Court Theatre series takes audiences on a tour through 100 years of Black theater

When Ron “OJ” Parson thinks about the past century of Black arts, he can’t help but zero in on one genre: theater.

The resident artist of the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre, Parson had an idea about a decade ago alongside his friend, the Chicago-based director Chuck Smith.

Both Parson and Smith have a reputation for being former collaborators of the legendary playwright August Wilson.

Parson is on the cusp of directing all 10 plays of Wilson’s famed “American Century Cycle,” a set of 10 ambitious works that dramatize the lives of Black Americans in different decades, with a 2027 production of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”

“Chuck Smith said he was going to do an August Wilson reading series,” said Parson. “I thought we should do something like that at Court, but from a different angle. We'll do the Black Theater movement.”

That idea led to the Spotlight Series, which has highlighted Black playwrights both historic and contemporary in its decade of existence. Parson, who studied theater at the University of Michigan in the 1970s, wanted to familiarize up-and-coming artists and current audiences with classic Black plays. In the early days, the series featured the work of artists like Ed Bullins (“The Taking of Miss Janie”) and Joseph A. Walker (“The River Niger”).

Spotlight Series When: Through Aug. 22; highlights include Kuumba Theatre Archive Unfurling on Aug. 9 and “A Womanist Trilogy: Hurston, Richards, and Kennedy” on Aug. 13 Where: Court Theatre, Harold Washington Library Center, University of Chicago Campus Info: Programs are free with registration. Sold out events have wait lists available.

In 2016, they did a reading of “The River Niger” at a park in Englewood.

“That's how it started, but it ended up also including Latino plays, Native American plays, and plays from different cultures,” Parson said.

Parson also wanted to share the experience of theater with communities that may not have access to shows. In 2018, when the pair did a reading of Native playwright William S. Yellow Robe’s “The Independence of Eddie Rose,” they held it at the American Indian Center.

A.C. Smith (left) and Kylah Renee Jones perform in the Goodman Theatre’s production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” in 2024. Two Chicago directors with mutual admiration for Wilson joined forces to create the Spotlight Series a decade ago.

Photo by Liz Lauren

“It was a combination of introducing new artists, but also marketing for the theater,” said Parson. “I was trying to introduce the theater to other neighborhoods in the city, so that the people would say, ‘Oh, they're doing something different. Let's buy a ticket.’ Because we would then offer them discounts.”

A decade ago, Parson, along with Court’s former community programs manager Aaron Mays, got the Spotlight Series up, running and into neighborhoods. But after the pandemic, Court’s director of engagement, Kamilah Rashied, ushered the program into a new generation.

“I don't want to say ‘revamp’,” Rashied said of the series. “I think it was reconsidering the program to make it all it could be with the resources we have.”

For the 10-year anniversary, Rashied envisions a celebration of 100 years of Black theater. She wants to connect past-to-present — but not in a linear way. She wants the years to meld together for a timeless experience that honors and presents the work of playwrights and theater companies from the past, while also spinning the art form forward with contemporary actors and theater companies also being highlighted.

“When I was thinking about what we were going to do to celebrate that 10 years of Spotlight, I really was like, ‘How do we do that’? There's so many writers. There's so many levels there,” she said. “And it just came to me: A century of Black progress. And that was tied to my awareness that the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, which had been Negro History Week, had just turned 100.”

Inspired by the idea of connecting the historical to the contemporary, she went to work crafting a series that bridged generations of theater.

One reading, on Aug. 14, will highlight a new company on the South Side: Definition Theatre, located adjacent to the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park. Definition and Court are neighbors. The new company, co-founded by millennial artistic director Tyrone Phillips, is known for staging new works by and for underrepresented communities and artists of color.

The Spotlight Series will stage a reading of “Are you ready to smash white things?” by Definition ensemble member Ireon Roach.

Looking to the past, the series will feature an event at Harold Washington Library Center that invites audiences to participate in a cultural “unfurling” of Kuumba Theatre. Founded in 1969, Kuumba was once a prominent South Side theater. The event pairs the library’s archival collection with conversations with former ensemble members and invites the public to also share memories of the former playhouse.

“This is an informal way of learning,” she said of the event. “This is also remembering as a community. This is also consciousness raising. It's like, ‘Wait, did you know that these thriving Black spaces were here on the South Side’? Let's resurface that information for your awareness.”

Keeping with the theme of connecting old and new, Parson will do a reading of August Wilson's one-man “How I Learned What I Learned.” And for him, this is a reunion many years in the making. Parson was in Seattle when the famed playwright performed the play himself, but he was directing a show in the suburbs and missed Wilson’s performance after getting lost on the bus.

“I’ve regretted that for all these years,” he said. “Now I get to direct it — and be in it.”

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