Why does her mother have to be so scared about it? She wants to stand up for what’s right, as she’s been taught. As she explains to the listener, she’s researched the activist groups. Stacey’s walk is propelled by her desire to convince her mother that she’s old enough to go to a protest. “I think I found one piece online eventually.” “It’s a little difficult finding history of the area written by folk of color,” she says. They don’t teach us in school about all the Black people that wanted to be president before Obama.” It won’t be the last time Barrett‘s writing pivots with ruthless grace from wry humor to blunt assessment of real-life ongoing travesties.īarrett had parallel issues in learning about the neighborhood. Probably like a hundred years ago.” And then: “That’s pretty neat. Upon seeing Jesse Jackson’s old stomping grounds: “He was a Black man who ran for the presidency. While she’s walking, Stacey muses with often hilariously accurate teenage perspective on the sights and the neighborhood history she’s been taught-or not taught. It just felt like a nice way to begin and end it,” Barrett says. “We so rarely invite young people to exercise control over their bodies in that way. At her final stop, she recalls in immersive detail how her father taught her to find meditative comfort in the waters of Lake Michigan after the killing of Michael Brown. Quenna Lené Barrett’s Stacey’s Walk is narrated by the titular 13-year-old girl (played by Jameela Muhammad) as she navigates from the lagoons of the Jackson Highlands past the Jeffery Theater and the South Shore Cultural Center to South Shore Beach. The map for Stacey’s Walk by Quenna Lené Barrett Credit: Courtesy Chicago Children’s Theatre I know these are sacred stories and I’m definitely a little nervous about people who might frown on some of the sillier elements we worked in. “We have to take an active ownership in our storytelling. “So I literally went to my kids and said, ‘I’m going to tell you some stories and I need you to tell me what you think.’ Because kids can have very short attention spans. I want them to hear about Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Aztecs,” says Cardenas. “I knew I wanted to tell the story of the Mexican flag and the symbols in it-these images people see all the time but may not know the history of, even if they know all the insignias. At one point, they stop at a church that was started by Eastern Europeans and is now used by the Latinx community, an architectural monument to waves of immigrant communities. These include tales that date back to the Aztec Empire and through changes the area has seen and is experiencing right now. Butterflies is anchored in visual cues, including monarch butterflies, which migrate to Mexico by the millions every year, and the snake-bearing eagle central to the Mexican flag.Īs the walk goes down 26 th Street (Cardenas recommends going on a weekend, so you can-at a social distance-experience the street vendors) past shrines, murals, and cafes, the three narrators tell the stories behind local landmarks. “For me, it was an easy pick because it’s such a beautiful, inspiring community that gets a bad rap because it gets a lot of bad publicity,” she says. Lift them all up.”Īrtist/activist Jasmin Cardenas brought her children (Mateo, 8 and Catalina, 5) into the storytelling as the trio explores Butterflies, Aztec Gods and Puerquitos/Sweet Piggie Bread, which she narrates with her children as they make their way through La Villita while playing a vivid game of I Spy. I’d really love to have one for each neighborhood. “So we wanted to offer something that would get them moving, and get them excited about these neighborhoods. “It seems like over time, people are getting less into online entertainment because kids are already spending so much school time online,” Russell adds. Each free episode comes with a map and a detailed audio play narrated by a storyteller (or tellers) taking the walk-virtually-with the participants. “Obviously necessity is the mother of invention,” says CTC artistic director Jacqueline Russell of Walkie Talkies, three separate podcasts each meant to be heard while taking a 20-30 minute stroll through South Shore, La Villita, and Lincoln Park’s North Pond Nature Sanctuary. They are also marvelously engaging, no matter your chronological age. All are wholly outdoors and all will spur kids and their families to explore worlds completely inaccessible via computer screens. Let it be said that if the CDC were to visit CCT, they’d approve of the 15-year-old company’s latest three productions. These are the elements that await within the latest adventures proffered by Chicago Children’s Theatre. Ground Michelle Obama probably walked on.
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