Chanell Bell Archives - Chicago Reader

Sixteen people seated and standing in a group on the set, which features white plastic folded to resemble paper, upon which are written the names of people lost to police violence and racism. Candles glow behind them. The group is mostly Black and Brown people.

To heal and hear

by Kerry Reid October 5, 2022October 5, 2022

Aleshea Harris’s 2018 performance piece, What to Send Up When It Goes Down, had its local premiere this past spring with Congo Square Theatre Company in a production that played both in West Town (at GRAY Chicago) and the south side (Rebuild Foundation Stony Island Arts Bank). It’s back now in a short residency with […]

A Black man in a golf shirt stands behind a table, leaning in toward a Black woman in slacks and an orange blouse with a beige jacket who stands in front of the table.

Theater Review

The movement at home

by Catey Sullivan February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

Donja R. Love’s Fireflies (the second in his trilogy, The Love* Plays, each focusing on a different era of Black American history) is at once brutal and hopeful, the hate and violence-soaked former threatening throughout to extinguish the hard-won gleam of the latter but never quite succeeding. It’s 1963 when we meet Olivia (Chanell Bell) […]

Arts & Culture

Crumbs From the Table of Joy and Flyin’ West resonate together in separate productions

by Tony Adler October 17, 2018August 18, 2021

And together they provide two perspectives on black women’s lives, written by black women.