Art

PRESS ROOM: Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Urban League collaborate for the second year of EmpowerYouth

CHICAGO CRUSADER — Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Urban League are pleased to announce details on the second year of their innovative youth program EmpowerYouth! Igniting Creativity through the Arts. This collaborative program provides Chicago youth an opportunity to learn about the performing arts while creating an original production.

Published

6 years ago

May 15, 2019

Oakland Post

By The Chicago Crusader

Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Urban League are pleased to announce details on the second year of their innovative youth program EmpowerYouth! Igniting Creativity through the Arts. This collaborative program provides Chicago youth an opportunity to learn about the performing arts while creating an original production.

EmpowerYouth! is an academic-yearlong program engaging 30 African-American high school students from Chicago in a process that encourages them to tell their story in their own words. Students meet weekly with professional artists who specialize in acting, composition, vocal training, dance, and writing. At each session, participants take part in a collaborative process that results in an original stage production. This year’s work, We Got Next, will be performed on Friday, May 17, 2019 at 7pm at Truman College located in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago.

Guiding students as acting coach and stage director is one of Chicago’s theater community leaders, Tony Santiago (About Face Theater, The Chicago Theater Accountability Coalition). Librettist/scriptwriter Derek McPhatter (This App is Not the Business, Bring the Beat Back) and composer/songwriter Paris Ray Dozier (Last Stop On Market Street, Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money) work with participants to incorporate their stories and ideas into the original script and music. Tanji Harper, artistic director of the Chicago youth performance nonprofit The Happiness Club, serves as movement coach and choreographer. Kedrick Armstrong, Project Inclusion Fellow in Conducting with Chicago Sinfonietta and assistant music director of Wheaton College Opera, is music supervisor. Add-2, the founder of Haven Studio and Chicago performing artist serves as rap coach.

Additional team members include Marty McConnell and Mariah Neuroth, co-founders of Appreciative Solutions Group, who serve as facilitators for the program. They are joined by Jonathan Brown, MSW, whose dual role as program coordinator and social worker supports the social-emotional development objectives of the EmpowerYouth!program.

The intent of the EmpowerYouth! program is to support young people in telling their stories as young, Black Chicagoans. The current production aims to tell the story of a day in their lives, outside of the school setting, dealing with issues that are pertinent to them. Themes of friendship, the value of having a community, making big decisions about their futures, and dealing with conflict are all are present. Music – including singing and rap, acting, and dance, will all play a prominent role in the final performance.

The final performance of the EmpowerYouth! students will take place at Truman College on May 17 at 7pm. Tickets are free but require a reservation. Reservations can be made by calling Lyric’s Audience Services department at 312.827.5600 and are subject to availability.

EmpowerYouth! is a program jointly planned and administered by Lyric Unlimited, Lyric’s education and community engagement arm, and the Chicago Urban League. This year’s production represents the continued commitment of Lyric Unlimited and the Chicago Urban League to work with Chicago youth to create an original performance while offering exposure and opening avenues to careers in the arts. In addition to the intensive weekly sessions, EmpowerYouth! students attended the finals for Young Chicago Authors Louder Than A Bomb at the Auditorium Theater, Rightlyndat Victory Gardens Theater, and a performance of the opera La traviata at Lyric Opera of Chicago. They also met rising opera star Zoie Reams, a native Chicagoan, who sang the role of Flora in La traviata.

“We are pleased to partner with Lyric Opera to provide high school students with this exceptional opportunity to learn from, work and co-create with leaders in Chicago’s theater community for the second year in a row,” said Barbara Lumpkin, Interim President and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. “Through this unique educational experience, our students have the chance to incorporate their personal life experiences growing up in their Chicago communities into a real stage production that also lets them showcase their many talents. We are deeply grateful to Lyric Opera for the continued collaboration and to Truman College for lending its stage for this year’s performance.”

“It is so exciting to see the second year unfold for this incredibly special program” said Cayenne Harris, vice president of Lyric Unlimited. ”In its first year, EmpowerYouth!participants exceeded all of our expectations through the process of creating an original opera presented on stage at the Lyric Opera House. This year the creativity of our youth is felt deeply through every aspect of the creation process. We all look forward to the final performance for this year’s young artists, and to continuing the program next season.”

About Lyric Unlimited

Lyric Unlimited is a long-term, evolving initiative that encompasses company activities that are not part of Lyric’s mainstage opera season. Its mission is to provide a relevant cultural service to communities throughout the Chicago area and to advance the development of opera by exploring how opera as an art form can resonate more powerfully with people of multiple backgrounds, ethnicities, and interests. It also leads the development of innovative partnerships with a wide range of cultural, community, and educational organizations to create a breadth of programming through which Chicagoans of all ages can connect with Lyric. In the 2017/18 season, more than 95,000 individuals participated in Lyric Unlimited programs.

For more information about Lyric Unlimited program offerings, visit lyricopera.org/lyricunlimited.

About the Chicago Urban League

Established in 1916, the Chicago Urban League is a civil rights organization that empowers and inspires individuals to reach and exceed their economic potential. The Chicago Urban League supports and advocates for economic, educational and social progress for African-Americans through our agenda focused exclusively on economic empowerment as the key driver for social change. For more information, visit www.thechicagourbanleague.org.

About Lyric

Lyric Opera of Chicago’s mission is to express and promote the life-changing, transformational, revelatory power of great opera. Lyric exists to provide a broad, deep, and relevant cultural service to Chicago and the nation, and to advance the development of the art form.

Founded in 1954, Lyric is dedicated to producing and performing consistently thrilling, entertaining, and thought-provoking opera with a balanced repertoire of core classics, lesser-known masterpieces, and new works; to creating an innovative and wide-ranging program of community engagement and educational activities; and to developing exceptional emerging operatic talent.

Under the leadership of general director, president & CEO Anthony Freud, music director Sir Andrew Davis, and creative consultant Renée Fleming, Lyric strives to become The Great North American Opera Company for the 21st century: a globally significant arts organization embodying the core values of excellence, relevance, and fiscal responsibility.

To learn more about Lyric’s current and upcoming season, go to lyricopera.org. You can also join the conversation with @LyricOpera on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. #Lyric1819 #Lyric1920 #LongLivePassion

EmpowerYouth! Igniting Creativity through the Arts is made possible by support from The Beaubien Family, the Lauter McDougal Charitable Fund, Eric and Deb Hirschfield, Dan J. Epstein, Judy Guitelman and the Dan J. Epstein Family Foundation, the Eisen Family Foundation, the Estate of Pierrete E. Sauvat, Fifth Third Bank, and OPERA America.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Crusader.

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Activism

Griot Theater Company Presents August Wilson’s Work at Annual Oratorical Featuring Black Authors

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Published

3 months ago

February 17, 2025

Oakland Post

Late playwright August Wilson. Wikipedia photo.

By Godfrey Lee

Griot Theater Company will present their Fifth Annual Oratorical with August Wilson’s “Half a Century,” at the Belrose on 1415 Fifth Ave., in San Rafael near the San Rafael Public Library.

The performance explores the legacy of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson whose 10-play Century Cycle chronicles the African American experience across the 20^th century, with each play set in a different decade. “Half a Century” journeys through the final five plays of this monumental cycle, bringing Wilson’s richly woven stories to life in a way that celebrates history, resilience, and the human spirit.

Previous performance highlighting essential Black American authors included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry with Langston Hughes.

The play will be performed at 3:00. p.m. on Feb. 20, 21, 22, 27, and 28 at 7:00 p.m., and on Feb. 23 at 3:00 p.m.

For more information, go to griottheatercompany.squarespace.com/productions-v2

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Activism

MLK Day of Service Volunteers Make Blankets and Art for Locals in Need

“Everyone has an opportunity to participate,” said Glenda Roberts, kinship support care program manager at CCYSB. “Our nonprofit organization and participants recognize how important it is to give back to the community and this is serving. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, ‘Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve.’”

Published

4 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of the nonprofit.

By Kathy Chouteau
The Richmond Standard

The Contra Costa Youth Service Bureau (CCYSB) and Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church (BMBC) are collaborating with a team of volunteers for a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Monday, Jan. 20 that will wrap the community’s most vulnerable people in warm blankets and provide them with an uplifting gift of art.

Volunteers will kick off their activities at BMBC at 11 a.m., making blankets for the unhoused people served by the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP) and art for those in convalescence in Richmond.

Others will get to work preparing a lunch of chili, salad, a veggie tray, and water for participants, offered courtesy of CCYSB, while supplies last.

“People of all ages are welcome to participate in the MLK Day of Service,” said Roberts. Volunteers can RSVP via phone to Glenda Roberts at 510-215-4670, ext. 125.

CCYSB Boardmember Jackie Marston and her friends donated the materials and supplies to make the blankets and art projects. The nonprofit is also providing the day’s complimentary lunch, as well as employees to volunteer, under the direction of CCYSB Executive Director Marena Brown.

BMBC, led by Rev. Dr. Carole McKindley-Alvarez, is providing the facility for the event and volunteers from the church, which is located at 684 Juliga Woods St. in Richmond.

Located in Richmond, CCYSB is a nonprofit youth advocacy organization that serves eligible children, youth, and low-income families with a variety of wraparound services so they can thrive. Programs include academic achievement, youth mentorship, truancy prevention and direct response.

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Art

Vandalism at Richmond Ferry Terminal Saddens Residents

Residents have been lamenting the destruction online. Ellen Seskin posted photos of the vandalism to the Facebook group, Everybody’s Richmond, on Jan. 12, saying she encountered it while out on a walk. “It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

Published

4 months ago

January 18, 2025

Oakland Post

Graffiti mars the walkway at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Photo by Kathy Chouteau, The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” stated the post on NextDoor.

The post referenced images of graffiti at the Richmond Ferry Terminal. Not just on the terminal, but also on public artwork, on trail signs, on public benches and the boardwalk.

On Wednesday, the Standard stopped by to see it for ourselves. The good news was that it appears the graffiti on the terminal and on the artwork, called Changing Tide, have been cleaned for the most part. But graffiti remained abundant in the area around the relatively new ferry terminal, which opened to the public just six years ago.

Graffiti artists tagged benches and the boardwalk. Cars that had done doughnuts in the street marked the cul-de-sac just outside the historic Craneway Pavilion.

A ferry worker told us the graffiti had been there since before he started working for the ferry service about a week ago.

A member of the Army Corps of Engineers who did not want to be named in this report called the scene “sad,” as “they’d done such a nice job fixing it up.”

“It’s sad that all this money has been spent and hoodlums just don’t care and are destroying stuff,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the graffiti would be removed. The Standard reported the graffiti to the city’s graffiti abatement hotline. We were prompted to leave a message reporting the address and location of the graffiti.

“It was on the sidewalk, the street, the doors to the ferry, even in the art installation and the ‘stone’ benches,” she said. “I reported it but knowing how slow they are about getting things done — I just know that the longer you leave graffiti, the more likely they are to spray it again.”

In the comment section responding to Seskin’s post, local attorney Daniel Butt questioned why there aren’t cameras in the area.

On Nextdoor, one resident suggested searching to see if the tags match any accounts on Instagram, hoping to identify the perpetrator.

On its website, the City of Richmond says residents should graffiti immediately call Public Works graffiti removal and/or Code Enforcement at 510-965-4905.

Kathy Chouteau contributed to this report.