HYDE PARK — A play that examines the complexities of race and identification is making its world premiere Friday from a theater program that helps platform native playwrights of shade.
“Black Bone,” written by Tina Fakhrid-Deen, debuts Friday on the Definition Theatre in Hyde Park. The play runs by June 29 at Definition @ fifty fifth, 1160 E. fifty fifth St. Tickets begin at $25 and are on sale.
Definition leased and geared up the storefront area on fifty fifth Road final yr, in order that the corporate can nonetheless host productions because it prepares for Definition’s everlasting dwelling in close by Woodlawn.
Directed by Carla Stillwell, “Black Bone” is a satirical fantasy that “blurs the road between recreation present theatrics and actual life,” in keeping with a press launch. It follows a bunch of Black lecturers at a predominately white establishment. They uncover that one individual amongst them has been “passing” as Black, main the group members to spiral into paranoia as they try and outline Blackness.
Fakhrid-Deen mentioned she was impressed to jot down the play after happening a deep dive into trans-racial passing: when a person makes an attempt to move for a race they aren’t. Throughout slavery and the Jim Crow period, Black individuals who might try and move as a unique race typically would to keep away from enslavement or persecution. Now, the act of trans-racial passing appears to be like a bit completely different.
“Lately, there have been information articles about varied people, professors in academia who’ve been passing for individuals of shade, whether or not that’s Black or Latinx,” Fakhrid-Deen mentioned. “So I used to be fascinated with this shift of whites now making an attempt to move for individuals of shade.”
“Black Bone” is Fakhrid-Deen’s sixth play, however the remainder have been dramas; that is her first satirical piece.
“I simply wished to play in one other style and one other playground,” she mentioned.
“Black Bone” can be the primary full manufacturing to return from the Definition Theatre’s Amplify Sequence.
The Amplify program was born with the objective of working with playwrights, particularly these from the South and West sides, to develop their work. Amplify was based in 2020, when the theater world had largely come to a halt, mentioned Tyrone Phillips, the founding creative director of the Definition Theatre.
The thought was, “If we will’t do tales proper now, we will’t do productions proper now, how can we nonetheless stay artistic?” Phillips mentioned.
The Amplify program is now in its fifth iteration, although Fakhrid-Deen was part of its second sequence. “Black Bone” is the primary play to be born from this system to emerge as a full manufacturing, and it’s the second play Fakhrid-Deen submitted to this system. After her first try was unsuccessful, she reapplied as a result of “the wonder about Amplify is it’s a developmental program, and so you may take one thing from its infancy,” she mentioned.
“There are quite a lot of good playwrights in Chicago, of all races and backgrounds and who haven’t essentially had many platforms inside the metropolis, which is so massive in an incredible theater city,” Fakhrid-Deen mentioned. “Definition is deliberately making an attempt to see us and showcase us, and so it simply feels actually good to be seen.”
Phillips mentioned Amplify fills a niche in Chicago and American theater, in addition to town as an entire: an absence of alternative, particularly for playwrights of shade.
“We’re truly enhancing the American canon,” which could be very whitewashed, Phillips mentioned. “We need to make classics for the American theater.”
Phillips mentioned “Black Bone” was deliberately chosen as the primary full manufacturing play to return out of the Amplify program. Whereas it’s a satire, it critiques assaults on variety, fairness and inclusion which have been coming from President Donald Trump’s administration, even though the play was written years earlier than Trump was reelected, Phillips mentioned.
Fakhrid-Deen mentioned that whereas she hopes the play makes viewers snicker, it’s extra essential to her that it makes viewers assume.
“Who will get to resolve what tradition is? Who will get to resolve what Blackness is, or whiteness or Asianness?” she mentioned.
Fakhrid-Deen additionally needs to problem stereotypes and tropes, she mentioned.
“In case you come throughout somebody like my husband who can not dance, otherwise you come throughout me who can swim, then what?” Fakhrid-Deen mentioned. “Who put these guidelines in place and the place, and what’s the historical past behind the issues that we imagine about completely different teams?”
Phillips mentioned he’s excited concerning the forged, the director and Fakhrid-Deen’s writing. However most of all, “I used to be actually excited for the South Aspect to have a chunk and see this piece that’s born on the South Aspect, from the South Aspect of Chicago,” he mentioned.
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