Carla Stillwell, Shepsu Aakhu, Myesha-Tiara, and Xavier Custodio.
We’ve written a few times about The Understudy here in Chicago, including illuminating its transformative properties as they staged their first production earlier this year. Earlier this week, The Understudy transformed again, replacing their islands of books and plays with rows of seats, as they made room for us at American Theatre to host Grown in Chicago, a panel discussion featuring local theatre leaders that we recorded live and that you’re able to listen to below.
The panel featured wisdom from Shepsu Aakhu, founding member of Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre (MPAACT); Myesha-Tiara, founding artistic director of Perceptions Theatre, and Xavier Custodio, co-founding artistic director of Visión Latino Theatre Company, all moderated under twinkling string lights against a billowing curtain backdrop by Carla Stillwell, who, as associate Chicago editor Gabriela Furtado Coutinho pointed out in her intro, has been a centerpiece of Chicago theatre for years and an inspiration for theatremakers across the city. The panelists brought with them a range of experience, from Stillwell and Aakhu, who have both been in the industry and Chicago for decades (MPAACT, which Stillwell has also worked with, was founded in 1990) to the newer companies, with Custodio’s Visión Latino Theatre Company being founded in 2014 and Myesha-Tiara’s Perceptions joining the Chicago theatre fold in 2019.
All of the panelists dove deep into the rich personal connections they each have with their respective theatres, and the lived experiences that led them to creating these artistic homes, while of course touching on how they are able to stay true to those missions in the face of the pandemic and outside pressure to do what might be considered more commercially appealing work. As Stillwell, who is also a member of TCG’s conference steering committee, noted, it can be easy for these kinds of conversations among leaders to spend a lot of time talking about the business model while overlooking how the art is made, how you work through the emotional and physical toll the industry can can take on its artists, and how do you stay true to that work in the face of pressure or monetary incentives to do something else.
But aside from listening to these wonderful artists discuss how they choose the work they do, how they connect to their communities, and how they stay true to themselves, what was most warming for me was the audience. When organizing this panel, our hope was that this could be a conversation that could help young theatremakers looking to glean wisdom on forging their own path in a city known for the fact that literally anyone can start a theatre company. Our panel fielded two wonderful questions from such theatremakers, one asking how intersectionality appears in the work of our panelists and another asking how, in this vast sea of theatres and theatremakers, do you find folks you can trust enough to build a mission and company like these.
You’ll have to listen to the full live recording below to find out how those questions get answered, but I’d like to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the night, which speaks to the deep love of theatre that this city has, even in the face of Chicago’s brutal winters.
“The thing that I love about Chicago theatre that I find so unique is, Chicago theatre is spitting distance away, with all the goodness and the badness that comes with that, all the risk in your life that goes with that,” said Aakhu. “But that grittiness and intensity that has created so many generations of artists here, regardless of what their background is, is why people keep figuring out how to leave their house in the middle of the arctic blast to see shows.”
