A few days before the launch of the Social Change Theater Festival, the actor and director of Chicago, Kevin Aoussou, puts the final touch in a office on the third floor of the Athenaeum theater in Lake View. The calendar is fixed, but he still hopes to find sponsorship.
Aoussou, who is associate director of social justice – focused Still Point Theater collective, never produced a theater festival before. He was so busy, he didn't have time to be nervous. But it is excited.
“Our hope is to create a moment around social change through the theater,” said Aoussou. “There is a community that is here, which cares about each other and cares about our neighbors. We want to create a space for these people to meet. ”
Great changes arrive at the bottom of the pipeline For new works of art in the Trump era, and Aoussou, which is 31 years old, is very aware of the training effects around him. Like many of his generation, he is able to use his voice and social media platforms for change.
To its inaugural Social Change Theater Festival This weekend at Athenaeum,, All performances will be organized readings, the actors working from scripts without costumes and sets of complete production. The objective is to play new plays that cover major themes, the reform of criminal justice and climate change to gender identity – the latter has concentrated the recent wave of decrees of the Trump administration concerning “the genre ideology” of the Trump administration.
“We grew up in a time and in a space where there are constant things that happen and attracting us (inside) and traumatizing,” said Aoussou. “There is a desire to create a change through what we create physically, even if we are unable to create a change in the structural level.”
This desire Slots Amesou directly in a wider scene of local millennials shaping the next generation of stories for the scenes of Chicago. As a group, they define a theater brand that feels unique to their experiences as a generation, informed by the way in which social problems affect them and the strong desire to promote the relationships in which they live.
“More than anything, it's not just about going and doing the show,” said Aoussou. “It is a question of connecting first, and the show is the bonus. It creates such impactful and real stories.”
During a recent New Works Festival organized by the Chicago Cultural Center, the playwright Nikki Carpenter, another millennium, focused a script on a group of seniors opposed to land developers. His room, The last senior house in Bronzeville, Discuss the gentrification that currently affects its real neighborhood.
“The piece is currently reflecting Chicago because we are in a unique place,” said Carpenter. “Obviously, gentrification occurs around us. So the community must ask: what elements are we ready to delete, and when we are ready to say “No, no amount of money can demolish this property. No influence can erase this story “?”
Carpenter, originally from Chicago and five -year -old residents of Bronzeville, said that her writing is influenced by people who preceded her, but her style and approach are deeply rooted in the experiences of her daily life.
“Even if I am influenced by August Wilson and Lorraine Hansberry, I am a millennium,” said Carpenter. “So, I try to focus on this influence, but I also want to be an artist who reflects time. And even if I cannot write in a 1964 perspective, I can write from the point of view in 2025 of my neighborhood change.”
Chicago's playwright, Krystal Ortiz, another emerging millennial voice, currently has a workshop of a musical by Jukebox Punk-Rock, frikination. The musical, which was also read during the New Works Festival of the Cultural Center, explores the real FRIKI subculture of Cuban artists Punk which, during the oppressive communist regime in the 1980s, were infected with HIV positive blood. They wanted to spend their dying days to create art in a hospital sanctioned by the government.
It was on a trip to Cuba that Actiz learned this story. “I am Cubano-American,” said Ortiz. “One of my friends who was traveling with me had a bunch of tattoos and piercings, and this Cuban guy came to us on the street and asked him if she was a” friki “. “”
Ortiz later learned of the true meaning of the word and was amazed at the intense decision that artists took at the time, sacrificing their lives for an opportunity to die by making art in improved living conditions. “It just shouted in the theater,” said the playwright. “And I knew: this is a story that must be put in place and told. So it was logical to write about it.”
Like other millennial playwrights, Ortiz considers theater as a vehicle for more important conversations on problems affecting its own life.
There is “this notion according to which the punk and alternative scenes can be considered as a show, or for the value of the shock or simply as far as,” said Ortiz. “I was super interested to focus on the root of this, and it is the protest – but not the protest for the protest. It is a protest for a way to reach an end to live the life you want to live and achieve the things you want to achieve. ”
Aoussou hopes that its inaugural – supported by the theatrical space in kind of Athenaeum and partnerships with other theater groups – helps to build a community of creatives sharing the same ideas. He finds this crucial at a time when the theater is still in shock of losses codid while facing a new challenge: a presidential administration determined to threaten crucial federal funds.
“If we think that the work we do is important, then we have to continue doing the job,” said Aoussou. “The scale in which we can do it will change. And how we are going to do the work could change. ”
For Aoussou, this change resembles partnerships and finding ways to share resources – conversations which it provides as a key element of the festival. The readings staged from the Social Change Theater Festival are produced by Chicago companies, including a new play by Brian Beals, executive director of Mud theater projectAn organization founded at the County Correction Center of Lee. The program also offers a new head play Theater, with its mission to tell LGBTQ +stories.
Some of these projects could be the aegis of non-compliance for the national allocation for artistic subsidies, according to new rules for federal funding. But the festival of social change, as Aoussou sends it, will serve both as an incubator for new works and a place where companies can share art, resources and means to move forward.
Mike Davis is a theater journalist who covers the scenes in Chicago.
