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.
First Monday Releases
Georges Blaise is a stellar musician. Starting his career in arts and entertainment as a guitarist, this first-generation Haitian American grew up in the Chicago suburbs, born to working-class parents who held great expectations for their youngest child. Never one to follow the well-worn path, Georges left the field of engineering to build a career as a musician. He soon added theater producer to his list of growing credits. As a founder of MPAACT Georges helped establish the company’s first production ensemble and steadied the companies first seasons as a fledgling institution. Happenstance brought Georges in on the ground floor of the launching of WCIU television. Over a three-decade career Georges has produced multiple Emmy award winning television programs and helped expand WCIU from a local station to a national media enterprise in television and radio.
Join us as we look at the man, his journey, and his craft.
Water – a force of nature, an essential element for life, a multi-modal transporter, a bringer of life and death, a nourisher of the many realms of life both seen/unseen and a healer. My return to Cuba is a lyrical anthropological investigation into my initial trip to the country in 2017 shortly after my mother’s passing. It was a journey that I took with my dear Valerie J. Maynard (friend/aunt/guide/visual artist), who herself transitioned in 2022. This trip provided an opportunity to return to sites, people and experiences in an effort to understand how they have shaped my “now.” This most recent visit to Cuba was framed by my participation in the 29th Habana International Poetry Festival. These musings in Water Returns are a glimpse into a 10-day odyssey – made possible with the support of MPAACT.
Plays are like snapshots in time – holding the energy of an era, the weight of history, or the uncertainty of the future for a preadolescent Black boy, as is the case with “Tad in 5th City.”
Orron Kenyetta’s deeply autobiographical “Tad Poems” were adapted into the play “Tad in 5th City,” riding the wave of collaboration between him and Carla Stillwell that is still cresting. In this Backstage offering preadolescent boy meets the measure of himself as a man. Join Orron, Carla, and select cast members as they revisit the multiple stagings of this stellar production.
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