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Showing posts with label PEGASUS THEATRE CHICAGO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PEGASUS THEATRE CHICAGO. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Pegasus Theatre Chicago Remounts Hit Production of “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery” To Honor Late Playwright Shay Youngblood May 15 – June 15, 2025

ChiIL Live Shows On Our Radar

Pegasus Theatre Chicago announces cast for its revival of 

Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery

Pegasus Theatre Chicago revives its 2017 hit to honor the late playwright Shay Youngblood


Pegasus Theatre Chicago and Director ILesa Duncan proudly announce the casting for the revival of playwright Shay Youngblood’s Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery, which follows “Daughter”, who returns home to eulogize the last of the women who raised her in 1960s Georgia. Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery runs at the Chicago Dramatists’ Russ Tutterow Theatre, 798 N. Aberdeen, from May 15 through June 15, 2025. Tickets are $15-$35 and can be purchased at pegasustheatrechicago.org. Group sales may be arranged by contacting boxoffice@pegasustheatrechicago.org.

Audiences will engage with “Daughter” who, after losing her mother, is brought up by a community of women, some blood-related, some not. Her 'Big Mamas' prepare her for womanhood by sharing stories while the child re-lives vivid memories of growing up, recalling rituals, faith healings, and lessons she learned about survival, healing, deep faith, and mystery. 

Cast members include Caitlin Dobbins, Felisha McNeal, Africa Brown, Sharyon Culberson, Stacie Doublin, Justice Ford, Destynee McMichaels, and debrah neal. The creative team includes Harrison Ornelas (scenic), Josh Wroblewski (lights), Shawn Wallace (music direction), Steve Labedz (sound) Tanji Harper (choreographer), Marquecia Jordan (costumes), Sheryl Williams (TIE Consultant), Carrie Hardin (dialects), and Wendy Huber (props design). 

Photo Credits: L-R Row 1 Caitlin Dobbins, Felisha McNeal, debrah neal, Stacie Doublin

Row 2: Sharyon Culberson, Africa Brown, Justice Ford, Destynee McMichaels

To honor playwright Shay Youngblood, who passed away in June of 2024, Pegasus Theatre Chicago dedicates this production to her and offers upcoming community engagement activities around healing and self-care. Supported by a grant from Healing Illinois, engagement activities and events will include a series of community Healing Circles, performance, and post-performance events from April through June 2025.  


About ILesa Duncan, Director

ILesa Duncan is Pegasus Theatre’s Executive and Producing Artistic Director and the former Artistic Director and an Ensemble Member at Lifeline Theatre. At Pegasus, she has directed Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea, and Jeff Award-nominated productions of Eclipsed, Rutherford’s Travels (co-adaptor), The Green Book, For Her as a Piano, and Blacula: Young, Black & Undead. At Lifeline, she directed the Jeff-nominated, Native Son, and Neverwhere, as well as From the Mississippi Delta, and Blue Shadow (2010 KidSeries Premiere). A producer, director, writer, educator, and theater-maker, Duncan is an avid collaborator on new work. She has worked with The Goodman, Writers Theatre, Congo Square, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, Stage Left and Chicago Dramatists, as well as Contemporary American Theatre Company (Ohio), The Alliance Theatre (Atlanta), Arena Stage (Washington D.C.) and Lincoln Center Theater (New York). As an educator, she has led youth development and arts education programs in Chicago for more than 13 years. She is a past awardee of an NEA/TCG Directing fellowship and a 3 Arts Ragdale’s Fellowship. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab and the Chicago Director’s Lab and is an associate artist with Chicago Dramatists (where she previously served as education and community engagement director).


About Shay Youngblood, Playwright 

Shay Youngblood penned novels, poetry, children’s books, and plays, creating powerful Southern Black women characters who were unapologetically self-possessed and free in ways not typically seen in women characters in general, and Black women in particular, in the U.S. In 1989, Youngblood published her first book, The Big Mama Stories, which she adapted into the seminal play Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery. Youngblood lived all over the world, joining the Peace Corps after graduating from Clark Atlanta University and serving in Dominica, working as an au pair and model in Paris, and living in Japan as a U.S.-Japan Creative Artist Fellow. Throughout her travels, Youngblood built strategic partnerships with theatres and created opportunities for women artists.


About Shawn Wallace, Music Director

Shawn Wallace studied Music Theory and Composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and currently serves as Musical Director for two New Thought congregations: The Emmaus Center and the Namaste Center for Spiritual Living-Chicago. Shawn has worked for several years as a Teaching Artist throughout Chicago schools teaching record production and theatre tech.  Wallace’s work with Pegasus Theatre includes composition and music direction for Rutherford’s Travels, the 2017 production of Shakin’ The Mess Outta Misery and with Ilesa on Middle Passage at Lifeline Theatre. He has worked with luminary artists such as Common, Ice Cube, Bobby Brown, Dwele, Johnny Gill, Jon B., Bilal, Estelle, Julie Dexter, Rene Neufville, Rakim, Eric Roberson, Maggie Brown, Ugochi and Cherisse Scott. 


About Tanji Harper, Choreographer 

Tanji Harper is a choreographer and teaching artist from the South Side of Chicago. Harper was trained by the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theater, Chicago Dance Medium, Homer Bryant, and Joel Hall, and is an alumna of The Chicago Academy of the Arts under the instruction of Anna Paskevska, Winifred Haun, Claire Bataille, Roger Turner, and Randy Duncan. After high school, she trained in both Los Angeles and New York, then started dancing for both R&B and Hip Hop mainstream music acts. Her resume includes R. Kelly, Sparkle, Do or Die, Avant, and Busta Rhymes from 1997 to 1999. After touring and performing all over the country. Harper came home and began teaching in Chicago. She landed a life-changing position that would grow her into the position of Artistic Director at The Happiness Club and began piloting dance programs that grew into apprenticeships through After School Matters for Chicago Public School teens aged 14-18.


SCHEDULE

Previews: May 15th through 18th at 7 p.m.

Opening: Monday, May 19th at 7 p.m.

Regular Run: May 19th – June 15th


TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets are $35 for General Admission, $25 for seniors, and $15 for students ages 21 and under. Tickets to Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery  are on sale at https://ci.ovationtix.com/216/production/1225929 


About Pegasus Theatre Chicago

Pegasus Theatre Chicago is a professional, nonprofit theater that has been supporting Chicago’s diverse community for over forty years in the promotion and development of new artists for the stage. Pegasus Theatre Chicago is invested in theatre that provokes dialogue and inspires a shift in thinking. Pegasus Theatre Chicago produces theatre that examines social issues and engages in arts education programs that develop the next generation of writers, thinkers, and game changers.


Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Shows On Our Radar: ECLIPSED VIA PEGASUS THEATRE CHICAGO THROUGH NOVEMBER 4TH, 2018 AT CHICAGO DRAMATISTS

ChiIL Live Shows On Our Radar:

PEGASUS THEATRE CHICAGO 
BEGINS 2018 - 2019 SEASON WITH DANAI GURIRA’S

ECLIPSED 
THROUGH NOVEMBER 4 AT CHICAGO DRAMATISTS

Pegasus Theatre Chicago’s Producing Artistic Director Ilesa Duncan directs this Tony-Awarded Drama Inspired by Real Stories of Women Rebels During the Second Liberian Civil War


Pegasus Theatre Chicago announces its production of Eclipsed, written by Danai Gurira and directed by Producing Artistic Director Ilesa Duncan, October 4 – November 4 at Pegasus’s resident home Chicago Dramatists, 773 N. Aberdeen. The performance schedule is Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. with added Saturday 3 p.m. or Sunday 7:00 p.m. performances (TBD). Tickets are $18 - $30 and are available at PegasusTheatreChicago.org. Discounts available for groups of ten or more by contacting boxoffice@pegasustheatrechicago.org.
      
Eclipsed, the first play to premiere on Broadway with an all female and black cast and creative team, was inspired by a photo that Gurira saw in The New York Times. “I was raised in Africa and I had never seen anything like it, women with AK-47s, dressed very hip and looking formidable.” she said. “I was keen to one day pursue that story and put it on the stage.” Taking place in a bullet-ridden rebel army camp during the Liberian civil war in 2003, the five "wives" of a commanding officer band together to form a fragile community and care for a 15-year-old girl who has been abducted and raped. The balance of their lives is upset by the return of a former "wife" turned rebel soldier who tries to convince the teen to leave the camp and fight with her. As the war draws to a close, each woman must discover her own personal means of survival in this deeply felt portrait of women finding and testing their own strength.

The cast of Eclipsed includes Morayo Orija, Maya V. Prentiss, Aja Singletary, Adhana Reid and Sola Thompson.
The production team includes Jacqueline Penrod (scenic design); Megan Turnquist (lighting design); Owé Engobor (costume design); Tony Bruno (sound design); R&D Choreography (violence design); Amanda Caputi (props); Carrie Hardin (dialect coach); Tanuja Jagernauth (dramaturg); Jennifer McClendon (production manager) and Justine Palmisano (stage manager).



 ABOUT DANIA GURIRA, playwright
Danai Gurira is an American actress and playwright of Zimbabwean origin who is best known for her roles as “Michonne” on the AMC horror drama series “The Walking Dead” and as “Okoye” in the Marvel Universe movies “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War.” She began her career on stage and has written critically acclaimed and award-winning plays such as In the Continuum,
which won her an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Award and a Helen Hayes Award for Best Lead Actress; Eclipsed, was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and won for Best Costume Design in a play; The Convert and Familiar, the last of which was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre. Among her other notable movies is “Mother of George,” in which she played the lead role of a Nigerian woman. She has also made guest appearances on several television
shows including “Life on Mars,” “'Law & Order” and “American Experience.” According to her, being “brought up by a scientist and a librarian”, she is “an academic at heart”, which helps her do the exhaustive research she needs to write her plays. Gurira, who feels that stories of African women are told very rarely, considers her three plays In the Continuum The Convert, and
Familiar as “parts of a trilogy on Zimbabwe’s coming of age from a feminine perspective.”

ABOUT ILESA DUNCAN, director
Ilesa Duncan is the executive/artistic director at Pegasus Theatre Chicago. Her recent directing work at Pegasus includes the Jeff-Recommended, sold-out Shakin the Mess Outta Misery, the world premiere of Jeff-Recommended Rutherford’s Travels and For Her as a Piano. Other recent credits include Neverwhere at Lifeline Theatre (Jeff-Recommended), Broken Fences at 16th Street Theater, Jeff Award-nominated The Nativity with Congo Square and the Jeff Award- winning Jar the Floor at ETA Creative Arts. Duncan has also worked with The Goodman, Writers Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, Lifeline Theater, Stage Left and Chicago Dramatists, as well as Contemporary American Theatre Company (Ohio). The Alliance Theatre (Atlanta), Arena Stage (Washington DC) and Lincoln Center Theater (New York). Duncan’s creative nonfiction short stories have been published (Columbia College Chicago) and she’s written poems and screenplays. For the stage, she co-adapted Rutherford’s Travels from the National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage, co-wrote and directed Blakk Love: Stoeez of A Darker Hue and facilitated the devised project Do You See What I’m Saying for Chameleon. Duncan will also assume the role of artistic director at Lifeline Theatre beginning in January 2019, and will remain Pegasus’ executive/producing director.



ABOUT PEGASUS THEATRE CHICAGO
Pegasus Theatre Chicago has been a mainstay in the Chicago theater community for nearly 38 years. Its mission is to produce boldly imaginative theatre, champion new and authentic voices and illuminate the human journey. The theatre adheres to the core values of community engagement, social relevance, boldness, adventure and excellence.

Pegasus is also committed to initiating important conversations through the arts with strong community engagement and socially relevant programming, including the Young Playwrights Festival for high school-age scribes, which will celebrate its 32nd year this season. Pegasus Theatre Chicago has received seventy-seven Joseph Jefferson Awards since its inception.

Pegasus Theatre Chicago is also supported by the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the MacArthur Fund at Richard Driehaus Foundation, the Albert Pick, Jr. Fund, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Polk Bros. Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and a CityArts grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (Rahm Emanuel, Mayor).



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