Displaying items by tag: House of Belonging

Now fully activated, Collaboraction Theatre Company’s new House of Belonging in the Kimball Arts Center, 1757 N. Kimball Ave in Humboldt Park, is a sleek, 4,000-square foot space featuring a new 99-seat flexible studio theater and a 50-seat cabaret with cafe and bar.

In addition to its own productions, Collaboraction is introducing its new You Belong Here series. Curated by company member Sandra Delgado, You Belong Here provides a home for independent artists and groups at any stage in their career, with an emphasis on those who live in close proximity to the Kimball Arts Center in Humboldt Park. The goal is to take the barriers out of self-producing by providing free space and tech equipment, stage management, marketing and PR support and a generous door split model. To learn more or submit a performance proposal, visit collaboraction.org/you-belong-here.

Come to Collaboraction’s House of Belonging in June and enjoy music, art, spoken word, youth performances, events for all ages, and the company's annual, all-day Belonging Bash. Go to collaboraction.org to get your tickets to:

¡Ah Huevo!

Bilingual Improv School Student Showcase

Wednesday, June 3, 7 p.m.

Tickets: $12.50

¡Ah Huevo! is a fully improvised comedy show that showcases the talented students of Bilingual Improv School – the only place where students can take an improv class in Spanglish! Everyone is welcome regardless of their fluency level or cultural background. Hosted by Rudy Mendoza. ¡Ah Huevo! and Bilingual Improv School are part of Collaboraction’s You Belong Here series. Learn more at linktr.ee/bilingualimprovschool.

Marcus Dunleavy: From Bach to Brazil in Preludes & Waltzes

Saturday, June 6, 3 p.m.

Tickets: $25

Sit back and enjoy this intimate evening of classical guitar, storytelling and musical reflection. Pairing works by Johann Sebastian Bach with music by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Garoto, Paulo Bellinati, Guinga, Sérgio Assad and Agustín Barrios, the program reveals unexpected resonances between distant musical worlds. Through brief poetic narration and immersive lighting design, the performance invites audiences into a deeply human listening experience where six strings become vessels for time-honored tales welcoming wandering hearts home. 

Marcus Dunleavy is a classical guitarist, performer, teacher, and interdisciplinary storyteller whose work bridges concert performance, spoken narrative, and theatrical atmosphere. Rooted in the classical tradition while deeply influenced by Brazilian music, his performances explore the emotional and cultural threads connecting Johann Sebastian Bach, Latin America, folk traditions, and contemporary storytelling. This event is presented as part of Collaboraction’s You Belong Here series.

All Skool Assembly: A Hiphop graduation of Nightchurch Emceeskool

Saturday, June 13, 6 p.m.

Tickets: $20

Emcee Skool and Elite Mind Apparel are partnering to present All Skool Assembly: A Hiphop graduation of Nightchurch Emceeskool. 

Enjoy fresh Hiphop from students graduating from Emcee Skool, established in 2018 by veteran Chicago hip-hop artist, poet, storyteller and frequent Collaboraction collaborator Teh’Ray Hale, aka Phenom. The evening will also showcase new fashions from Chicago’s Elite Mind Apparel, known for its “Buy Black” or Not at All collection. Early arrival is strongly advised. Presented as part of Collaboraction’s You Belong Here series.

Casa de Lore's: Cabachet

Sunday, June 14, 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: $25

A solo night of music, stories, and crochet, this high-energy cabaret celebrates the vibrant intersection of Cuban heritage, Miami life and Chicago culture. To experience Cabachet is to feel like you stepped into your prima’s house. Sip a cafecito, eat a pastelito and share some stories in Spanglish, while being serenaded through a dynamic song mix of boleros, salsa, and some Broadway hits. The evening is curated and performed by Lorena Estevez, a first-generation Cuban-American, multidisciplinary artist with her own fiber arts business @casa_delore.

The People’s Pot & Pantry

Monday, June 15, 22 and 29

Doors open at 4 p.m.

Free

Collaboraction looks forward to hosting The People’s Pot & Pantry at The House of Belonging on three consecutive Mondays this month. In an effort to build community ties, strengthen mutual visibility, and battle food insecurity in the performing arts, community members are invited to dine on their dark day. Enjoy a free hearty meal including locally grown produce,  browse the pantry for free items and bring your own containers to take home prepared food for the week. The People’s Pot & Pantry is facilitated by Global Hive Laboratories with Cedillo’s Fresh Produce, a family-run farm located in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. For more, visit globalhivelabs.org. To contact the organisers, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

RADIATE

Tuesday, June 16

6 p.m. creative workshop and sign up; 7 p.m. open mic

Tickets: Free

RADIATE is Collaboraction’s monthly open mic series produced by The Luminaries, alums of Collaboraction’s The Light youth ensemble. Each event begins with a guided workshop that invites participants to explore a theme or social change concept through art and reflection. The Luminaries then open the floor for performances from local artists, students, and community members, closing the night with a showcased featured artist.

THE FREQUENCY

Curated by DJ Lady D

With special guest Dr. Nicole Rawls

Tuesday, Wed, June 17

Doors open and music at 5:30 p.m.

Program at 6:30 p.m.

Suggested ticket: $20

THE FREQUENCY is a bold new monthly live speaker series supporting new energies, emerging thought leaders, and connections. Internationally renowned DJ/producer, TEDx speaker, Recording Academy Chicago Governor, and Collaboraction Executive Director DJ Lady D is introducing THE FREQUENCY to amplify voices, cultivate dialogue, and inspire collective action around today’s most pressing cultural issues. Lady D will bring together artists, activists, civic leaders, and changemakers for immersive experiences that blend music, storytelling, and conversation.

THE FREQUENCY launches in June with special guest speaker Dr. Nicole Rawls, a Black anthropologist, astrologer and artist. Rawls will present “The Body as an Altar,” followed by conversation, collective movement and dancing with DJ Lady D.

The Belonging Bash

A benefit for The Light summer youth program and Collaboraction’s House of Belonging

Saturday, June 20, 2 p.m. to midnight

Tickets: $20-$250

*Purchase before June 10 to take advantage of a 20% early bird discount

The Belonging Bash is an all-day, indoor/outdoor fest with food, drink, DJs and live performances. It starts with an outdoor, family-friendly block party in the Kimball Arts Center parking lot, and leads to a high-energy night of live comedy, music and DJs in Collaboraction’s new House of Belonging. The stacked line-up (at press time) features the Corey Wilkes Quartet staring Meagan McNeal (Lyric Opera’s Safronia, NBC’s The Voice), DJs Larry Miller and Craig Elliott, Dance Loud, DJ Lady D, The Black Puppet Show, Bilingual Improv School, Linda Sol, Vitigrrl, Zion Ali, The Happiness Club, The Light, The Luminaries, Yuri Lane, DJ Dreea, and Maria Huertas with MLTOONS Spanish for Kids. Enjoy food, drinks and community. Support the youth. Fund the future.

Sunday Family Magic with The Magical Myster AJ

Sunday, June 21, 2:30 p.m.

Tickets: $20

Get set for a fast-paced flurry of magic, circus, gut busting laughs and absurdity, guaranteed to enchant kids aged 4-10. This enchanting, interactive, hour-long performance is the brainchild of AJ Sacco, named “Best Magician in Chicago” by the Chicago Reader three years in a row. Tada! It’s funny for adults, too. So, make it a magical family outing for Father’s Day - dads get in free!

Collaboraoke: Real Band Karaoke

Thursday, June 25

Tickets: $25, includes one free drink ticket

Sign up to compete in Round 3 of Collaboraoke. This is your rare chance to show off your karaoke skills, but this time, backed by a live band! Chicago’s own Ocean and the Waves, led by Sam Ocean, is ready to rock your vocals with a 200-song repertoire of karaoke classics. See the full song list at collaboraction.org and start practicing your favorites. Each contest is hosted by Anthony Moseley, Collaboraction’s Artistic Director and crooner extraordinaire. Three winners will be selected to compete in the Collaboraoke Championship, Thursday, July 23 at 7 p.m. Proceeds support The Light, Collaboraction's youth program.

Cómo Se Dice?

Friday, June 26

Doors at 6:30 p.m., Show at 7 p.m.

Tickets: $20

"Cómo se dice?" is a monthly bilingual short-form improv show featuring a rotating cast of professional bilingual actors and comedians. The show is a throwback to the classic TV show, "Whose line is it anyway?" but in Spanglish. Cómo Se Dice? is hosted by Rudy Mendoza and is a premium production of the Bilingual Improv School as part of Collaboraction’s You Belong Here series. 

The show is hosted by Rudy Mendoza and is a premium production of Bilingual Improv School, the only improv school where students can take an improv class in Spanish and English. Learn more atlinktr.ee/bilingualimprovschool.

Frequencyhealing.love

Sunday, June 28, 12 p.m.-2 p.m.

Tickets: $15 students, $25 general admission

Sound, human connection and community healing converge in FrequencyHealing.LOVE, a 3-dimensional vibracoustic and digital sound bath. Creating a safe space where people can celebrate their growth and healing, these gatherings become more than events — they become emotionally restorative environments, holding containers for art, mindfulness, movement, conversation, and vulnerability to coexist harmoniously. More at deepcuddlefrequency.com.

Note: Free and nearby street parking is available at Collaboraction’s new House of Belonging in the Kimball Arts Center, 1757 N. Kimball Ave. in Chicago’s Humboldt Park community. For CTA riders, the 82 Kimball-Homan bus stops right in front of Kimball Arts Center. Collaboraction is also a short walk from the Kimball stop on the 72 North and 73 Armitage bus lines. For bikers and pedestrians, The 606’s Kimball trailhead leads directly to the Kimball Arts Center.

Collaboraction  Theatre Company could not have chosen a more resonant inaugural production for its new House of Belonging than Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till. In this sleek, in-the-round studio in Humboldt Park, the company inaugurates its new home by opening an old wound—one that America has never fully allowed to heal. The result is not merely a staging of history, but an act of communal witnessing, one that insists the past is not past.

Co-adapted by G. Riley Mills and Willie Round and co-directed by Anthony Moseley and Dana N. Anderson, Trial in the Delta transforms the 1955 courtroom proceedings in Sumner, Mississippi, into a visceral live docudrama. Actors emerge, take the stand, and deliver testimony drawn from the long-buried trial transcript of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, the men who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till. In this immersive setting, spectators are not allowed the comfort of distance. You are seated inside the machinery of injustice.

The production’s most devastating power lies in its restraint. This is not melodrama; it is documentation made theatrical. When NK Gutiérrez steps forward as Mamie Till-Bradley, the room seems to recalibrate its breathing. Her presence is not performative grief but moral force. Mamie’s insistence on truth—her refusal to look away, her demand that the world see what was done to her son—becomes the spiritual engine of the evening. Darren Jones’s Mose Wright, Mysun Aja Wade’s Willie Reed and Donald Fitzdarryl’s Chester Miller, embody the perilous bravery of Black witnesses testifying in a Jim Crow courtroom, where truth itself was an act of defiance.

The ensemble functions as a grim chorus of American roles: judges, clerks, journalists, sheriffs, defendants, and bystanders. Richard Alan Baiker’s Judge Curtis Swango carries the chilly authority of a system that pretends neutrality while protecting white supremacy. Tyler Burke and Matt Miles, as Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, avoid caricature; their ordinariness is the horror. Evil here is not monstrous but banal, upheld by procedure and custom. That banality is the production’s sharpest blade.

Prosecutor Gerald Chatham (John Henry Roberts, center) holds a photo of Emmett Till as he asks Till’s murderers Roy Bryant (Tyler Burke, left ) and J.W. Milam (Matt Miles, right) if they recognize their victim, as Till’s mother Mamie Bradley (NK Gutiérrez) looks on, in Collaboraction's Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till. 

Emmy Weldon’s set and Levi Wilkins’s lighting make elegant use of Collaboraction’s new 99-seat flexible studio, shaping the room into a courtroom that feels both provisional and eternal—anywhere, anytime. Shawn Wallace’s original music hums beneath the proceedings like a low current of grief and warning, while Warren Levon’s sound design places the audience inside a sonic environment of testimony, tension, and aftermath. The design team’s work never distracts; it quietly conspires with the text to tighten the emotional vise.

What distinguishes this staging from earlier iterations is how fully the new space is activated as a moral arena. The reserved jury seating—occupied by audience members—does more than gesture at interactivity. It implicates. You are reminded, without theatrical gimmickry, that verdicts are rendered not only in courtrooms but in communities, institutions, and histories. The post-show “Crucial Conversation” deepens that charge, extending the production beyond performance into dialogue—an extension of Collaboraction’s KEDA methodology in action.
KEDA—Knowledge, Empathy, Dialogue, and Action—frames the company’s belief that theatre should not end with reflection, but move audiences toward change.

Opening the House of Belonging with Trial in the Delta is a statement of values. This is not a theater christened with spectacle or escapism, but with reckoning. In a cultural moment eager to repackage or blunt the edges of history, Collaboraction insists on confrontation. The question the production leaves behind is not simply what happened in 1955, but what we have allowed to keep happening since.

Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till does not offer catharsis. It offers clarity. It reminds us that justice delayed is not just justice denied—it is justice rehearsed in different forms, across different bodies, in different decades. In Collaboraction’s new home, the walls are fresh, the tech is state-of-the-art, and the future feels open. But the story told on opening night is a reminder that belonging, in America, has always been contested—and that the work of making it real is unfinished.Top of Form

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

When: Extended through March 29th!

Where: Kimball Arts Center, 1757 N. Kimball Ave

Running time: under two hours, including a short Crucial Conversation after every performance

Tickets: $25 - $55.00 (10% discount for groups of 10 or more)

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