What's Inside?
Full Catalogue
Explore our selection of over 40 uniquely Black stories, vividly performed and expertly crafted.
Backstage
Get a deeper dive into the history and making of some of your favorite stories.
Interviews with Icons
Hear directly from some of the most influential talents in Black culture.
Listen Magazine
Enjoy a monthly magazine that contains sneak peeks, insightful information, and other tidbits.
In Memoriam
In loving tribute to our dear friend, our brother, our company member Leonard House Jr., please enjoy free access to hear his heartfelt work in our podcast play, Black and Blue (preview below). Streaming until March 31st.
First Monday Releases
Andrea J. Dymond has built a career in Chicago sitting at the helm of new plays and introducing them to their very first audiences. Her career spans American Blues Theater (which she co-founded), The Victory Gardens Theater, Paramount Theater and MPAACT to name a few. She is also an independent producer, regularly taking plays to the fringe festival in Edinburgh Scottland. Her accolades are many, but it is in the trenches where Andi has made her name. She is a producer/director/collaborator who has added to the distinctiveness of decades of American Theater.
Writer, a respected but obscure Black playwright, attempts to write the perfect, producible Black play. Despite Writer’s efforts, her inclination toward truth and honesty in art conflicts with her desire for commercial viability. Try as she may to write the quintessential Black play that falls within the comfort zones of white and Black audiences, her subconscious artistic and political sensibilities leap to the fore.
Her characters rebel. Finally, a humorous and suspenseful coup. Writer is killed. The catatonic momma on the couch and the ethnically ambiguous European bombshell maid are killed. Angry Young Buck is killed. A new matriarch—Grandma—emerges. And with all of the clichés effectively deconstructed and out of the way, Monica (the pretty little sister) will begin a play of truth and honesty. Or can she?
A Lydia Diamond play is a delightful set of challenges. Her characters are most often set in upper-middle class environs – a choice that has often been met with criticism. Are her characters ‘Black enough” if they are also upper middle class? Can Black characters be authentically both?
Spoiler alert, the answer is yes. But that doesn’t mean that her work was easy to produce or readily welcomed in the commercial marketplace. Join the cast and Director Lauren Wells-Mann as they take deep dive into this little produced gem by Lydia Diamond.
Returning to Our Roots
From the time of our ancestors, our story and our history has been told orally. The Griot in our villages kept and told the oral history of our people, and passed it down to the next generations. More recently, our transplanted elders gathered the family around the victrola radio in the living room and listened to the news and stories of the world, as well as weekend episodes of the family’s favorite radio serials.
Birthed during the global pandemic which shuttered our theatre doors for a year, we took heart in the ability to return to our elders’ tradition. MPAACT invites you to stream our Podcast Play Series- radio plays presented for your enjoyment. Gather around with family and enjoy dynamically Black stories presented comfortably in your home.
Who We Are
MPAACT exists to develop, nurture, and sustain Afrikan Centered Theatre [ACT], an artistic expression grounded in the many cultures and traditions of the Afrikan continent and its Diaspora. With a vision focused on creating new work and collaborative art, MPAACT produces and educates with the goal of increasing understanding and appreciation of [ACT] and its interrelated disciplines.
MPAACT has grown from a collective of like-minded individuals who shared an artistic vision, to an organization that has produced a formidable body of work. This work includes: main stage productions, a playwright’s laboratory, standing productions, original music, a publishing company [Sakhu Publications], an arts education program, and many workshops and master classes.
It is important to us as a company that we, in everything we do, pull from the disparate cultural elements which unite artists in the Afrikan Diaspora. Drawing from the well that nourished artists such as Wole Soyinka, Charles Mingus, Adrienne Kennedy, Amiri Baraka and Bob Marley among others, we create and perform work, which examines and celebrates the many facets of Afrikan theatre.
Want to learn more? Visit our official website mpaact.org!
Contact
Greenhouse Theatre Center
2257 N Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60614
information@mpaact.org
661.373.3089
Mail: P.O. Box 10039
Chicago IL, 60610