actors.

Many African Americans perceive theater as “something special,” the same way many others might regard opera, said Chuck Smith, artist-in-residence at Columbia College of Chicago and a resident director at The Goodman Theatre.

“In the black community, it’s more like, ‘I don’t know about going to a play—let’s go see a movie’ or ‘Let’s go listen to some music,’” said Smith, who is black. “There’s just not enough [theater] on the South Side. If there was more of it, then I think it would help.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, frustrated by discrimination they experienced in mainstream, white theaters, black artists in Chicago formed companies dedicated to producing black artistic work.
In 1971, eta Creative Arts Foundation was founded. The theater, which specializes in producing new works by African American playwrights, owns a theater space in the South Side’s Greater Grand Crossing community.

Black Ensemble Theater, located in Uptown on the city’s North Side, was established in 1976. And in 1984, Smith co-founded The Chicago Theatre Company, in the Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side.

Abena Brown, eta’s co-founder, president and producer, said the company is the only black theater company that owns its theater space.

Chocolate Chips Theatre Company, a black theater group that focuses on youth-oriented performances, is in residence at Kennedy King College. Congo Square Theatre Company, which performs works from across the African Diaspora and other cultures, has put on shows at the Theatre Building Chicago and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, both prominent, mainstream venues on the North Side.

Blacks flood the theaters when they see positive images that relate to their lives, said Jackie Taylor, founder and executive director of Black Ensemble Theater.

“In college, I studied Beckett, Ibsen and Chekhov, but it had nothing to do with me,” said Taylor, an African American whose critically acclaimed musical “The Jackie Wilson Story” plays this month at New York’s Apollo Theater. “During the Harlem Renaissance, we were supporting our artists because we saw us.”

Vincent E. Williams, founding president of the Black Theatre Alliance Awards, said a lack of grants and corporate support has slowed the development of more black theaters.

Some mainstream theaters like The Goodman Theatre and Victory Gardens Theater produce one or two black-themed productions a year. But Williams said a true black theater is one founded and run by African Americans that focuses on the black community.

Officials at some mainstream theaters said they have made efforts to diversify their programming and audiences. But some say black institutions are needed to accurately portray the black experience.

“It’s a long, hard road,” said Dennis Zacek, artistic director of the popular Victory Gardens Theater, located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Zacek believes there is less segregation in the theater community now than there was 20 years ago. But, he added, “Is there more to do? Are there more doors to be opened? You bet.”

“The whole point of the theater is to include people in a room together who might not necessarily be otherwise,” he added. “Audiences of all sorts are looking for their lives and stories to be pulled on stage and to receive those stories as a group,” said Criss Henderson, executive director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, a venue located on Navy Pier dedicated to the works of William Shakespeare.

“Chicago should have a really prominent theater that tells the African American experience,” he said. “I’m not sure that Chicago Shakespeare Theater is the theater to do that.