About the Program
As a core value, Theatre Y thrives off of collaboration, dialogue and intimate exchange between itself and its community, and we curate intergenerational spaces where these conversations can happen.
Theatre Y’s Youth Program fosters 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3 relationships between Theatre Y’s collaborators and young people in North Lawndale, with Marvin Tate as the program’s core visionary. As a necessarily collaborative organism, Theatre Y is home to a diversity of high-caliber talent in a variety of art forms, including architecture, sound production, film, and photography. Our objective with this program is to encourage multidisciplinary, lateral thinking in young people and to teach the necessary hard and soft skills for successful careers in the arts and social justice fields. As the program’s coach, Marvin Tate’s extensive and deep-rooted history with the art community of Chicago-at-large will be an indispensable resource to the city’s future artists and educators.
This program will launch youth into their expressive selves through the ancient and timeless practice of puppetry and masks, spoken word, experimental music and found object visual art! Currently, we are working on the Youth Puppet Production of Little Carl, to premiere May 27th, 2023 at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.
For more information, please contact Emily Bragg at emilybragg@theatre-y.com or email info@theatre-y.com.
About the Mentor
Marvin Tate is a Chicago native, born and raised in the North-Lawndale neighborhood. He is an award-winning Poet, Performer, Visual Artist and Educator. His works have been featured on stages internationally and locally, e.g. National Public Radio’s, “This American Life”, Def-Jam Poetry and on the BBC Radio program “The Poetry Detective”.
He has been active in the Chicago music scene since 1993. He has collaborated with Visual Artist, Theaster Gates Jr. and the Black Monks of Mississippi, Video Artist, Jefferson Pinder, and a motley crew of musical talents that include: Leroy Bach, Angel Olsen, Bill MacKay, Tim Kinsella, and Jazz Artists: Ben LaMar Gay, Angel Bat Dawid, Mike Reed, French experimentalist, The Bridge, Composer, Ernest Dawkins, and Soundscape Artist Joseph C. Mills.
Marvin's art is exhibited in many galleries and museums, including The Intuit Museum in Chicago, one of the world's premier museums dedicated to presenting self-taught art.
Tate is represented by The Hana Pietri Gallery in Chicago. Tate combines raw theater, with spoken word, poetry, and song to create powerful and personal narratives about love, death, and the struggle to be present in a constantly changing world.
Collaborator
Michael Montenegro is artistic director of Theatre Zarko which has presented for Chicago audiences original puppet theater plays such as: He Who, Haff (The Man), Sublime Beauty of Hands, Klown Kantos, and Iktu Blas.
For over thirty years, puppet artist Michael Montenegro has been developing his unique style of puppet and mask theater in the Chicago community both as a solo artist and as a collaborator with different theater groups. Commissioned projects include: Argonautica with Lookingglass Theatre, directed by Mary Zimmerman, The War With the Newts and The Long Christmas Ride Home with Next Theatre , and The Puppetmaster of Lodz with Writer’s Theatre which garnered a Jeff Award for Puppet Design. At present he is working on a film entitled Apparaticus in collaboration with Theatre Y.
