The fictional work debuted in Chicago in 2024 and moved earlier this year from Steppenwolf to Broadway, where it currently plays with most of its original Chicago cast. Directed in New York and Chicago by Phylicia Rashad, it’s loosely based on the family of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

This marks the first time a play first seen at Steppenwolf has won the prestigious prize since Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County” in 2008.

In a joint statement to the Tribune, Steppenwolf artistic directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis said that the “Purpose” win “underscores our company’s time-honored commitment to developing ensemble-driven, new works.” The play was also nominated for a Tony Award last week, along with several members of its cast.

The 2025 winners of the Pulitzer Prizes, presented annually by Columbia University, include nine winners across eight arts categories for books, drama and music. Awards for journalism were also announced Monday.

“James,” by the novelist Percival Everett, won for fiction.

The book, which previously won the Kirkus Prize and a National Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, used Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as its starting point, reworking the story from the perspective of Jim, now James, Twain’s escaped slave. It was a risky kind of bestseller from a longtime author and professor of English at the University of Southern California, whose previous breakthrough 2001 novel “Erasure” was later adapted as the Oscar-nominated movie “American Fiction.” Critics felt Everett more than lived up to his source, both honoring Twain and deepening the 1885 original.

Everett told the Tribune last year, “I think people assume because I am revisiting Twain, I am correcting. I love Twain’s novel. It doesn’t arise from dissatisfaction. if anything, I am flattering myself thinking I am in conversation with Twain.”

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

Tribune writer Christopher Borrelli contributed to this report.

2025 Pulitzer Prize winners in the arts

FICTION: “James” by Percival Everett (Doubleday)

DRAMA: “Purpose” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

HISTORY:

• “Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press)
• “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America” by Kathleen DuVal (Random House)

BIOGRAPHY: “John Lewis: A Life” by David Greenberg (Simon & Schuster)

MEMOIR: “Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, by Tessa Hulls (MCD)

POETRY: “New and Selected Poems” by Marie Howe (W.W. Norton & Company)

GENERAL NONFICTION: “To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement” by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press)

MUSIC: “Sky Islands” by Susie Ibarra

Sitting there at “Wake” on Friday night, I found myself hoping that Terry Guest, the writer-performer behind this world premiere from Story Theatre (in residence at Raven Theatre) would not let the voluminous audience reaction go to his head. Steeped in his own sense of Southern gothic, Guest is a huge Chicago writing talent; I’ve admired his work since I saw “Magnolia Ballet” some three years ago. “At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen,” which was first produced even before that, could really be something. But that will take more focus and work, and maybe even Guest giving up his starring role.

Guest has said that his 85-minute piece, a two-hander also starring the phenomenal Paul Michael Thomson, was inspired by the death of Guest’s uncle from AIDS at the age of 35. The show is set in 2004, backstage at a small-town Southern establishment where a drag queen named Courtney Berringers (Guest) holds nightly court. Through the narration of this character, whose “government name” is Anthony Knighton, we learn of struggles and aspirations, as you might expect, but Guest also builds a complex picture of one who has built impermeable personal walls of such solidity that he has rendered himself incapable of accepting the support he needs. Even when proffered.

Therein lies the core of this show, as directed by Mikael Burke.

Thomson’s character, a young man named Hunter Grimes, falls in love with his fellow performer. Grimes performs as Vickie Versailles but off stage he focuses mostly on trying to connect with his friend. Since Anthony is Black and Hunter is white, the two debate issues of race and oppression as they change their gowns, both being outsiders in a sometimes cruel town.

In these moments, “Wake” is very moving. It’s fundamentally a piece about friendship and boundaries and you hardly need to perform in drag to recognize its topography.  Thomson is credible at every single moment. As vulnerable as he is forceful, this actor inhabits a wounded character who is unafraid to deviate from the drag queen cultural gospel, not all of which he even knows. We intuit that Hunter has figured out that love is the only means to salvation.

Truly, Thomson’s work as the second banana in this show is one of the best pieces of acting I’ve seen this year in Chicago. As his friend spirals downwards, this character keeps calling and calling. To say that the audience becomes invested in this relationship is to understate. Burke, the very capable director, clearly focused there.

Guest is very potent and entertaining, don’t get me wrong, although I think if he stepped out of the show for a while in favor of one of Chicago’s many professional drag queens with top-shelf lip synching skills, he’d be better able to see what it now needs. That’s mostly specificity: Of performance, of theme, of time and of location. Ideally, we’d have a better sense of how the performance space separates from the backstage areas and of what a small-town Southern drag club really looked, felt and sounded like in 2004. The set here, from Alyssa Mohn, is rich in symbolism but I found myself wondering about who and what went where and why.

To my mind, the flashback structure also needs more clarity and although Guest clearly started down the road of using the drag performances to mirror the relationship we are watching unspool, it could go much further for a greater sense of unity; as of now, the musical numbers live somewhat uneasily within the whole, lacking the snaps and pops of climaxes.

The show is already attracting and exciting an audience; the remaining challenge, which could make this a show that could live long here in Chicago or even off-Broadway, is to raise the emotional stakes and yet better honor those artists who lived, worked, and sometimes died, all too young, long before RuPaul.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: “At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen” (3 stars)

When: Through May 25

Where: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.

Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Tickets: $25-$45 at 773-338-2177 and thestorytheatre.org

Not that many, would be the honest truth.

Women buy most theater tickets, and data consistently shows that most heterosexual men in a theater audience have been coaxed there by a female partner.  Dudes, especially in friend groups, are an endangered population in a theater lobby, and that’s particularly the case when it comes to Black men. Thirty-some years of theatergoing have also taught me that’s especially true in Chicago, with rare exceptions. Which brings me to playwright Lolita Chakrabarti’s “Hymn,” if you get the double meaning of the title.

Here’s a modestly ambitious, highly enjoyable show that celebrates African American friendship and is directed by Ron OJ Parson with such exuberance that you leave thinking there actually could be few things better than finding a long-lost brother that you never thought you had. And that’s the case even though “Hymn” actually deals with such very serious topics as addiction and suicide, and works to probe the fragility of the Black middle-class in Chicago, especially during the COVID era.

Chakrabarti likes to introduce themes of social justice in her work, sometimes predictably and moralistically so, but Parson invariably ensures that the great Black life force takes center stage in his shows, and that’s where “Hymn” lands in its U.S. premiere. The right partnership, then.

Parson foregrounds the power of friendship, the strength of Black familial bonds (whatever troubles they may also bring), and the ability of one brother to love another with such power that all else drops away at the end.  Although much of the soundtrack is part of Chakrabarti’s script, Parson long been a master of old-school, intra-show playlists and this one includes such pleasures as “Lean On Me,” “Got to Get You Into My Life” and “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” not to mention “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” which is especially apt, given the show’s themes.

In this two-character show, Parson has two Chicago actors in James Vincent Meredith and Chiké Johnson who can pull off this joy. Both men have deep experiential benches and watching the pair of them Friday night, I was struck by how clearly they were loving doing this show, leaning into its positivity. Both of them are entirely convincing all night long as their characters traverse from wariness to full-on acceptance and then back to wariness, life bringing the challenges that it invariably does. They’re just an unmitigated pleasure to watch for the play’s entire 100 minutes.

“Hymn” actually began as a play set in the U.K. (It starred Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani and was streamed live during the pandemic). For the U.S. premiere, Chakrabarti rewrote the play so it was set on the South Side of Chicago. That carefully wrought rewrite mostly works, even if lifelong Chicagoans likely will find it something of a glancing blow, location-wise, rather than a deeply specific dive. I had trouble fully believing one central event involving Michigan Avenue in the play (which I don’t want to reveal any more than that), given how there would be more checks at that level in reality. But going with that device really is not a big ask. Everything in this show feels believable, honest and raw. And there is the additional benefit of a lovely, rather cinematic setting from Rasean Davonté Johnson that wisely focuses on the emotional landscape of the two central characters, manifesting their doubts, fears and faith in each other.

I hope some members of the aforementioned, hard-to-reach audience make it to this play.

I’ve had a lifelong love of works that don’t offer up heroes or villains but fundamentally good people doing their best under very difficult circumstances over which they have only limited control.

Here, we watch two men trying to go forward with their lives, deal with their own mistakes and stay centered in a tough city.

“Hymn” is centered on father, brothers, and friends, on trust and guilt, on despair and hope. Whoever we are, we all deal with that stuff and not only is this a show about finally finding someone who has your back, you surely will feel like this lovable show has your back, too.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: “Hymn” (3.5 stars)

When: Through May 25

Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Tickets: $52-$95 at 312-365-5600 and www.chicagoshakes.com

Mordine died early Friday from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, according to her daughter Ann Mordine. She was 89.

Born Shirley Ann Macaulay on Jan. 8, 1936, Mordine grew up in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California. She attended Fremont High School there and received dance training from the San Francisco Ballet School. Mordine also studied with noted choreographers Anna Halprin and Welland Lathrop, who were key influences in forming Mordine’s idiosyncratic, theatrical style of modern dance.

Mordine graduated from Mills College in 1958, where drama professor Arch Lauterer deepened her interest in theater. It was a boom time for modern dance on the West Coast. Several of Mordine’s contemporaries moved to New York to pioneer a burgeoning postmodern movement (Simone Forti, Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer among them), but Mordine initially stayed in the Bay Area, piecing together freelance performance and teaching work. She met Glenn Mordine in an Oakland bar while listening to Dave Brubeck. The couple married and quickly had three children, Alex, Ann and Michael, settling in Chicago’s northern suburbs in 1967. Mordine lived in Evanston for decades and was a longtime member of the  Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. She often tapped into Chicago’s architecture and culture as sources of inspiration.

“She loved Chicago,” said Ann Mordine. “She loved the grittiness and tapped into that as a resource.”

Mordine picked up teaching gigs at Hull-House and Urban Gateways. She was an artist-in-residence at Evanston Township High School and took a part-time job teaching dance in the theater department at Columbia College Chicago. In 1969, Mordine simultaneously launched The Dance Troupe (later called Mordine & Company Dance Theater) and a new dance department at Columbia College. She would chair that department for 30 years.

“It is impossible to fully measure the profound and lasting impact Shirley has had on the Chicago dance community,” said Chicago Dance History Project executive director Michael McStraw, a dancer and managing director for Mordine & Company Dance Theater. “What can be measured, however, is the transformation she elicited in me as a dancer, arts administrator and admirer of her incomparable artistry and body of work.”

In 1972, Mordine spearheaded the formation of the Dance Center Columbia College to house the school’s dance department. By the late 1990s, the Dance Center had outgrown its landmark building on Sheridan Road in Uptown, moving to the heart of Columbia’s South Loop campus in 2000. In 1974, Mordine originated the Dance Presenting Series, which brought prestigious contemporary dance companies and artists to Chicago, often for the first time. In 1991, Mordine produced the first Dance Africa Chicago, which ran for well over a decade and has periodically been revived by other organizations.

To date, Dance Center Columbia College remains the city’s only arts presenter dedicated exclusively to dance.

During and after her time at Columbia College, Mordine’s insatiable curiosity kept her creating dances for Mordine & Company, which made regular appearances on the Dance Presenting Series.

“I always think of making dances in terms of what I observe in the world,” she said in 2017. “’Every dance should be new, strange and beautiful.’ I don’t remember who told me that, but I like it.”

Mordine & Co. — the reason we have modern dance in Chicago — celebrates its 50th birthday

Mordine & Company Dance Theater operated as a repertory company for 50 years — earning credit as the Midwest’s longest-running modern dance company. Mordine relocated to California in 2021. Former dancer and longtime board president Philip Martini dissolved the company in 2023, handing Mordine’s extensive archive to the Newberry Library. A network of former dancers, led by longtime company member Danielle Gilmore, remounts select works for various companies and festivals.

“There are so many of us that can say with conviction that we genuinely owe Shirley for what we became,” said Martini. “From the few companies that used gymnasiums and storefronts to stage their work, we now have a vital community that extends far beyond the borders of this state and the Midwest that can trace its beginnings back to Shirley.”

Indeed, generations of “Mo & Co” alums form the fabric of Chicago’s contemporary dance scene. Several still teach at the Dance Center. Among the qualities they hope to impart to students today are Mordine’s uncompromising standards and tenacity.

“Shirley surrounded herself with visionary artists, collaborators and dancers who shared her passion for dance and theater,” said Pamela McNeil, who joined Mordine & Company in 1992 and recently retired from the Dance Center. “She was uncompromising when it came to the work, never settling — always pushing for more.”

As an observer of her choreography for more than three decades, former Tribune dance critic Laura Molzahn said her eager, restless mind stood out.

“She often seemed to rethink and revise her works,” said Molzahn. “And she was always looking for the source of the next dance, whether it was a novel or a new aspect of current culture or an abstraction or the way that modern dance might intersect with classical Indian forms. Shirley was tough, in a way most women choreographers had to be to get by.”

“She wasn’t just a dancer,” said Ann Mordine. “She did something big and lasting, contributing to dance, to Chicago and to other people’s lives. I’d like her to be remembered in that way. She worked hard and left something meaningful behind.”

Mordine is survived by her former husband, Glenn Mordine, and their three children, Alex, Ann and Michael.

Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic.

A cautionary tale: Do great work in a bad production and Tony nominators likely will pass you by.

But the reverse can be true, too. The number one reason the Tony-nominated “Maybe Happy Ending,” a sweet and deeply thoughtful romance between two retired robots, was such a sleeper hit was the achingly vulnerable performance of Helen J. Shen.

Guess who did not get a Tony nomination.

Darren Criss was impressive in that show, too, but his was a stylized and somewhat self-protected performance that relied on his well-honed technique. Playing a robot with abandonment issues, Shen laid out her heart at the Belasco Theatre. There’s no question Nicole Scherzinger produced the most astonishing musical performance of the Broadway season. But the second best? Shen’s work, for sure.

Pity David Foster, too. Here you have an enormously accomplished, 75-year-old composer — 16 Grammy Awards, co-writing credits on megahits like Earth Wind and Fire’s “After the Love Has Gone,” Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” and Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry,” to name but three — who dreamed up a delightful and fully accessible score for “Boop! The Musical.” This lush, dreamy and string-heavy affair is so instantly pleasing to the ear that director Jerry Mitchell is able to persuade the audience to enthusiastically sing along with a number, “Why Look Around the Corner,” they’d heard for the first time just a few minutes earlier.

Foster, who also penned one of the season’s best new songs in “Where I Wanna Be,” lost out on the nomination list to the cheerfully rudimentary score for “Real Women Have Curves.”

I doubt many who had been in that show’s audience could tell you the name of a single song one day later. But Foster, a Canadian who has worked mostly in Hollywood, has never been a Broadway insider and no nomination came for him. An egregious omission. “Death Becomes Her” is a very entertaining show, score included, but it’s a lively pastiche. The music in “Boop!” is far superior to that, too.

Tony nominations are complicated affairs: Since the competitive field is different in every category, some illogicalities are inevitable. Director David Cromer’s work on “Good Night, and Good Luck” was far more complex, and yet more impressive, than his work on “Dead Outlaw,” a fine and worthy show but very much in his pre-existing wheelhouse. The Tony nomination went to the wrong one; the same was true for lighting designer Heather Gilbert, whose work on the George Clooney CBS studio extravaganza was simply astonishing.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose” rightly enjoyed many nominations, but the most complicated performance on that stage, the one from Alana Arenas, was missed. And both Michael McKean and Bill Barr were better than Bob Odenkirk in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which is no knock on Odenkirk; he just wasn’t cast in the best role for him.

To their credit, the Tony nominators did indeed nominate the best five new plays of the year, and I have few quibbles with nominators’ choices for best leading actor and actress in either play or musical. It was good to see Danya Taymor nominated for her remarkable direction of “John Proctor is the Villain,” a work of such craft that she made a mostly predictable and overpraised play feel exciting and spontaneous.

Precisely how Brooks Ashmanskas could be considered a featured performer in “Smash,” — despite seeming to be present at every moment in a problematic musical he basically held together by sheer force of personality — is a mystery to me. But he deserves some nod for that feat of endurance, anyway.

Nominators flipped far more than me for “Buena Vista Social Club,” a formulaic musical in every way except for the excitement generated by its music. And while I greatly enjoyed “Death Becomes Her,” a show that survived a very quiet change in its lead producer, its whopping 10 nominations perhaps go too far.

Award slates are always going to start arguments, of course. But the painful truth in a spring where few of the new musicals are grossing enough to cover their weekly running costs is that shows beyond the Best Musical nominees are going to struggle to survive the summer. We’ll have to see how much audiences agree with the Tony nominations; sometimes they pick different favorites.

Nominations for ensemble members from “Purpose” include Jon Michael Hill in the best actor in a play category and Steppenwolf artistic director Glenn Davis for best featured actor in a play. Other nominees from the Broadway production, by lead producer David Stone, include LaTanya Richardson Jackson for best actress in a play, Harry Lennix for best actor in a play and Kara Young for best featured actress in a play.

Steppenwolf executive director Brooke Flanagan said Thursday morning that the five “Purpose” nominations “are a testament to our theater’s storied commitment to investing in ensemble-driven new plays for the American canon.”

The longtime Chicago director David Cromer was nominated for his work on the musical “Dead Outlaw.” Chicago lighting designer Heather Gilbert, a frequent Cromer collaborator, was nominated (with David Bengali) for her work on Cromer’s production of “Good Night, and Good Luck,” and former Steppenwolf artistic director Anna D. Shapiro’s Broadway production of “Eureka Day” was nominated in the category of best revival of a play.

Screen actor George Clooney was nominated for leading actor for “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

“Death Becomes Her,” a musical that tried out in Chicago, scored a formidable 10 nominations, including an all-important nod for best musical, as well as nominations for both of its stars, Jennifer Simard and Megan Hilty.

“Boop! the Musical,” which also began in Chicago, missed out on the best musical category but saw Tony nominations for star Jasmine Amy Rogers, choreographer Jerry Mitchell and costume designer Gregg Barnes.  And yet another Chicago tryout,  “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” earned a Tony nomination for its star, James Monroe Iglehart.

Three Broadway shows stood out in the list of nominations —  “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending,” each earning 10 nominations Thursday. Some 29 shows were recognized across 26 categories.

The 2025 Tony Awards will be presented by the American Theatre Wing and Broadway League in a ceremony at 7 p.m. June 8 at Radio City Music Hall in New York, hosted by “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo and broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Nominations in the top categories for the 78th annual Tony Awards.

BEST MUSICAL

“Buena Vista Social Club”

“Dead Outlaw”

“Death Becomes Her”

“Maybe Happy Ending”

“Operation Mincemeat”

BEST PLAY

“English”

“The Hills of California”

“John Proctor Is the Villain”

“Oh, Mary!”

“Purpose”

BEST LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY

Laura Donnelly, “The Hills of California”

Mia Farrow, “The Roommate”

LaTanya Richardson Jackson, “Purpose”

Sadie Sink, “John Proctor Is the Villain”

Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

BEST LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY

George Clooney, “Good Night, and Good Luck”

Cole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”

Jon Michael Hill, “Purpose”

Daniel Dae Kim, “Yellow Face”

Harry Lennix, “Purpose”

Louis McCartney, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow”

BEST LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

Jasmine Amy Rogers, “Boop! The Musical”

Megan Hilty, “Death Becomes Her”

Audra McDonald, “Gypsy”

Nicole Scherzinger, “Sunset Blvd.”

Jennifer Simard, “Death Becomes Her”

BEST LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

Darren Criss, “Maybe Happy Ending”

Andrew Durand, “Dead Outlaw”

Tom Francis, “Sunset Blvd.”

Jonathan Groff, “Just in Time”

Jeremy Jordan, “Floyd Collins”

James Monroe Iglehart, “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical”

BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL

Saheem Ali, “Buena Vista Social Club”

Michael Arden, “Maybe Happy Ending”

David Cromer, “Dead Outlaw”

Christopher Gattelli, “Death Becomes Her”

Jamie Lloyd, “Sunset Blvd.”

BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY

Knud Adams, “English”

Sam Mendes, “The Hills of California”

Sam Pinkleton, “Oh, Mary!”

Danya Taymor, “John Proctor Is the Villain”

Kip Williams, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

BEST FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY

Tala Ashe, “English”

Jessica Hecht, “Eureka Day”

Marjan Neshat, “English”

Fina Strazza, “John Proctor Is the Villain”

Kara Young, “Purpose”

BEST FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY

Glenn Davis, “Purpose”

Gabriel Ebert, “John Proctor Is the Villain”

Francis Jue, “Yellow Face”

Bob Odenkirk, “Glengarry Glen Ross”

Conrad Ricamora, “Oh, Mary!”

BEST FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL

Natalie Venetia Belcon, “Buena Vista Social Club”

Julia Knitel, “Dead Outlaw”

Gracie Lawrence, “Just in Time”

Justina Machado, “Real Women Have Curves”

Joy Woods, “Gypsy”

BEST FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL

Brooks Ashmanskas, “Smash”

Jeb Brown, “Dead Outlaw”

Danny Burstein, “Gypsy”

Jak Malone, “Operation Mincemeat”

Taylor Trensch, “Floyd Collins”

BEST PLAY REVIVAL

“Eureka Day”

“Our Town”

“Romeo + Juliet”

“Yellow Face”

BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL

“Floyd Collins”

“Gypsy”

“Pirates! The Penzance Musical”

“Sunset Blvd.”

BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL

“Buena Vista Social Club”

“Dead Outlaw”

“Death Becomes Her”

“Maybe Happy Ending”

“Operation Mincemeat”

Complete list of nominations at www.tonyawards.com

Co-founded by Cerda in 2002, Handbag specializes in campy pop-culture parodies, from its series of so-called “lost episodes” of “The Golden Girls” to holiday perennial “Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer” and recent Broadway send-up “Poor People.” Typically featuring actors in drag, absurd plots, witty one-liners and cheeky innuendos, Handbag shows have drawn a loyal following among the LGBTQ+ community “and cool straight people” over the years, as Cerda said in a recent interview.

Written by Cerda and directed by Cheryl Snodgrass, “Scary Town” parodies the style of Richard Scarry, a prolific 20th century children’s author and illustrator best known for his cheery depictions of anthropomorphic animals. Colin Callahan plays the protagonist and Cerda stand-in Deven Bunny, a moody 13-year-old who feels out of place among the relentlessly optimistic residents of Merry Town, where he shares a burrow with his dysfunctional family of 368 bunnies and counting. When Deven discovers a secret about his parentage, he embarks on a quest to learn the truth about his past. This “adult children’s play,” as Handbag bills it, blends whimsy and dark humor to tell a heartfelt family story.

In a recent interview at the theater’s home base in the North Center neighborhood, Cerda recounted the real events that inspired the play. Born in 1961, he grew up as the oldest of four siblings in Hammond, Indiana, an industrial city that borders Lake Michigan and the Illinois state line. Childhood wasn’t easy; his parents often fought, sometimes violently, and both struggled with substance abuse. Plus, he was bullied by schoolmates for being a “really obviously gay kid.”

While working on a school project at age 13, Cerda was surprised to find that his birth certificate listed his mother’s maiden name, rather than his father’s name, as his surname. When he asked his mother about it, she angrily dismissed the question. Although it continued to bother him, he didn’t get any more information until he was an undergraduate at Purdue University Northwest and started going to gay bars in Calumet City, a southern suburb of Chicago then known for its lively nightlife. One evening, a stranger approached Cerda and said she recognized him from family photos; she turned out to be his half-sister.

It took about another decade for his mother to admit to Cerda that he had a different father from the siblings he grew up with, a fact that finally came out in a confrontation that he described as “a big ‘August: Osage County’ moment.” After many more years of twists and turns, including several connections made through Facebook, Cerda learned that his biological father was a Hispanic man whom his mother met while working at a nightclub in Calumet City. He was already married to someone else, and she didn’t tell him when she became pregnant.

“My grandparents were horrified because he was a brown man. It was 1960, and there was no way they wanted her to have the baby,” he said. Some details are still hazy for him, but Cerda understands that he was taken from his mother and raised by Catholic nuns in an orphanage for the first six months of his life. “My mom fought to get me back. She fought the Catholic church and fought the system, and she succeeded, and I was told that’s not easy to do, but it was under the condition that I live with my grandparents while she went to beauty school.”

This early period of separation left its mark on Cerda. He lived with his grandparents, whom he adored, until he was four, and he believes he’s blocked out the memory of leaving their home to go live with his mother. “It was really hard for me to accept love, and it kind of still is, but I’m a lot more open to it. And talking about it really helps because a lot of people feel that way.”

After his mother passed away in 2016, Cerda finally met his biological father, a decision he made after his half-sister sent him a photo of his dad that was taken in his 20s. “That moment just blew my mind because he looks so much like me, and I’ve never had that,” Cerda recalled. “It was really profound for me, and that’s when I decided I have to connect with this person.”

The father who raised him is also still alive, and Cerda has maintained relationships with both men. “Suddenly I have two dads, and my mom’s gone. I just miss my mom because we argued a lot, but we were so much alike in the respect (that) she was a free spirit,” he said. “It really kind of breaks my heart that she was kind of a dreamer, and she never got to fulfill any of those dreams.”

Cerda has chased his own dreams and overcome many struggles since moving to Chicago in 1981. He spent his first decade in the city working in bars and nightclubs, where he learned about queer culture and classic movies from older gay men. “I was part of the new wave, artsy punk scene, and I found great solace in that and with those people,” he recalled. “I was able to express myself through my look because my self-esteem was just so low that I didn’t entertain the idea of writing or performing.”

Even after he changed jobs to work in telemarketing, “I was drinking myself into oblivion,” he said. “I came out in 1980, so I watched a lot of friends die (of AIDS).” He put off getting tested until the early 1990s, expecting to test positive “and just party until I die.” With this nihilistic outlook, “you just don’t picture yourself past 40, let alone 60.”

However, his test results were negative, and after sharing the good news, his doctor asked if he wanted to do something about his drinking. “I just paused, and I said, ‘Yes, I would,’” Cerda recalled. “It was like a spiritual moment. I don’t believe in organized religion, but I do believe in a higher power, something bigger than me, and I just thought at that moment, ‘I’m here for a reason.’”

This conversation prompted Cerda’s journey into sobriety, and a few years later, he met Chris, his partner of nearly 29 years. Around the same time, he wrote his first play, a sobriety-themed take on “The Stepford Wives,” and he also started acting and writing for Sweetback Productions, a company founded in 1994 by Kelly Anchors and Mike McKune.

One of the things that attracted Cerda to Sweetback was its willingness to cast actors who were often overlooked by other theaters — people “whose professors told them, ‘You’re too gay to be a leading man. You’re just a character actress. You’re too heavy to be a leading lady.’”

Although he later had a messy split with Sweetback, Cerda instilled these shared values into Handbag’s work from the company’s inception. (He and Anchors have since reconciled, and she’s an understudy in “Scary Town.”) “We call the (Handbag) ensemble the Island of Misfit Toys,” said Cerda. “Things have changed since we started, and now theater’s open to different body shapes and different types and different gender expressions. … People are a lot more aware, but we were one of the first people to do that. We cast transgender people; it wasn’t a statement when we did it, it was just they were great and they’re our friends.”

Long an itinerant company, Handbag moved into a new rehearsal space, fittingly dubbed “The Clutch,” three years ago. “Scary Town” is the first production to be staged there, and Cerda aims to make it a more permanent home for Handbag performances — though he says “The Golden Girls: Lost Episodes” audiences are too large for the intimate space.

He also hopes the Clutch can serve as “a safe space to create queer art” during a time when the LGBTQ+ community is “under attack.” He elaborated, “I think a lot of young people are just terrified, and especially trans people. We need to make resources available to them. I know so many talented young people. I think they just need to know it’s OK to be scared, but take that and create something with it. You can protest in the streets, but you can also protest on the stage with your art.”

Beyond Handbag, Cerda continues to work with other local theaters on occasion. This spring, he stars opposite Esteban Andres Cruz in A Red Orchid Theatre’s Chicago premiere of “Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin.” In this dark comedy by Dianne Nora, Cerda’s character is a strict, Stanislavski-style actor who’s forced to train a younger performer to play Stalin’s body double.

As for his artistic home, Cerda acknowledges the challenges of operating a small theater (Handbag’s annual budget is under $200,000). Production costs are rising, and audience habits have changed since the pandemic, but he’s still dreaming up new possibilities for the company and remains committed to mentoring younger artists. “In my old age, I want to give everybody else a hand up,” he said. “I still have a lot of ideas and spark, and I think that helps keep me young.”

Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.

“Scary Town” plays through May 11 at Hell in a Handbag Productions, 4335 N. Western Ave.; tickets $35-$43 at handbagproductions.org

The list of Chicago-area dance companies participating this summer includes the Chicago Tap All-Stars, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Giordano Dance Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Joffrey Ballet, Movement Revolution Dance Crew, South Chicago Dance Theatre, Trinity Irish Dance Company and Visceral Dance Chicago, plus a first-time appearance for Aerial Dance Chicago. Choreographer Jonathan Alsberry, who contributed in 2024, will return to create the performance’s finale, a work including dancers from across the Chicago area.

Dance for Life 2025 co-chairs are Jamin and Ekua McGinnis.

This will be the 34th annual fundraiser for the nonprofit Chicago Dance Health Fund, and according to an announcement Thursday, it will have the largest lineup since 1993. More information about the works the companies are performing will be announced in June.

Dance for Life was launched in 1992 to raise money to support Chicago-area dancers in response to the AIDS crisis. In the years since, it formed as a nonprofit and expanded its mission to provide financial support for preventive health care and medical needs for members of Chicago’s professional dance community.

dgeorge@chicagotribune.com

6 p.m. Aug. 16 at The Auditorium, 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive, followed by an After Party Gala at Venue SIX10, 610 S. Michigan Ave.; tickets ($45-$125 for the performance only, $500 for performance and gala) go on sale June 3 at 312-341-2300 and auditoriumtheatre.org. A presale runs May 13 to June 3 with $125 tickets available for $75; use code DFLPRESALE.

Tom Stoppard immortalized two such hapless couriers in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” his 1966 tragicomedy about the minor characters from “Hamlet” who are killed on a voyage to England after the Danish prince swaps a letter ordering his own execution for one commanding theirs. In Stoppard’s absurdist play, the duo swap wordplay and ponder existential questions as they are swept along by events beyond their control.

An unsuspecting emissary from Shakespeare’s most notorious blood-fest gets a similar treatment in “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus,” a 2019 play written by multi-hyphenate theater artist Taylor Mac. The title character is inspired by a bit part, simply called a “country fellow” in the original, who is sentenced to hang by the Roman emperor after he delivers a letter from General Titus Andronicus with a knife tucked inside. Mac reimagines Shakespeare’s country fellow as a street clown named Gary and writes him a new ending: he manages to escape the gallows and is tasked with cleaning up the heaps of corpses left over at the play’s end.

Steve Scott directs Redtwist Theatre’s current production of this sequel, which is staged on the same set (designed by Eric Luchen) as the company’s recent revival of “Titus Andronicus.” With William Delforge playing Gary, the cast also includes Hannah Rhode as Janice, the last surviving maid of the royal household, and Cameron Austin Brown as Carol, the midwife who is killed in the original but survives here.

Mac’s dark comedy takes the perspective of those who are overlooked in the history books — and in history plays — to riff on themes such as revenge, cycles of violence and the nature of power. While the absurdist style and bantering dialogue evoke Stoppard to a certain extent, “Gary” is a much more gruesome and juvenile affair, with phallic jokes, gassy cadavers and several gag-inducing depictions of bodily fluids. While this aesthetic might work for some viewers (and I’m all for low-brow humor in certain contexts), I found it detracted from the play’s potential for a deeper exploration of the ideas raised in “Titus.”

The cast and production team fully commit to Mac’s vision, so much so that Redtwist sells plastic ponchos to any audience members who might be nervous about sitting in the splash zone. Luchen’s set is draped with corpses resembling blood-stained rag dolls, with entrails strung up into the rafters, and props designer Robin Manganaro doesn’t shy away from the more disgusting elements of Gary and Janice’s clean-up duties.

Costume designer kClare McKellaston gives Gary the look of a shabby vaudevillian clown, and he and Janice both speak in exaggerated cockney accents — ’cos that’s what the people expect from clowns and maids, innit? Gary often slips into rhyming couplets, much to Janice’s annoyance, and the dialogue has some funny moments.

In their more serious exchanges, these “three disposables” (as Carol calls their motley ensemble), discuss the history of human conflict, the complicated role of memory after violent acts and the capacity of art to influence power structures. Janice mourns for Lavinia, the victim of a brutal sexual assault in “Titus,” while Carol feels guilty for not trying to save the empress’s illegitimate baby. Meanwhile, Gary concocts a plan to stage an “artistic coup,” in contrast to the forceful coup in “Titus,” and harness the power of beauty and wonder to bring an end to tragedy.

There are some thought-provoking nuggets here, and I’m inclined to revisit Mac’s ideas by reading the script. Unfortunately, the spectacle overshadows the substance in this bawdy sequel to a bloody play.

Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.

Review: “Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus” (2 stars)

When: Through June 1

Where: Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

Tickets: $35 (with pay-what-you-can pricing every Friday) at redtwisttheatre.org

No one knows where he went. He didn’t run off. He just seems to have vanished as if by magic, leaving the police officers scratching their heads, perplexed by what just happened.

When you watch that intriguing opening scene of Zora Howard’s “Bust,” an accomplished new play produced at the Goodman Theatre in concert with both the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta and the commercial producer Sonia Friedman, what shoots into your head is how skillfully this gifted writer has come up with a metaphor for a solution to this most vexing and dangerous of ubiquitous American confrontations; if one of what typically are two angry parties could immediately be transported out of the situation, as if by a “Star Trek”-like teleporter, lives would be saved.

Mysteries deepen as “Bust” progresses, and we learn that these magical disappearances are not limited to one occurrence.  Before the end of this two-hour play, Howard has revealed the destination, too, evoking the famous “Somewhere” number in “West Side Story,” broadening her themes to explore not just a notable method of violence-interruption but the danger of pent-up anger and bottled-up feelings, all in service of the truth that shootings traumatize not just those directly involved, but the witnesses and the entire community. And that confrontations with unintended consequences create an endless cycle of repetition and pain.

That description makes “Bust” sound like a heavy night of theater, which is not entirely incorrect. But Howard strives to leaven the experience with comedy, whether that flows from the exuberant spirits of Reggie (Ray Anthony Thomas) and Retta (the especially excellent Caroline Stefanie Clay) watching the confrontation, or the slew of mostly young high schoolers (variously played by Bernard Gilbert, Victoria Omoregie, Ivan Cecil Walks and Renika Williams-Blutcher) wondering about this disappearance thing, only to find that Reggie and Retta’s grandson, Trent (Cecil Blutcher), might also be a candidate for finding his way to the other side.

“Bust” is one of several dramatic works (such as “Pass Over” and the opera “Blue”) written about police shootings that were first developed during the pandemic, post-George Floyd era, a time of trauma and unrest when few Black writers in the nonprofit American theater felt inclined to be fair to police. And, indeed, the white officer here (played by Mark Bedard) is a stereotype of a racist Alabama cop, sans a reasonable bone in his body. His immigrant partner, Ramirez (Jorge Luna) is also somewhat stereotypically drawn,  replete with concern for his large family, unease with his job and other standard-issue tropes that I’m not convinced most Latino cops would appreciate. The play’s Black characters are drawn with diversity, vivacity and, above all, complexity.

I’d argue “Bust” would be a yet better play if it threw out those stereotypes and created complex figures from those cops. For example, the play seems to either not know or not care how often police officers act out of fear, justified or not, for their personal safety, especially when they don’t know someone’s location. As any clear-eyed specialist in these matters will tell you, that often explains why things go so terribly wrong. “Bust” just treats these cops as either expediently trying to keep their job (the Latino officer) or being aggressively racist (the white officer).  What a play this would be if had the courage to eschew such melodrama. It might really have the capacity to make an even bigger impact.

Director Lileana Blain-Cruz’s production is an exuberant and exciting affair, although the set sometimes gets in the way of the power of the work, sending the actors upstage or trapping them in a raised box in the work’s most primal moments. The performances are very much present and alive and that serves to reflect the play’s notion that vibrant Black life gets assaulted from without.

But when the scenes set in a familiar landscape feel so heightened as to not be truthful, which happens occasionally, that diminishes the power of the semi-mythical landscape the play posits as balm and a salve for the Black soul. It other words, too much of a departure from reality diminishes the crucial contrast with the other side, the somewhere, wherein lies Howard’s most potent political observation and artistic longing lies.

That could and should be fixed. Act 2 of “Bust” is mostly excellent, especially the scenes where the actor Keith Randolph Smith, who I’ve admired for decades, lays out the price always paid by Black Americans, whether engaged in an assaultive world or choosing to inhabit somewhere different, somewhere of their own design.

Therein, Howard really hits a chord: She’s writing about anger and trauma, for sure, but also about the perennial dilemma as to whether to engage and struggle, politically and within a family, or disengage for greener personal pastures. Who has not wondered about that?

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: “Bust” (3 stars)

When: Through May 18

Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.

Running time: 2 hours

Tickets: $25-$85 at 312-443-3800 and goodmantheatre.org

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