20 Ilesa Duncan Artistic Director, Lifeline Theatre and Executive & Producing Director, Pegasus Theatre Ilesa Duncan has held down the fort at Pegasus Theatre as the company’s executive artistic director since 2012. This year she updated her resume with a new position and a new company: artistic director of Lifeline Theatre, taking over for Dorothy Milne, who has held the position for nineteen years. This past summer at Lifeline she successfully revived Robert Kauzlaric’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel “Neverwhere,” which played at Lifeline in 2010, and was welcomed back enthusiastically by audiences. At Pegasus, Duncan has kept a busy schedule of directing (“The Green Book,” “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery” and many more), as well as co-adapting (along with David Barr III) and directing “Rutherford’s Travels,” a world premiere based on Charles Johnson’s novel “Middle Passage,” and helming the company’s Young Playwrights Festival, which celebrates its thirty-second anniversary this year. More work doesn’t mean more time, though Duncan will stay on at Pegasus while the company continues developing young theater makers. And Lifeline’s robustly creative MainStage and KidSeries performances are ideal outlets for her strengths as an artist and educator.
Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
18 Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani Founding Artistic Director and Founding Executive Director, Silk Road Rising Our 2017 Players of the Moment, Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani have not rested on their laurels in the last two years. Among their accomplishments, the Silk Road Rising leaders are adept at selecting works that import Asian and Middle Eastern perspectives into popular Western stories. “Through The Elevated Line” by Novid Parsi, which had its world premiere with the company, echoes the romantic and familial tensions of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” transporting Tennessee Williams’ tale to Uptown in the summer of 2016 leading up to the Cubs’ historic World Series victory. The company collaborated with Remy Bumppo on an adaptation of “Great Expectations” set in nineteenth-century Calcutta during the British Raj. “Christmas Mubarak” related the story of Mary and Jesus as told in the Quran. Elsewhere, the company bypasses a historical/literary focus to present stories that sear with urgency: Anu Bhatt’s “Hollow/Wave” was a deeply personal excavation of her experiences with sexual abuse. The New China Festival featured playwrights from the Chinese-speaking world that provided humanistic insight. When they aren’t producing, Silk Road is delivering EPIC (Empathic Playwriting Intensive Course), a twenty-session program, to 600 CPS students. The company partnered with the Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists to present their national conference in Chicago, which brought 200 Asian American artists together for professional workshops and national network building. With grants from the American Theatre Wing and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for Islamic Art under their belts, we have every reason to believe that it will be another busy couple of years for this dynamic duo and their essential company.
Paul D’Addario and Michael Patrick Thornton/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
17 Michael Patrick Thornton, Emjoy Gavino, John Gawlik and Paul D’Addario Artistic Director, Associate Artistic Director, Managing Director and Associate Artistic Director, The Gift Theatre Even within our progressive theater community, opting to prioritize underserved communities can be a pathway to being underrepresented in arts coverage and under-attended by those who prefer the hubs of downtown and downtown-adjacent institutions. The Gift has a knack for turning what might appear to be limitations into virtues. Now in their eighteenth season, and with an established ensemble of some of the best actors in town as well as a high-profile playwright in David Rabe, the company keeps their doors and hearts open to new talent, promoting casting director Emjoy Gavino to associate artistic director, welcoming Jennifer Glasse into the ensemble and promoting ensemble member Chika Ike to director of 4802, the company’s new-play initiative. With the success of “A Swell in the Ground,”“Hang Man” and “Hamlet,” works that were written, directed and adapted by artists of color, The Gift proves that they are on the frontier of the city, not just geographically, but artistically and socially as well.
Anthony Moseley and Dr. Marcus Robinson/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
16 Anthony Moseley and Dr. Marcus Robinson Artistic Director and Managing Director, Collaboraction When writing about Collaboraction it’s better to look forward rather than back. It’s only a slightly more manageable task for the writer: the company produces such a wide and constant proliferation of events and performances that push conventional ideas of where art stops and social justice begins that to list everything they’ve done in the last few years would require more space than we have. The company is constantly on the move, often literally. The annual Peacebook festival has toured the city for three consecutive summers and shows little sign of fatigue, physical, creative or otherwise. Ditto for the company’s artistic director Anthony Moseley and managing director Dr. Marcus Robinson, the latter a “transformational leader of non-profit management, talent development, corporate culture and diversity with inclusion,” hired in the fall of 2017. In the interim, Collaboraction has been the recipient of the twentieth-anniversary Otto Award, recognizing “the achievement of individuals and theater companies who conceive, produce and foster the development of innovative and socially challenging theater.” And if you thought that might be a cue for the company to take a much-deserved rest, you’d be mistaken: in January the company continues its “Encounter” series and in the spring they will co-produce the remount of Sandra Delgado’s mega-hit “La Havana Madrid” with Teatro Vista.
Kendall Karg and Kurt Chiang/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
15 Kurt Chiang and Kendall Karg Artistic Director and Managing Director, The Neo-Futurists The Neo-Futurists first performed the show that would become their inimitable flagship just over thirty years ago. That legacy was challenged in the twilight of 2016 in a well-documented intercompany dispute. The show emerged, scathed and stronger for it, as “The Infinite Wrench.” If the last two years of American history have imparted one thing to us collectively, it’s that the strength of any institution cannot be confirmed until tested. And The Neos have proved resilient. Ten-thousand-plus world premieres later, there may be no better place in Chicago to find the huddled masses yearning to feel seen.
Ginger Farley and Shawn Lent/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
14 Ginger Farley and Shawn Lent Executive Director and Program Director, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Fifteen thousand dollars to make new work, no strings attached. It’s a grant almost unheard of in the arts, save the MacArthur “genius” award, much less one specifically earmarked for dance. Six Chicago choreographers receive the coveted Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Grant each year and, along with it, performance opportunities, and peer and technical support throughout the process. CDF also awards smaller Greenhouse program grants of $4,000 for emerging choreographers, along with mentorship from an established artist, which makes the team of Farley and Lent arguably the most powerful force for the creation of groundbreaking dance in the city.
Ricardo Gutierrez and Sylvia Hevia/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
Kaiser Ahmed, Nora Leahy and Gus Menary/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
12 Gus Menary, Nora Leahy and Kaiser Ahmed Artistic Director, Managing Director and Associate Artistic Director, Jackalope Theatre Jackalope Theatre has committed to exploring and redefining American identity, a timely and activistic call to action. Under artistic director Gus Menary, these players dig deep and aim high, maximizing capabilities to make great social change, onstage and in the community. On their stages, both at the Frontier and the Broadway Armory, they undertake a rich excavation of the American mythos through the amplification of diverse voices, from “In the Canyon,” a groundbreaking world premiere from Kilroys-cited company member Calamity West, to the three world premieres produced last year in their tenth season, including Ike Holter’s acclaimed thriller “The Light Fantastic.” Collaborations with The Chicago Inclusion Project and The Yard further extend their reach. Eleven years in, through new initiatives like The GroundWorks Series, the Circle Up! Reading Series, and an eight-week Playwrights Lab (taught by West), Jackalope walks the walk.
Nancy García Loza and Isaac Gomez/Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
11 Nancy GarcíaLoza and Isaac Gomez Creative Co-Directors, Alliance of Latinx Theater Artists (ALTA) Founded in 2010, the Alliance of Latinx Theater Artists has been a resource for Latinx theater practitioners, a consistently marginalized demographic in local arts coverage. This past year, in response to calls for better representation in theater awards and ceremonies, the organization hosted the first ALTA Awards. Where local and national award ceremonies struggle with inclusion, the ALTA Awards demonstrated the breadth and depth of “LatinXcellence” in Chicago. Helmed by playwrights Nancy García Loza and Isaac Gomez, the organization is making the ALTA Awards an annual tradition as well as furthering “the Chicago Latinx Theater movement by promoting, educating, representing and unifying Latinx identified artists and their allies.”
Players 2022: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago In the return of the Players 50 list, we tried to honor those who came back, who've already been putting shows on stages, while crossing our fingers that those we've not heard from are just around the corner.
A Second Company's Saga: The Spirited Story of Fifty Years of Chicago Opera Theater Chicago Opera Theater began as a handful of vocal students of company founder Alan Stone. It was formed by Stone to give his students actual performance practice and experience. Stone’s decision to present operas in English was a considerable break with convention back in 1973.
