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FIVE PLAY SEASON OF EXCELLENCE

“Black Ensemble has so established itself as a place to relax, let yourself go and have fun that the stage was quickly packed with both genders, all races and all physcial persuasions…and there was a smile on every face in the joint”
-Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
“The wholly irresistible new show at Black Ensemble Theater has the ability to restore your emotional health and lift your joyfulness quotient straight off the charts. After all, that tends to be the effect of pretty much all of the company’s productions – shows that also manage to forge a connection between audience and perfomers that is close to foolproof”
-Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

Our Five Play Season of Excellence produces 5 world premieres a year. Our productions educate, entertain, inspire and challenge. We concentrate our stories on historical entities that may be lost or forgotten to insure that the impact of African American culture is preserved and documented. Each play delivers a positive message to its audience and is of cross-cultural interest. Through sharing these stories, we are documenting and preserving African American history while bringing together different races and cultures in order to help people acknowledge our sameness, while accepting and understanding our uniqueness as human beings.

Our plays are written specifically for the Black Ensemble Theater so that we may continue to achieve our mission of eradicating racism. To this end our plays must promote racial interaction, communication, understating and acceptance. Each and every production must be uplifting, historical in nature and utilize music. We feel the utilization of music is vital in that this medium in itself already crosses cultural barriers and has a language of its own that goes beyond ethnic origins. Our Five Play Season of Excellence runs 48 weeks out of the year, January — December.

As a constant source of continual employment for African American artists, designers and technicians, we are assisting a community that is underserved in the cultural community. We are also enhancing the economic growth and development of the African American artist.

Black Ensemble Theater has demonstrated our ability to continually provide theater of excellence, theater that speaks to all people and theater that is a step about all the rest in reaching out to a cross cultural community. The impact of the Black Ensemble Theater productions has been overwhelmingly entertaining and educational with the ability to speak in a language that can be understood by all, no matter race, creed and color.

Nicholas Brothers

Josephine Baker

Young Play Dance

Harlem Renaissance

Sammy Davis Jr.