It’s organized chaos at rehearsal for The Color Purple on a recent afternoon at the Goodman Theatre downtown.
Choreographer Breon Arzell and music director Jermaine Hill are working on an African dance sequence with the cast. Arzell whips around the room performing pieces of routine with small groups of performers. Hill plays notes on his keyboard as he works with actor Shantel Renee Cribbs on vocal timing.
Director Lili-Anne Brown looks on with expert calm. She’s researching costume accessories on her laptop, her mind focused as always on the details.
The Goodman’s take on this American classic promises to be one of summer’s hottest tickets in Chicago. To helm its first-ever staging of the musical, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker, the downtown theater hired Brown, a five-time Jeff Award winner with a reputation for creating musicals that highlight Black voices and stories.
Brown has directed The Color Purple twice before, once at Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace and once at The Muny, St. Louis’ historic outdoor theater. Her impressive resume includes two world premieres at the Goodman: I Hate It Here and Lottery Day, both by playwright Ike Holter. Now, she is bringing a classic musical about the Black experience to one of Chicago’s biggest stages, with a tight-knit cast that’s a who’s who of local creatives.
At rehearsal, as the cast members take their places and the music starts, each group falls into place like pieces of a puzzle. Compared to the mayhem of an hour prior, a cohesive dance sequence unfolds before me. Brown approves, then huddles with Arzell to give notes.
A new world is unlocked
Brown grew up on the South Side in the Pill Hill neighborhood. She recalls watching The Brady Bunch as a child and thinking the Bradys lived in a neighborhood just like hers, with manicured lawns and midcentury modern homes.
“It was like being in the suburbs, but in the city,” said Brown. “It was a very quiet and beautiful neighborhood. But it was the place to be in the ‘80s — very affluent, and everybody knew each other.”
Her household focused on academics: Both of her parents had postgraduate degrees, and Brown, who describes herself as a “gifted” child, was expected to follow suit. She took the SATs for the first time at age 8, studied piano and ballet, and maintained excellent grades, competing in the Math Olympics.
The idea of theater didn’t cross her mind until her junior year of high school, when she switched her area of study in Northwestern University’s summer Cherubs program from engineering to theater without informing her parents.
“It was expected that I was going to be an engineering Cherub,” said Brown. But the theater sounded like a refreshing change of pace to her rigorous academic lifestyle.
That program unlocked a new world. Brown found where she belonged — her “tribe.” She joined the theater group at her high school, Saint Ignatius College Prep, and decided to study theater in college.
It was in her early years at Northwestern that she faced her first professional setback.
“I got kicked out of my acting class, and I left the theater department,” recalled Brown, who switched her major to performance studies. “My acting teacher said that he did not think that I had what it took to be a professional actor and that he would never give me a grade above a C.”
From actor to director
That didn’t deter her: After graduating from Northwestern, Brown launched a 15-year career as a professional actor. What struck her during those years was how few of her friends were being cast.
“Everybody’s so talented, everybody’s so amazing,” she recalled thinking. “How come these people aren’t getting cast? How come it’s the same people over and over? How come it’s the same plays?”
These questions inspired Brown to seek more control in the artistic process. In 2008, with a group of friends, she founded the theater group Bailiwick Chicago. She took on the role of artistic director, with an agreement that she would helm a menu of musicals and new plays.
“We had resident playwrights, and it was really about making something that was run well,” Brown said. “And I think for several years there, we really had a good thing going.”
Bailiwick Chicago had a good run by many metrics, producing multiple award-winning shows before shuttering in 2015. Ultimately, the company’s closure had to do more with internal struggles (as Brown describes it, a power struggle between her and the board over artistic direction) than with performances or ticket sales.
“I had to quit that job to save myself,” said Brown. “I had been taken to the emergency room two times that year. The year that I quit was also the year my house burned down, and I was not being supported well at all.”
From there, Brown went to Victory Gardens Theater as a resident director. However, her tenure ended after the storied Lincoln Park institution splintered during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to protracted disagreements between its company members and its board of directors. The final straw for Brown was the sidelining of Ken-Matt Martin, the company’s first Black artistic director. In June of 2022, she was among a group of playwrights and resident directors who penned an open letter announcing their resignations in support of Martin.
“We are still in the grips of late-stage capitalism. We are still in the grips of the patriarchy,” Brown said recently, reflecting on the power struggles she has witnessed between artists and boards. “Theater is America, so everything that’s a problem with America is a problem in the American theater, and we’re trying to deal with it. Boards run theaters, but the optics are that the artists run theaters.”
Brown is optimistic that American theater can be reformed, but she admits it will be a tough task.
Working with her friends
Even though the theater company that Brown started faltered, it helped her build a core group of friends — and mentees — whom she has held onto over the years.
Gilbert Domally, who is playing Harpo (for the third time), got the call about The Color Purple while he was in New York, performing in The Lion King on Broadway. He requested a leave of absence from the Disney show to star in his fifth production under Brown’s direction.
“I feel like she sees me,” Domally said of Brown, whom he has known since he was a student at Roosevelt University. “I feel like watching her work with other actors, she sees them, and I think that is how you get the best out of someone.”
Nicole Michelle Haskins, who plays Sofia, also is working with Brown for the fifth time. She says that over the years, she’s developed trust with the director.
“She allows me to be the artist that I am, and not the artist that she saw in another show or the artist that may have originated the role,” said Haskins. “She allows us all to shine.”
Mike Davis is WBEZ’s theater reporter.