Chicago’s South Side used to be a hub for Black theater. There’s hope it could flourish again.
Built in 1897, the Forum Hall in Bronzeville may appear to be in a state of disrepair. But the venue, a staple of the 1950s-era Black Metropolis, is on the precipice of a return.
Today, developer Bernard Loyd is working to revitalize the Forum and has already brought musicians back to the space. He understands the historical importance of the theater.
“A teenager named Nat Cole used to perform on that stage right there,” said Loyd, a Bronzeville native himself, talking about the legendary singer and future Nat “King” Cole. “He lived right around the corner on Vincennes and 41st. He performed on the stage right here, and there'd be hundreds of youth lindy hopping and and so forth dancing on this floor.”
Forum Hall represents a time on the South Side when Black arts, including theater, thrived.
In the early 20th century, Chicago was a hub for Black theater in America. The South Side was home to some of the first Black theater companies in the country, including the first Black equity company, The Kuumba Theatre Company, founded in 1968. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Black theater companies on the South Side flourished, including eta Creative Arts Foundation and Theodore Ward’s South Side Center for the Performing Arts.
But then, for economic and systemic reasons, the drama dried up, save for a few groups that managed to hang on. But courtesy of some fresh talent and an influx of grant dollars intended to use arts to catalyze community development, there’s a tentative new chapter emerging.
In Grand Crossing, eta Creative Arts Foundation now has a resident company, Pulse Theatre, run by Aaron Reese Boseman, the nephew of the late “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman. In Hyde Park, across the street from the University of Chicago, Definition Theatre is laying out ambitions beyond its storefront. The company has also opened its doors to South Side itinerant theater groups. This fall Perceptions Theater and Coalescence Theatre Project will stage Kelundra Smith’s “Other Paths to God,” at Definition.
A short walk away, Court Theatre, located on the U. of C. campus, has become one of the premiere Equity venues in the city — recently doing more to showcase the work of Black artists than it has in the past. The Beverly Arts Center, founded in 1967, remains the home of resident company Beverly Theatre Guild, the oldest community theater company in Chicago.
And while it’s not a Black-led company, Free Street Theater has a storefront in Back of the Yards where the group has a prominent youth ensemble and produces shows focusing on racial, economic and environmental justice in Chicago.
Madison Savannah, Lady in Purple, finishes a dance during a July rehearsal at the eta Creative Arts Foundation in Grand Crossing. Founded in 1971, eta is one of the longest-running Black theater companies in Chicago. It recently signed its first resident company, Pulse, to produce plays there.
Anastasia Busby/For the Sun-Times
It’s a promising moment, but not one without tension. Theater companies with South Side ambitions have run into persistent challenges, like landlords who refuse to rent, or folded due to leadership struggles. After producing award winning work in Chicago for a quarter century, Congo Square Theatre Company was quietly dissolved by its board of directors last spring, after years of tension between the ensemble and board.
Meanwhile, the North Side has itself become a theater hub, even for some Black artists, like Jackie Taylor, the founder of the award winning Black Ensemble Theater in Uptown.
“Some South Side theater organizations lived, then died out, because they didn't get funding, they didn’t get the support that the major white theaters are getting,” said Tyrone Phillips, founding artistic director of Definition Theatre. “And when the white theaters started doing their annual Black-show-a-year for the season, that funding went over there.”
Landing on the South Side in a storefront, a space they are renting that formerly housed The Revival comedy club, was by design, Phillips said.
“We were a group of actors coming out of U. of I. at Urbana-Champaign,” said Phillips. “When we got out and we looked at the map, we could see that the spaces in which you could even see theater, or be exposed to theater, were either Downtown or north of Downtown for the most part.”
The company is currently trying to raise money for a new building — one the group will own, which Phillips says is crucial to the company’s mission.
More shows for South Side audiences
Definition hopes its future home will be in Bronzeville, part of a nine-site cultural zone in the planning stages that also includes Bernard Loyd and Forum Hall.
Historically, space has been a challenge for groups, and it’s not just Black theater companies facing hardship when navigating South Side venues.
Coya Paz, producing artistic director of Free Street Theater, a company founded in 1969, said renting storefronts on the South Side is hard for a specific reason: zombie landlords who intentionally hold on to empty storefronts.
“Outside of some neighborhoods like Hyde Park, Bridgeport or Beverly, that are kind of established as more middle class or economically diverse areas, you have a larger structural problem of landlords holding property,” Coya Paz, producing artistic director of Free Street Theater, said. Here, she rehearses with Free Street in 2019.
James Foster/For the Sun-Times
“Outside of some neighborhoods like Hyde Park, Bridgeport or Beverly, that are kind of established as more middle class or economically diverse areas, you have a larger structural problem of landlords holding property,” Paz said. Free Street has been in Back of the Yards since 2016. “They're getting more money from a tax write-off than they would renting that space.”“There’s a whole coalition of people … who are calling out landlords and saying, ‘Let us buy the building if you're not going to activate it’,” she said. “Our communities are not thriving when we have just empty storefront after empty storefront.”
The value of a permanent fixed address is obvious on a recent Monday evening inside eta Creative Arts Foundation. Founded in 1971, it's one of the longest-running Black theater companies in Chicago. But it has not had a resident company before, instead using its venue to host itinerant theater groups.
On this night, the lobby is buzzing with theater-goers ready for opening night of Pulse’s production of Dominique Morisseau’s “Detroit 67.” The smell of fresh popcorn wafts through the air as the South Side audience exchanges hearty hugs and fervent handshakes.
The 200-seat theater, operating out of a building that was once a glass factory, also houses an art gallery and classrooms where generations of local artists have studied acting.
Days before opening night, Boseman sits in the empty auditorium after a rehearsal. The millennial theatermaker and director of “Detroit 67” says that after running his company as a vagabond for many years, he saw the importance of taking residence in the legendary venue.
“[It was] finding something fresh to bring to the South Side,” he said. “People should go past this place and not just remember it as something from the past, but also be like, ‘Yo, this thing is still thriving and kicking.’ ”
Also thriving is Court Theatre, which is undergoing a renovation and planning a later season that includes nabbing the first theatrical staging of the new opera “safronia,” by inaugural Chicago poet laureate avery r. young, for spring 2027. This fall, the theater is doing its take on America 250 looking at the arts through the lens of racial history.
Yet, in the not-too-distant past, Court faced criticism that it was reluctant to stage Black shows or work with Black actors. But resident artist Ron O.J. Parson says a lot has changed in the 21 years he has been an artist in residence there: “They were resistant at first to diversity.”
But, he added, “I have to give Charlie credit,” speaking of former artistic director Charles Newell. “He said, ‘Name me some other classics, you know, Black classics besides ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’ So I called up five scholars I knew and came back with a list. Charlie agreed with me.”
“I saw Ron’s ‘East Texas Hot Links’ and knew I wanted to work with him,” said Newell, a Washington D.C. native who grew up in a diverse neighborhood and wanted Court to bring in more Black artists and do more to represent the culture of the neighborhood the theater was in.
Parson went on to direct numerous shows from his list of Black plays at Court. Next year, he will become one of the only artists to direct the entire August Wilson 10-play cycle at a single theater when he stages “Joe Turner Has Come and Gone.”
“Hiring Ron to do ‘Fences’ and then getting him to become resident artist was one of the best decisions I ever made,” said Newell.
Theatrical boom and bust
When it comes to the South Side’s cycle of theatrical boom and bust, filmmaker Pemon Rami has seen a lot. The South Side native started his career in theater with a stint at Theodore Ward’s South Side Center for the Performing Arts and as resident director of Kuumba Theatre.
Kuumba started in the South Side home of founder Val Gray Ward before landing in the South Side Community Art Center in Bronzeville. It had its glory days in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing such luminaries as James Baldwin to the South Side to stage plays.
Kuumba eventually moved to the West Side and ultimately shuttered in 1993 due to lack of funds.
But the theater has not been forgotten. Over the summer, as part of a series that highlighted 100 years of Black art, Court Theatre held an event revisiting Kuumba’s long history.
The event, at Harold Washington Library, paired the library’s archival collection with conversations with former ensemble members and invited the public to also share memories of the former playhouse.
The room buzzed with generations of local Black actors, from Kuumba’s past ensembles to faces you can see on local stages today.
“This is an informal way of learning,” said Court’s director of engagement, Kamilah Rashied, who programmed the lookback. “This is also remembering as a community. This is consciousness raising. It’s like, ‘Wait, did you know that these thriving Black spaces were here on the South Side?’ ”
The cast and crew of Kuumba Theatre’s ‘In the House of the Blues’ (from left: Colette, Eddie Richardson, Katherine Davis, Rhonda Ward, Val Ward, Laura Walls and Marshall Titus) greet Mayor Harold Washington (second from right) in 1985. The Kuumba Theatre Co. the first Black equity company.
Sun-Times file photo
In a regal upper-floor archival room of the library, Rami walked the audience through history, from theaters to the first Black soap operas, in what he called the Golden Age of South Side theater.
A few days later, at a cafe in Hyde Park, Rami unspooled his personal memories of the Black Arts Movement on the heels of the Civil Rights era.
“After Malcolm X died, it became evident that Black people needed to begin, or continue to, develop work for Black audiences,” said Rami. “And that’s what ended up happening. So you have the development of all these theater companies, dance companies, the Association of Black Psychologists, the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, the National Association of Black Social Workers, the National Black Nurses Association. You can go down the list.”
This time period saw the birth of many Black theater companies, with eta and the Beverly Theatre Guild standing the test of time and still operating today.
But in the years after the Civil Rights movement, and the end of segregation and racial housing covenants, theater on the South Side suffered another blow.
Loyd says the root of the downturn was pretty simple: Public policy.
“Theaters suffered a double whammy,” said Loyd. “One is that 75% of the population left, and therefore there was no local population to feed these theaters.” The new laws allowed Black audiences into venues like the Chicago Theatre downtown, so the remaining residents could travel out of the neighborhood to see plays.
Now, South Side theater seems to be on the rise once again. Theater makers say they are intent to push forward, while also being mindful about connecting the future of South Side theater to its glorious past.
“We’re building on land Lorraine Hansberry used to own,” said Definition’s Phillips. “That’s part of plugging into legacy, of knowing how our stories can affect our real lives — that's why we're in it.”
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