The long hot summer is winding down, according to the calendar, but youth theater ensembles are examining a season of protest and pandemic through three shows, created in collaborative (though remote) processes and available online.
“They were tasked with interviewing people in the neighborhood and asking them questions about their dream job. And then they would come back and have to transform into the person that they had interviewed and kind of embody the interview they had conducted from the perspective of the person they had interviewed. And that was kind of our first launching into the topic of labor. And then we started branching into the stockyards and the history of factories and industry in Back of the Yards,” says Díaz de León. When they could no longer safely do in-person interviews, the process became even more “hyperlocal,” as Arboleda and Díaz de León describe it, with the teens collecting stories in their own homes and families.
Essential, 8/28-9/7, Fri and Mon 7 PM CDT, freestreet.org, pay what you can; The Light, available anytime through website with Together Network membership, collaboraction.org (membership $5/month); Fulmination, available anytime through website or YouTube, timelinetheatre.com, F
