Has Chicago theater actually changed since 2020?

Within weeks of the release of a video showing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, an open letter from theater artists titled “We See You, White American Theater” emerged.

The letter, signed by artists of color, including many in Chicago, contained a list of demands for the American theater, such as mandatory companywide antiracist trainings and more equitable work hours. More importantly, it put a spotlight on an industry that remained stubbornly white despite efforts to feature a more diverse and more relevant generation. The note also gave voice to thousands of artists who felt unseen and unvalued in an industry that often tokenized them for its own convenience.

Soon, 50,000 artists had signed it. Today, the number of signatures tops 100,000.

But what, if anything, has actually changed for theater actors, directors and behind-the-scenes creatives here in Chicago? As a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times survey of the city’s 21 largest cultural institutions reveals, some major citywide arts organizations have made incremental progress in diversifying their boards and full-time staff, but many won’t discuss their numbers.

As part of that reporting, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times asked some Black Chicago theater makers what has changed for them since 2020. Among those interviewed for this story, even the most optimistic back in 2020 felt no significant change in the years since.

That’s despite the promise of major action by groups themselves, from Seattle, where A Contemporary Theater dismantled and rebuilt its board, to Washington, D.C., where Mosaic Theatre ousted its founding artistic director for “supporting white supremacy.” Here in Chicago, the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theatre, regarded as one of America’s premiere regional theaters, hired Ken-Matt Martin as the company’s first Black artistic director. But he was out a few seasons later after a contentious relationship between Martin and the theater’s mostly white board of directors.

“There’s always hope, but I don’t think I believed in it,” said Kevin Aoussou, associate director at Still Point Theater Collective in Lake View and founding artistic director of the Local Lab Collective, a Chicago-based arts organization using theater to address social issues.

“Because there is a system, there is a theater world that has been created and set up by people who wanted it to be a certain way,” Aoussou said. “And there are a group of people that work in that setup who are saying, ‘Hey, we’re being treated unfairly.’ And that is something that has been happening for generations with no action happening afterwards.”

Today, theater artists say they are watching as the institutions that employ them confront a new series of challenges stemming from President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Even so, at least one artist interviewed said she may have seen a boost in her career due in part to the movement and in part to the general response of Floyd’s killing.

Lili-Anne Brown is a prominent director in Chicago. She was an early signer of the statement and said the movement may have played a role in the rise her career took from the early 2020s until now.

“The first initial reactions were to change the optics very quickly,” she said. “I’ll never really know why my career shot up the way it did, because it happened at a strange time. Was it already happening? Yeah, there was definitely already something happening. Had the pandemic not happened and so much protest in 2020 not happened, would my career be like it is now? I actually don’t know.”

“It was a really crazy time that year, so there was a lot of scrambling. And I think I definitely, in a strange way, may have benefited from people scrambling to have the right optics.”

On notice for hypocrisy, exploitation and cultural erasure

The original 2020 letter was signed by a broad swath of theater artists, including such Broadway luminaries as Cynthia Erivo and Lin-Manuel Miranda, along with impactful locals like Steppenwolf’s Glenn Davis and in-demand playwright Nambi E. Kelley. The statement aimed to inform the white leaders of American theaters across the U.S. that BIPOC artists were aware of the hypocrisy, exploitation and cultural erasure happening on stages and put theaters on notice that the artists planned to speak up.

Soon after came an accompanying list of demands that spanned 31 pages, ranging from cultural competency and antiracist training across organizations to the elimination of six-day rehearsal weeks and “10-12s,” the dreaded tech week rehearsals where show staff and performers often are required to be onsite 12 hours and to work 10.

Yet five years later, nearly every artist of color interviewed for this story, and those who spoke on background, said life in American theater is no different than it was pre-pandemic.

Another common thread quickly emerged: None of the demands in the 2020 letter was new.

“We’ve been asking for the system to change for years, and it hasn’t,” Aoussou said. And, he points out, American theater as an institution was built to make fulfillment of change unlikely. “You’ve created a system that requires designers to only be available for that window of time, because they have to work so hard to do other jobs to make ends meet,” he said.

Some theater professionals felt more optimism about the letter, only to later question its lasting effect. Quenna Barrett, associate professor of theater and performance studies at Governors State University, said she was working at the Goodman Theatre as associate director of education and engagement when the letter was published.

“I remember being appreciative and grateful for all of the artists,” she said. “I remember going through seeing all the artists listed and seeing who I knew from Chicago, and seeing that artists of color were really organizing to demand change.”

Barrett said the fact that people were having these conversations publicly could signify a step in the right direction. She felt “hopeful that if organizations actually listened and truly did the work, it could lead to significant and lasting impacts.”

As for the success of the movement, she said, “I think it was successful in getting institutions to recognize that there was a problem.” At the Goodman, the letter prompted meetings about how to include more diversity, equity and inclusion into the theater’s “IDEAA plan,” or action plan for how the theater planned to use its art and resources to be antiracist, she said.

“We created new programming to respond to some of these demands,” she recalled.

As for the industry as a whole, she said, “My sense is that it was hot for a moment. Like, it felt like a necessary performance, right? And we performed it. And maybe we have closed the curtain and not returned to actually making sure that artists of color are getting what they need.”

Barrett said real change was needed at the top. “I don’t think we have seen a lot of shifts in upper leadership and what those rooms look like, or on boards, which trickles down in how artists have access to that leadership.”

A fleeting moment in time

Some artists thought the timing of the letter, when COVID had closed theaters and put the future of the industry in question, lessened its potential impact. After all, the demands made rounds while theaters were shuttered. No one could say when — or if — they would reopen.

Actor Al’Jaleel McGhee, who has performed on stages throughout Chicago, from the Goodman to Steppenwolf, and toured with a Broadway production, commends the letter’s authors for seizing the moment but said it may have been the wrong moment.

“Everything that was going on in 2020 was in response to police killing with impunity. I felt like that was the conversation. And I love theater and I love theater people, but I know we can get sort of insular sometimes in our theater world.”

As a Black actor based in Chicago, McGhee said his experience isn’t distinguishable in the years post-Floyd reckoning to what he encountered before. He admits he may be a bit of a cynic but says the theaters and directors that hire him now always have.

“It’s still Ron O.J. Parson [a resident artist at Court Theatre], it’s Lili-Anne Brown and it’s still Lydia Diamond [playwright],” he added, referring to, respectively, some of the most prominent theater makers in the Midwest.

McGhee, who earned his masters from Northwestern University in 2021, said, “If we’re not singing or crying, nobody really wants to see [us],” referring to the parts he is offered. “So often my career is [man] in the 1950s in a three-piece suit or, like, jail person. And that’s in TV and theater.” He’s currently cast in “Revolution(s)” at the Goodman, where he plays a lead role. “But he’s still a prisoner, you know,” he said.

Some roles just get recycled. McGhee played the title character in Dominique Morisseau’s “Paradise Blue” in 2017, directed by Ron OJ Parson, and he is set to do so again starting in December. Next year, he’ll act in August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” twice — at the Goodman and outside Chicago in a production directed by Lili-Anne Brown.

McGhee says he is eager to work, but these roles fall in line with his critique of the industry: Black stories are only appreciated if they involve singing or crying, and it’s predominantly a handful of Black directors who provide the bulk of the work available.

But for Brown, the movement itself wasn’t unsuccessful; she said it depends how you measure success.

“Awareness has changed,” she said. “And I think, honestly, that’s kind of the point of making any initial statement. The first thing you have to do is raise awareness. It’s naive to think that people in a bubble understand what is going on outside of that bubble. So the first thing you have to do is make people aware.”

Mike Davis is a theater reporter who covers stages across Chicago.