“Chicago produces more black plays than any other place in the world,” says director Chuck Smith, who’s partly responsible for the thriving African-American theater community here. “You’ve got the three main black companies–ETA, Black Ensemble, and the Chicago Theatre Company. You’ve got new companies like Onyx and MPAACT coming up. Then you have nonblack companies producing African-American work. I think it’s the healthiest environment in the world.”
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That wasn’t the case when Smith started doing theater here 30 years ago. The former marine says he “stumbled” into acting in 1964 when friends asked him to join the Dramatic Art Guild, which they’d created after realizing there wasn’t much of an outlet for their interests. Smith, who worked for the post office, then began studying theater part-time at Loop College.
“It’s been a process over 15 years to get nonblack companies to actually seek out and want to do black plays and work with the directors and actors,” Smith says. “This hasn’t just happened. The League of Chicago Theaters has had annual minority auditions every spring for ten years. Union and nonunion directors and actors come, and casting directors from all the major companies come. They look forward to it.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo / J.B. Spector.
