Jenise Sheppard Archives - Chicago Reader

Three Black actors playing the Younger women in A Raisin in the Sun are seated onstage. Two are on the couch at left, seated at either end.

A Raisin in the Sun comes home to the south side

by Tracy Baim February 13, 2023February 13, 2023

Racial covenants that kept Black people out of certain neighborhoods of Chicago, and across the U.S., are not just a thing of the past. Today, there are organizations including Chicago Covenants still trying to un-do them, and the harm they caused. Chicago-raised playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is perhaps the best known […]

A soldier in tan camouflage and a red beret stands behind a woman in an African dress, holding her arms. Another soldier seated on the right grabs her face.

Theater Review

‘They’re safer with me than at home’

by Amanda Finn February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined can be hard to watch at times. Set in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Nottage’s Mama Nadi (Tekeisha Yelton-Hunter) runs a pool hall where the women don’t just serve beer. Mama Nadi’s brothel is a place of refuge for the men on either side of the civil war […]