Congo Square Theatre Puts on a Festival for the Community

Smoky skies and concerning air quality didn’t stop community members and theater lovers from supporting a small group of young, emerging Chicago playwrights in late June. Dozens came out to the first two of three theater festival events put on by Congo Square Theatre, as part of its 2023 Festival On The Square celebration. 

In honor of the theater company’s 25th anniversary, the expanded Festival On The Square partnered with three South Side venues, bringing the theater to audiences in their own communities. Festival events this summer included Retreat at Currency Exchange in Washington Park on June 22 and Boxville Marketplace in Bronzeville on June 28. The third event will take place on July 29 at the Silver Room in Hyde Park, in conjunction with the Silver Room Block Party. 

The festival has been around for more than a decade and went on a brief hiatus at the beginning of the pandemic but has been hosted annually for the past three years.

The majority of the readings from the event at Boxville were excerpts from full-length plays written by their 2022-23 Next Up Fellowship fellows, including The Playgrounds by Bair Warburton Brown and The September Show by Helaina Coggs, both directed by Malkia Stampley Johnson. The festival also included a reading of the ten-minute play Tisha, Rita, and Mary Lee vs. The World by incoming 2023-24 fellow Maria D. Smith, directed by Ken-Matt Martin.

Each of the first two festival events brought out distinctive crowds that represented the type of stories told. The first event, held at the Retreat, welcomed a mature, intergenerational crowd. Everyone from millennials to boomers frequent the space and were present to support the theater’s first staged reading, of play Welcome to the Blue Swan, which follows trumpeter Jimmy Earl Brown and a group of friends preparing for a darts tournament at a St. Louis lounge.

The readings at Boxville, however, reflected the next generation of Chicago playwrights. Congo Square ensemble member and playwright Aaron Todd Douglass mentored fellows through the Samuel G. Roberson Next Up Fellowship. Though these playwrights are younger and new to the craft, the stories portrayed a range of relatable life experiences.

2023-24 fellowship winner Maria D. Smith’s play, Tisha, Rita, and Mary Lee vs The World, followed three young women leaving their old life behind in Ohio in search of freedom in the unknown. While The September Show, written by Helaina Coggs, is a humorous take on family and friends navigating changes, trauma, and growth together: for better or worse. 

The Boxville event leaned into engagement. Unlike the first event, the readings included physical performances, while strangers and supporters alike connected with one another over free drinks and homemade quality sweets, including vanilla maple fried chicken and vegan peach cobbler cupcakes catered by Happiness Cupcakes. 

Similar to the stories they showcase, Congo Square Theatre has a rich history rooted in intentionality. The theater was founded by graduate students at the University of Urbana Champaign and based on the original Congo Square in New Orleans—a historic national park named in honor of the tradition of slaves who gathered there on Sundays to sing, play instruments, and celebrate.

According to Ericka Ratcliff, the artistic director at the company, the mission is to uplift Black stories. Their work is “based on those morals of bringing folks together and making sure that the theater is a haven, a space for Black artists to have a home to tell artistic stories to represent Black culture,” said Ratcliff.

The fourteen-year-old festival, along with other programming and initiatives, is a reflection of their mission, as well as their model of community participation, which the company refers to as “radical generosity, radical commitment, and radical expansion.”

“With radical generosity, that’s our commitment to keeping our productions free or heavily subsidized. For community members, we provide transportation for those who need it so that they can come to see the show,” said Ratcliff. “We want people to see their stories on stage. But we also want them to understand how pivotal the arts are to community development and organizing.”

Ratcliff added that radical generosity could be the “touchpoint” for people to experience Congo Square for the first time. Whether that be through a free ticket or transportation access to an event, once they attend, the intention is community members will be inclined to remain involved with the organization. This is where radical expansion comes into play. 

A new initiative titled “Celebration of Healing,” in collaboration with Steppenwolf Theatre, was developed to address the question of “How do we continue to invest in communities so that we can grow?” said Ratcliff. The programming “aimed to provide audiences with a curated space geared toward individual and community healing” and served as an extension of one of their produced plays, How Blood Go. The play is a generational period piece that explores themes around healthcare inequities in America.

The collaboration was “a way for [them] to really show evidence of, here’s the art, the beautiful art that is created. But when we pull these themes out, and we put it into community conversations, here’s how you can contextualize this and put it into action.” The Celebration of Healing series consisted of a total of nine events: a mix of webinars, resource fairs, and screenings. 

When asked about how their programming has evolved over the years, Executive Director Charlique Rolle shared how the pandemic provided space for introspection. “I always say it was a blessing for us because it really gave us time [to refresh] our focus on our vision,” she said. “This is really where our radical tenets always existed within the organization. The pass of the [pandemic] allowed us to dip into digital programming.” From the shift an audio and web series was created, said Rolle, ensuring “that our artists continue to work”. 

Rolle described the core of Festival on the Square “being about embracing all mediums of artistic expression, not just performance in plays, but [to] elevate the performance of plays, dance, music, community, community conversations, and just being present within the community to tell our stories and all the artistic ways that they can be manifested.”

The last event of the festival will take place on July 29 at the Silver Room Block Party, itself a cultural staple of the city that is coming to an end. Registration for the final Congo Square event of the summer is free, however, you have to purchase tickets to the Block Room Party.

Kristian Parker  is a writer and visual storyteller, inspired by sharing narratives that positively shift and shape perspectives. She previously wrote about a WTTW special for the Weekly.