Showtime: Black Theater in Chicago

On Thursday, February 20, 2003, in the Claudia Cassidy Theatre of the Chicago Cultural Center, The HistoryMakers hosted a free public event entitled Showtime: Black Theatre in Chicago. Theatre founders Val Gray Ward of Kuumba Theatre, Jackie Taylor of the Black Ensemble Theatre, Okoro Harold Johnson of the ETA Creative Arts Foundation and Douglas Alan Mann of the Chicago Theatre Company told the history of Black theatre in Chicago from the Skyloft Players through today and the roles they have played in the success of black theatre in Chicago.

Showtime: Black Theatre in Chicago was presented in collaboration with the Chicago Cultural Center and the African American Arts Alliance. The moderator for the program was Chuck Smith of the Goodman Theatre and Bonnie De Shong of V-103 served as Master of Ceremonies.

This program was developed by The HistoryMakers, a Chicago-based organization founded in 1999 that is committed to preserving, developing and providing easy access to an internationally recognized, archival collection of thousands of African American video oral histories. The goal of The HistoryMakers is to develop a digital video archive that is entirely searchable by image and text of 5,000 well-known and unsung African American HistoryMakers.

You can order your very own copy of Showtime: Black Theatre in Chicago by clicking here.