Shows to amplify BIPOC communities
Two plays about marginalized voices will both be firsts at Paramount Theatre
Not long ago, Lanise Antoine Shelleywas in a health food store on the North Side helping her mother pick out some nutritional supplements. “I’m a vegan and a bit of a health nut,” says the Chicago stage and TV actor (you may have seen Shelley on “Chicago Fire” and “Empire,” or in the Goodman Theatre’s recent streaming production of “School Girls; Or, The AfricanMean Girls Play”). She’s also fromHaiti, adopted by her mother when shewas 4 years old. As she tells it, a salesperson didn’t knowwhat to make of this picture of a young Blackwoman advising an older whitewoman about nutrition. “She came over and interrupted us with this ‘ Can. I. help. you?,’ ” Shelley said.
Having to explain herself, constantly, to people has been a difficult part of Shelley’s life, and that life informs her new play, “Pretended,” that launches a new-works initiative this month at the Paramount Theatre. Called the Inception Project, itwasmade possible by a $40,000Healing Illinois grant inNovember fromthe Illinois Department ofHuman Services in partnership with the Chicago Community Trust. The Inception Project will be headed up by director AmberMak, in charge of developing newworks at the Paramount since 2016, and actor and artistic associate Paul-Jordan Jansen.
The stated mission is to “amplify BIPOC andmarginalized voices”; the second play in the series will be “Bull: a love story” by Nancy García Loza. Both will be streamed, and a second part of each evening’s performance will be a panel of experts joining the playwright and audience on a Zoom call to talk about the play and the issues it raises.
The series will be the Paramount’s first foray into online programming and it all came together in about two months.
AsMak and Jansen describe it, a team at the theater including the education department became aware of the grant in October, applied and found out they had received the money inNovember— and
“We are charged with feeling indebted, but I would not have chosen to be given up for adoption. I would not have chosen to be brought to America.” — Lanise Antoine Shelley, citing a misconception she wants to change
were charged with getting something on “stage” by the end of January.
“It’s likewewere shot out of a cannon,” Jansen said.
The project is about developing new voices but they needed more or less written plays, at least for the initial round. (The Healing Illinois deadline has since been relaxed but Paramount will meet the original schedule.) They reached out to the Chicago theater community and found Shelley and Loza.
Shelley is directing her own play; the Paramount actually first contacted her to direct, she said, but then she told them about “Pretended.”
“Pretended” is very personal to her, she said. It’s not about her, storywise — the character at the center is named Elly who flees fromChicago to Seattle when she finds herself pregnant. “But I don’t say ‘Pretended’was written by me, I say ‘lived by.’ A lot of the dialoguewas taken verbatim frommy life.”
Her mother, a single woman fromNorthern California, adopted her and a non-biological sister from an orphanage in Port-auPrince. Coming to America, she only spoke Creole, had never eaten American food. Over years of adjustment she became Americanized, she said, but nowonly speaks English. She keeps in touch with herHaitian parents and siblings but can no longer speak Creole.
“There are some who’d say I’m notHaitian enough now, but I disagree,” Shelley said. She has channeled her experiences growing up and finding her identity into both “Pretended” and aweekly podcast, “When TheyWere Young,” which brings together adoptees, families and experts on the subject of adoption.
“I am not the result of a charitable deed. I ama person,” Shelley said, citing amisconception shewants to change. “We are charged with feeling indebted, but I would not have chosen to be given up for adoption. I would not have chosen to be brought to America. I address this in the play, too.”
The second play in the Inception Project, by Loza, is about the Chicago neighborhood of Lakeview in the 1980s and ’90s, as theMexican immigrant community began to be pushed further west.
“I used to have 22 aunts and uncles living in Lakeview,” she said. Only one aunt remains. Her play, “Bull,” is about aMexican American drug dealer who gets sent to prison and comes home to find a community that is no longer his.
When the Paramount approached her, she told them the playwas mostly written inside her head, she’sworking to finish it on paper now.
“For Inception, I could have dusted off an old play about amother and daughter relationship,” she said. But she remembers visiting the Paramount when she was young, shewon tickets
to a concert through a radio station. And she remembers an Aurora, withMexican Americans almost 45% of the population, thatwas just as segregated as neighborhoods in Chicago.
“Aurora had a ‘good’ side of town and a ‘bad.’ I knew that Iwas in the ‘bad’ side of Lakeview,” Loza said. “So I said to Paramount, if this is supposed to be a play about healing you have to do this kind ofwork.”
There are some who would ask, why such a project at Paramount Theatre? The Paramount is known, and acclaimed, and heavily subscribed, for its series of Broadway musicals— a recent production of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” starring Jansen collected six Jeff Award nominations. Is this project simply a response to the call for all Chicago theaters to demonstrate their social awareness in the year of Black LivesMatter?
It’s not that simple, Mak says.
“We have alwayswanted to be inclusive to our whole community,” she said. But it was the pandemic shutdown and the pause, more than anything else, that made this possible. “We’ve always believed in that, but at the same timewewere always on this treadmill of
producing, producing, producing as quickly aswe could.”
Nowtheater has time to commit to something like Inception. TheHealing Illinois money only covers the first two shows but the intent is to continue the series once live theater returns, include in its new, 173-seat Copley Theatre space, nowcompleted and ready to open.
Jansen, for his part, has gotten a lot of critical praise in Chicago as an actor, including for his recent tile roles in both “Beauty and the Beast” and “Sweeney Todd” at the Paramount, but feels that he has found his calling.
“My mission has shifted a little bit. Iwon’t say I’ll stop acting, but I realized this iswork I need to do. That’smy mission for the Black community, formy community,” he said. “I get such a rush frombeing on stage. But I get just as much a rush fromthis.”