Good morning, Chicago.
The ensemble of the 25-year-old Congo Square Theatre Company, one of Chicago’s most venerable and important Black theaters and a company the playwright August Wilson said should be supported in his memory, has told the Tribune it has “unanimously decided to not participate in any production, artistic curating and programming for the upcoming 2025 season until the current board president has been removed from the board.”
The ensemble said that it had made “several requests for neutral mediation with the entire board of directors, to no avail.” In the meantime, it said, its non-involvement would include “full productions, staged readings, auditions, courses, internships and artistic programming of any kind.”
Named after the 19th century New Orleans gathering place for enslaved Africans and free people of color, Congo Square Theatre was co-founded in 1999 by Derrick Sanders and Reginald Nelson. It was the first theater to produce Lydia Diamond’s play “Stick Fly,” which moved to Broadway, and in 2004 it premiered a new play about police brutality titled “Deep Azure,” penned by Chadwick Boseman, then an unknown.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Chris Jones.
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