Charles Newell Archives - Chicago Reader

Charlique Rolle is pictured wearing black clothing and sitting on a stool.

Charlique Rolle takes over at African American Arts Alliance of Chicago

by Kerry Reid September 28, 2023September 30, 2023

Charlique Rolle knows what it takes to keep a strong vision going in challenging times. The executive director of Congo Square Theatre Company came into that role in the summer of 2020, when nobody even knew when it would be safe to return to live performance. Rolle worked with artistic director Ericka Ratcliff and the […]

Oedipus sits center on a stone altar, wearing a long robe and dark glasses. A Black woman is on his left, wearing a white-and-gold robe, and a Black man is on his right wearing a tan tunic and trousers.

Theater Review

The Gospel at Colonus gets a rousing revival at Court

by Kerry Reid May 24, 2023May 30, 2023

Lee Breuer’s 1983 reimagining of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus as a Black Pentecostal church service (featuring music by Bob Telson) didn’t make it to Chicago until 1990. But that local premiere at the old Goodman Theatre (where the Art Institute’s modern wing now stands), featuring the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and “Pops” Staples, among […]

Angel Ysaguirre and Charles Newell of Court Theatre stand in front of a Tony Awards backdrop on the red carpet. Ysaguirre has white hair and wears a light pink suit. Newell is bald and in a black suit.

Ghost Light

Tonys, tech awards, and terpsichore

by Kerry Reid June 16, 2022June 16, 2022

Lots of behind-the-scenes news in Chicago theater, and some well-deserved plaudits to note as well this week! At the Tony Awards this past Sunday, longtime Chicago sound designer and composer Mikhail Fiksel took home the top prize for his work on Lucas Hnath’s drama Dana H., which ran locally at the Goodman in fall of […]

Vintage photograph of the audience at the Studebaker

Ghost Light

The Studebaker gets ready to roll

by Kerry Reid May 20, 2022May 25, 2022

Last August, I caught up with Jacob Harvey just as he was taking over as the new (and first-ever) managing artistic director of theaters for the Fine Arts Building. At the time, he noted that with the loss of the Royal George as a midsize rental house, the soon-to-be-remodeled Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts […]

Theater Review

Less is Moor in Court Theatre’s stripped-down Othello

by Sheri Flanders October 21, 2021October 21, 2021

Othello is usually viewed as “Shakespeare’s Race Play” and somewhat rightfully so—after all, the Bard almost never wrote Black characters. In our society race overshadows everything, so much so that much discourse around Othello tends to obstinately revolve around whether or not the play is “racist”—as if an inanimate object were able to take offense […]

Erin Kilmurray, wearing a white shirt and jeans, stands with arms outstretched to the left of the page in front of a blue backdrop.

Theater Preview

Moving through the violence in Othello

by Irene Hsiao October 13, 2021October 13, 2021

A year and a half after the stage went dark, Court Theatre presents its first live performance since the world was plagued with pandemic and the country with civil unrest. The chosen play is Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, which places racial discrimination, misogyny, toxic masculinity, and all the ills not […]