At one point in Theatre Y’s ambulatory Laughing Song: A Walking Dream, Marvin Tate as George W. Johnson (the first Black American recording artist) is asked by a reporter at a press conference, “Is your laugh real, or is it fake?” It’s a reasonable question—but by the end of this four-hour show, which weaves together […]
Tag: George W. Johnson
Posted inAgenda
Blasian March, Laughing Song, Dummy, and Giallo Gelato
The Blasian March, cofounded in New York by onetime Chicago dancer and performer Rohan Zhou-Lee in the wake of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests, has grown to encompass other cities, including New Haven and Los Angeles. Now, thanks in part to Columbia College Chicago’s Asian Student Organization, it’s come to Chicago. As Zhou-Lee […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Marvin Tate takes us on a dreamwalk through North Lawndale
When Chicago poet, sculptor, and musician Marvin Tate was in elementary school, he had a terrible stutter. To help him, his older sister gave him a poem to practice reading aloud. The poem was “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. That’s the one that begins with “We real cool. We/Left school.” and ends with “We/Jazz […]
Posted inMusic
Artist and poet Marvin Tate tees up a busily multidisciplinary July
Even in a city full of talented artists with their fingers in a half dozen projects at once, Marvin Tate stands out as a Renaissance man. The west-side native is extraordinarily industrious as a singer-songwriter, poet, visual artist, playwright, and activist, with a richly diverse body of work, and he’s been a local legend for […]