Lili-Anne Brown Archives - Chicago Reader

A group of four Black women stand in the foreground of an elegant living room set, while a fifth sits in a chair. Behind them we see a library with a portrait on the wall and two younger Black women and a young Black man.

Debutantes and debacles

by Kerry Reid September 28, 2023October 2, 2023

Pearl Cleage isn’t from Chicago, but she’s been produced enough here that she feels like an adopted playwright at least. Now-defunct Eclipse Theatre Company (dedicated to the one playwright, one season model) offered a season of Cleage plays back in 2007, and that same year, Court Theatre did a stunning revival of her 1992 frontier […]

The exterior and marquee of the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, shot from across Lincoln Avenue and looking north.

Victory Gardens dismisses remainder of staff

by Kerry Reid September 8, 2022September 8, 2022

The tangled recent history of Victory Gardens Theater became even more complicated this week with the mass dismissal of the remaining staff members in the wake of an attempt to unionize. It’s the latest development in a series of moves that has thrown the survival of the venerable Tony Award-winning regional theater—long a beacon for […]

Four Black women dance in a kitchen. The woman on the left is in gray pants and sweater with a light blouse. The young woman to her right is in a bathrobe and slippers, her hair wrapped in a cloth. An older woman in a long housecoat with a cane stands behind the table. The only one not dancing is seated with a book at the kitchen table on the right, looking skeptically at the others.

Lead in the water

by Kerry Reid June 23, 2022June 23, 2022

I hardly ever start reviews this way, but trust me: stop reading this and hop online to get tickets for Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah, now in its local premiere at Victory Gardens under Lili-Anne Brown’s direction. It’s a profound, poetic, scabrous (and beautifully acted) piece of theater that hits at so many levels that I […]

Chita Rivera in a red dress

Chita Rivera lights up the stage for Porchlight

by Kerry Reid October 19, 2021October 19, 2021

The word “icon” gets tossed around pretty liberally, with every eye-catching ensemble on the red carpet at awards shows declared an “iconic” look. But if anyone deserves that designation, it’s Chita Rivera. The 88-year-old theater legend is in town tomorrow night for Porchlight Music Theatre’s annual fundraising gala, where she’ll receive the company’s ICON Award […]

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play reopens at the Goodman

by Kerry Reid August 3, 2021August 18, 2021

Jocelyn Bioh’s smart comedy at the Goodman examines cliques, colonialism, and colorism.

Art for The Sound Inside

Live at the Goodman offers three views on loss and reinvention

by Melissa Renee Perry May 11, 2021May 19, 2022

Plays by Adam Rapp, Adrienne Kennedy, and Ike Holter make a livestream connection with audiences.

Retail, resistance, and rebirth in Wally World and Kickback

by Kerry Reid December 23, 2020August 18, 2021

Christmas Eve goes to 11 in Isaac Gómez’s workplace comedy; About Face celebrates Black queer lives, past and present.

Dystopia on the air

by Kaylen Ralph October 9, 2020August 18, 2021

A trifecta of radio plays examines the present through the lens of the past.

Lyric, Goodman, Steppenwolf, and CSO face the music

by Deanna Isaacs April 2, 2020August 18, 2021

Major performing arts organizations recalibrate for COVID-19.

COVID-19 has Chicago theater down, but not out

by Almanya Narula March 25, 2020August 18, 2021

Here’s a reminder of what the theater community has done in the last five years.

P.Y.G. or the Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle cuts with double-edged satire

by Kerry Reid November 12, 2019August 18, 2021

A white Canadian pop star and two Black hip-hop artists share a reality-TV crib.

The Color Purple fills Drury Lane’s stage with triple threats

by Jack Helbig September 25, 2019August 18, 2021

Lili-Anne Brown’s staging of the musical based on Alice Walker’s classic novel brings down the house.

Firebrand’s Caroline, or Change revels in tension, both racial and domestic

by Irene Hsiao October 4, 2018August 18, 2021

Firebrand’s production features fearless, fantastic singers.

Why does a sea mammal evoke more sympathy than a Black man?, asks Tilikum

by Irene Hsiao July 5, 2018March 29, 2023

Kristiana Rae Colón’s new play, inspired by the documentary Blackfish, tells the tragic story of an orca whale imprisoned at Sea World.

Nothing is as it seems in Ike Holter’s The Wolf at the End of the Block

by Jack Helbig April 12, 2018August 18, 2021

A case of police brutality turns into a complex morality tale.