Samita Sinha, Tremor at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Samita Sinha, Tremor at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Tremor is artist and composer Samita Sinha’s latest performance work. In the piece, Sinha explores what she describes as “the practice of attuning oneself to the raw material of vibration and its emergence in space, as well as unfolding the possibilities that arise from encounters between this sonic material and other individuals.” Tremor is born from Sinha’s practice of decomposing, distilling, and transforming Indian vocal traditions through the body, employing sound as a vessel that harnesses and liberates energy through oneself. Through this practice, what emerges is a new language with the potential to challenge our thinking, reconfigure our relationships, and open new forms of collaboration. In Tremor, Sinha asks how we might reactivate our relationship to life itself through our sense of vibration, despite the numbing and distorting effects of coloniality and modernity. How can our voices be vessels to repair the fabric of our interconnection and open generative possibilities? How can we relearn to listen?

Performed in relationship to a live sonic environment created by composer Ash Fure, and within a space designed by architect Sunil Bald, Sinha is joined on stage each night by a rotating cast of sound-and movement-based collaborators. The casting schedule will be announced in the coming months.

Tremor was co-commissioned by Western Front (Vancouver, CA) and Danspace Project (New York).

This performance is part of On Stage: Resonance, organized by Tara Aisha Willis, former Curator in Performance, with Laura Paige Kyber, Curatorial Associate.

Run time: 60-75 min

Content Warning:

Seating for this performance is general admission and on stage. A limited number of cushions are available for sitting on the floor, and provide the closest proximity to the performance. If you require a chair, please speak with a staff member who can assist you. The performance includes the use of theatrical haze. Some loud sounds may occur throughout. There will be intervals of very low light, including complete darkness at times.

Ear plugs are available upon request for all performances. If you need wheelchair seating or have limited mobility, staff members are available to assist you.

The performance on Saturday, April 20, features Audio Description.

Politics of Poetics: CAConrad

About the Event
Join us for a reading with poet CAConrad in celebration of the new series Politics of Poetics.

ASL and CART captioning are provided.

About the Series
Politics of Poetics is a new quarterly program series held in the MCA’s Edlis Neeson Theater that highlights today’s leading poets whose practices traverse the political through writing, teaching, and activism. The series invites poets from across the globe to give readings and be in conversation with artists and other thinkers about the themes in their work. Historically, poets and visual artists have benefitted from close collaboration and artistic exchange, sharing in technical approaches and critical ideas of the day. Like many of the artists exhibited at the MCA, these poets take up critical issues in their work while propelling voices, stories, and thoughts under-seen and under-regarded in traditional canons.

About the Speaker
CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin 2024). They received the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award. They exhibit poems as art objects with recent solo shows in Spain and Portugal, and their play The Obituary Show was made into a film in 2022 by the artist Augusto Cascales. Visit them at https://linktr.ee/CAConrad88.

FORCE! An Opera in Three Acts at the Museum of Contemporary Art

This is an opera, but what is an opera? If opera is defined simply as “big work,” what could be blacker? FORCE! features a live band that blends gospel, folk, pop, and jazz, with experimental dance, song, and the spoken word. As the work unfolds, characters reveal layered interiors creating a strange sisterhood with the power to disintegrate walls that blooms in the shadows of the prison industrial complex. As the artists manifest the free worlds of which they dream on stage, their voices resound with collective power. A meditation on often-overlooked spaces—prison waiting rooms—FORCE! travels through silence, sound, and rhythm to dissipate borders between performers and audience members and question who truly controls how their time is spent.

Comprised of a Chicago-based cast, FORCE! is created by Anna Martine Whitehead alongside co-music directors, Ayanna Woods and Teiana Davis; co-composers, Phillip Armstrong and Angel Bat Dawid; and is devised in collaboration with performers Zachary Nicol, Jenn Freeman, Rahila Coats, Eva Supreme, Nexus J, Daniella Hope, Brittany Brown, Kai Black, and Wyatt Wadell; with extra help from Tramaine Parker and Jasmine Mendoza.

Since late 2019, FORCE! has developed as an iterative re-imagining of performance practice, constantly re-centering care, consent, queer divergence, and rest. The creative team re-imagines rehearsal protocols and releases disciplinary categories to build an abolitionist feminist theater practice. This project gathers lessons from lichens and other emergent strategies, direct actions, and mutual aid societies and leverages sound and movement as vectors for processing state violence and racial capitalism. Using the prison as a particular prism through which we can bear witness to the ways carceral systems replicate themselves. FORCE! is also an attempt to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex in the audience and artist’s heads, hearts, and houses.

Libretto by Anna Martine Whitehead. Composed by Ayanna Woods, Anna Martine Whitehead, Angel Bat Dawid, and Philip Armstrong.

This performance is part of On Stage: Resonance, organized by Tara Aisha Willis, former Curator in Performance, with Laura Paige Kyber, Curatorial Associate.

Run time: 90-100 min

Content Warning:

This performance begins in the theater lobby. Audiences will take a behind the-scenes route to their seats with the performers as their guides. All seating for this performance is on stage. A live band plays in close proximity to the audience. The performance includes the use of theatrical haze. It also features loud sounds and bright, moving lights throughout.

Ear plugs are available upon request for all performances. If you need wheelchair seating or have limited mobility, staff members are available to assist you.

The performance on Saturday, March 30, includes CART captioning and Audio Description.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/anna-martine-whitehead-force-an-opera-in-three-acts/

Nana at Trapdoor Theatre

Trap Door Theatre’s 30th Anniversary Season closes with Olwen Wymark’s splendid dramatization of Zola’s Nana: a story of sexual and financial greed in nineteenth-century Parisian society, depicting the rise and tragic downfall of a young courtesan.
Managing Director Nicole Wiesner and Resident Choreographer Miguel Long team up again to direct this reimagination, first produced at Trap Door in 2002.
This Friday, May 3rd performance includes open captioning.

Accessibility: Open Captions, Captioning, and All-Gender Restrooms

https://trapdoortheatre.com/nana-2024/

The Next Cup of Tea at Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Copresented with the Steppenwolf LookOut Series

The Next Cup of Tea is a solo dance-theater performance by Anjal Chande that investigates how to make sense of the never-ending impulses that run through our hearts, our everyday moments, and our contradictory experiences. Through improvisational dance and storytelling, Chande reflects on money, her grandfather, the politics of art, and more. Zigzagging between the gnawing inner world and daily physical routine, The Next Cup of Tea traverses through all that is ordinary, appalling, and enchanting.

This performance was originally scheduled as a part of the MCA’s 2023 Chicago Performs series, organized by Tara Aisha Willis, former curator, with Laura Paige Kyber, Assistant Curator.

Special Thanks from the Artist
Gratitude to all the collaborators who have contributed to previous iterations of this work across seven years of process. Shout out to the following individuals who shaped recent versions during the pandemic (2021) and a live showing at Tanztage in Berlin (2019): Gina Hoch-Stall (dramaturg), Jesse Hunter (musician), Karl Olson (musician), Josh Anderson (cinematographer), Emese Csornai (lighting design), David Ofori-Amoah (material design), Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos Jr. (dramaturg), and Sophia New (mentor).

Accessibility: captions

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/the-next-cup-of-tea/

Learning Series | The Impact of Food Apartheid in Education, Part 2 at Museum of Contemporary Art

Harnessing Narrative for Food Sovereign Futures
Throughout the year, the MCA hosts high-quality professional development programming, open to teachers of all subjects, grade levels, and disciplines. These events are educator-specific, skills-based, training on contemporary art integration. Programs are designed in connection with the cultural assets of the MCA and the needs of the Chicago area educators. In keeping with addressing issues of relevance, the 2023–24 Learning Series is a four-part series exploring “The Impact of Food Apartheid in Education.”

The term “apartheid” is used as it acknowledges the existence of economic and racial segregation systems. And as history has shown us, apartheid systems can be dismantled through collective action.

This workshop, titled “Harnessing Narrative for Food Sovereign Futures,” is meant to help us to understand food apartheid: how it impacts our lives and how we can leverage power in order to mobilize towards food sovereignty. Through experiential storytelling, collective imagination exercises, and power-mapping strategies, teachers work alongside food justice advocates to learn how they can make a difference in their classroom, their school, and their food system. This session includes a making and a writing activity.

Accessibility: ASL interpretation and captioning upon request

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/learning-series-the-impact-of-food-apartheid-in-education-part-2/

MOTHERS by Anna Ouyang Moench, presented by The Gift Theatre at Filament

SYNOPSIS

This performance will include audio description with a touch tour before the show and captions.

MOTHERS by Anna Ouyang Moench

 

 

Screening | The Sojourner Truth Film Festival at Museum of Contemporary Art

In 1976, Faith Ringgold and a group of Black feminist artists co-organized the first-ever Black women’s film festival: the Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts. In celebration of the festival’s 2023 edition and Ringgold’s major retrospective, Faith Ringgold: American People, join us for an all-day screening of rarely shown films by and about Black women.

CART captioning is provided for all screenings.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/screening-the-sojourner-truth-film-festival/

Screening | The Sojourner Truth Film Festival at Museum of Contemporary Art

In 1976, Faith Ringgold and a group of Black feminist artists co-organized the first-ever Black women’s film festival: the Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts. In celebration of the festival’s 2023 edition and Ringgold’s major retrospective, Faith Ringgold: American People, join us for an all-day screening of rarely shown films by and about Black women.

CART captioning is provided.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/screening-the-sojourner-truth-film-festival/

Talk | Sowing Change with Erika Allen and Linda Goode Bryant at Museum of Contemporary Art

Sowing Change: Creativity and Food Sovereignty is a collaboration between the MCA and the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5). This program brings together artists Erika Allen, founder of Urban Growers Collective in Chicago, and Linda Goode Bryant, founder of the pathbreaking gallery, Just Above Midtown (1976-1984) and Project EATS in New York City. Allen and Goode Bryant will discuss how the arts—and tending to the imagination—have guided their visionary leadership in transforming urban space as sites for food sovereignty and collective change.

The conversation will be moderated by Emily Mello, Senior Director of Learning, Education, and Public Programs at the MCA.

ASL and CART captioning are available.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-sowing-change-with-erika-allen-linda-goode-bryant/

Talk | Roundtable on Faith Ringgold at MCA

Join us for a conversation on how Faith Ringgold’s aesthetic and political practices continue to reverberate across generations of artists with artists Jamal Cyrus and Amanda Williams, and the MCA presentation Curator of Faith Ringgold: American People, MCA Manilow Senior Curator Jamillah James.

English/Spanish CART and ASL are provided.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-roundtable-on-faith-ringgold/

Talk | Roundtable on Faith RinggoldJoin us for a conversation on how Faith Ringgold’s aesthetic and political practices continue to reverberate across generations of artists with artists Jamal Cyrus and Amanda Williams, and the MCA presentation Curator of Faith Ringgold: American People, MCA Manilow Senior Curator Jamillah James at Museum of Contemporary Art

Join us for a conversation on how Faith Ringgold’s aesthetic and political practices continue to reverberate across generations of artists with artists Jamal Cyrus and Amanda Williams, and the MCA presentation Curator of Faith Ringgold: American People, MCA Manilow Senior Curator Jamillah James.

English/Spanish CART and ASL are provided.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-roundtable-on-faith-ringgold/

Talk | Lotus L. Kang and Jack Schneider at Museum of Contemporary Art

This year, the Chicago-based artist Lotus L. Kang transformed the museum’s atrium with her mesmerizing work Molt (New York-Lethbridge-Los Angeles-Toronto-Chicago- ) (2018–2023). To celebrate the final weeks of the commissioned installation, Kang speaks with MCA Assistant Curator Jack Schneider.

ASL and CART captioning will be provided.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-lotus-l-kang-and-jack-schneider/

 

Live Arts | Muslim Writers Collective: Intersectionality at Museum of Contemporary Art

A grassroots initiative promoting storytelling, creativity, and the arts, the Muslim Writers Collective will focus this iteration of its programming on themes drawn from the MCA exhibition Faith Ringgold: American People. This storytelling event will center itself around hearing life experiences from Muslim American and Muslim-adjacent perspectives.

CART Captioning is available on personal devices.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/live-arts-mwc-mca/

Rewritten Narratives: A Comic Workshop at Access Living

Let’s reclaim and rewrite our stories as disabled people through writing and drawing together! Too often disabled individuals have their stories told to them by medical professionals and cultural norms. It’s time to get the power back and tell our own tales!

Rewritten Narratives is a workshop for participants who self-identify as disabled and/or chronically ill, whether the disability is apparent or non-apparent. This could mean anything from physical disabilities, learning disabilities, “invisible” disabilities, and disabilities caused by mental health concerns.

No art making skills or experiences required!

Attendees will receive transportation stipend (PACE vouchers).

Location:
Center for Mad Culture
410 South Michigan Avenue, suite 419
Chicago, IL 60605

In-person Rewritten Narratives session RSVP Link: https://tinyurl.com/rewrittennarrative

Access information:
Press Here is on the 4th floor in the Fine Arts Building. It is accessible by elevator. A wheelchair accessible restroom is available. For in-person sessions, please request ASL interpretation and identify any access needs when signing up for a session.

AI captioning will be available for virtual workshop sessions. For virtual sessions, contact B at brandolph@accessliving.org or (312) 640-2100 with access requests. Please allow 2-3 weeks’ advance notice for ASL interpretation requests, both virtual and in-person.

About the facilitator:
Brian “B” Randolph (they/them) is an art therapy graduate student from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Brian specializes in portraiture, drawing the human form, and the writing/drawing of comics. B is working with their supervisor, disabled artist and art therapist, Sandie Yi, to create disability culture and art at Access Living this year.

Sponsor Information:
This project is brought to you by the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities, Bodies of Work: Network of Disability Art and Culture, and the Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL). DCAL, a teaching lab housed under the department of art therapy and counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and Shirley Ryan Abilities Lab. The contents of this project were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90RTCP0005). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this project do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Rewritten Narratives: A Comic Workshop at Access Living

Let’s reclaim and rewrite our stories as disabled people through writing and drawing together! Too often disabled individuals have their stories told to them by medical professionals and cultural norms. It’s time to get the power back and tell our own tales!

Rewritten Narratives is a workshop for participants who self-identify as disabled and/or chronically ill, whether the disability is apparent or non-apparent. This could mean anything from physical disabilities, learning disabilities, “invisible” disabilities, and disabilities caused by mental health concerns.

No art making skills or experiences required!

Thursday sessions will be held via Zoom from 2-4pm.

Attendees will receive transportation stipend (PACE vouchers).

Join the Rewritten Narratives Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83239461202?pwd=Zml3ZFdDdkhHQU5tTytrM1B5SzlzUT09

Meeting ID: 832 3946 1202
Passcode: AL2023

Access information:
AI captioning will be available for virtual workshop sessions. For virtual sessions, contact B at brandolph@accessliving.org or (312) 640-2100 with access requests. Please allow 2-3 weeks’ advance notice for ASL interpretation requests, both virtual and in-person.

About the facilitator:
Brian “B” Randolph (they/them) is an art therapy graduate student from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Brian specializes in portraiture, drawing the human form, and the writing/drawing of comics. B is working with their supervisor, disabled artist and art therapist, Sandie Yi, to create disability culture and art at Access Living this year.

Sponsor Information:

This project is brought to you by the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities, Bodies of Work: Network of Disability Art and Culture, and the Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL). DCAL, a teaching lab housed under the department of art therapy and counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and Shirley Ryan Abilities Lab. The contents of this project were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90RTCP0005). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this project do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Talk | Helen Molesworth and Madeleine Grynsztejn at Museum of Contemporary Art

Over the past three decades, writer, curator, and podcaster Helen Molesworth’s singular voice and lively curatorial vision has established her as one of the most dynamic and influential voices in the art world.

At this inspiring event, MCA Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn will join Molesworth on stage for a conversation about her new book Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing about Art.

Signed books are now available for pre-order at the MCA Store.

Accessibility: Spanish translation, ASL, and CART captioning

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-helen-molesworth-and-madeleine-grynsztejn/

Talk | Helen Molesworth and Madeleine Grynsztejn at Museum of Contemporary Art

Over the past three decades, writer, curator, and podcaster Helen Molesworth’s singular voice and lively curatorial vision has established her as one of the most dynamic and influential voices in the art world.

At this inspiring event, MCA Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn will join Molesworth on stage for a conversation about her new book Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing about Art.

Accessibility: Spanish translation, ASL, and CART captioning

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-helen-molesworth-and-madeleine-grynsztejn/

LEAD Conference Share Out 2023

Event Description: Are you curious about the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD) conference? Did you want to attend but couldn’t? Join The Collab for a Zoom Lunch and Learn about this year’s LEAD experience. Four representatives from the Collab will share takeaways from their focus areas and lead a live discussion with our arts and culture accessibility community. Come for the best practice takeaways and bring your questions about LEAD!

Date: October 3, 2023

Time: Noon to 1:00 PM, Central Time

Location: Zoom. Registered participants will receive a Zoom Meeting Link via email the day prior to the event. Please ensure that Info@ChicagoCulturalAccess.org is an approved sender to your email account, or be sure to check your Spam/Junk Mail filter for the email.

Program Accessibility: Real-Time Captioning and Sign Language Interpretation will be provided. Please complete the accommodation request field found in the event registration form or call 773-203-5039 to request other access services.

Cost: FREE. While this program is free, a $5 suggested donation helps to cover programming costs to ensure Cultural Access Collaborative’s mission is achievable and accessible to all. You may make a tax deductible online donation to the Collab at any time.

Registration: Join us by completing this event registration form!

Join Us!


LEAD Conference Share Out 2023

Forms & Features Community Reading (Virtual) with The Poetry Foundation

Join us for a reading and celebration of the diverse voices, rich experiences, and powerful words of poets from around the US and the world. Poets working in the online poetry workshop and discussion, Forms & Features, will share work that they created in this creative community.

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

Accessibility: ASL, captions

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/forms-features-community-reading-tickets-710431017297?aff=oddtdtcreator

Fall Mental Health Peer Support Group (virtual) with Access Living

The Peer Mental Health Support Group is an opportunity for Disabled-identifying people and those exploring their relationship to disability identity to share and hold space for one another in an accessible and virtual setting.

Facilitated by disabled art therapist Bri Beck, LCPC, ATR, this group is meant to offer an opportunity for participants to share current concerns, thoughts/emotions, and offer support to others through validation, encouragement, and even practical ideas to cope. This group will also explore art as an emotional outlet.

This group is not considered, nor should it be a substitute for traditional group therapy, however, topics of mental health, emotional wellness, self-advocacy, and healthy relationships will be addressed in a structured and confidential space. Participants may attend as many or as little group meetings as needed. Group norms will be reviewed every week.

Join the group via Zoom

Zoom Meeting ID: 818 5920 1086
Zoom Meeting Passcode: AL2023

For any questions, please email bbeck@accessliving.org.

Fall 2023 meeting dates are as follows:
(Off September 4 – Labor Day)
Monday, September 11
Monday, September 18
Monday, September 25

(Off October 2)
Monday, October 9
Monday, October 16
Monday, October 23

(Off October 30)
Monday, November 6
Monday, November 13
Monday, November 20

(Off November 27)
December 4
December 11
December 18

Access Information:

Automatic captioning is available in Zoom.

Due to high demand for live captioning (CART) and ASL interpretation services during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are asking participants to submit access requests 2-3 weeks in advance. Please contact bbeck@accessliving.org with requests.

Sponsor information:
This event is brought to you by the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities, Bodies of Work: Network of Disability Art and Culture, and the Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL), a teaching lab housed under the department of art therapy and counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

As a platform for creative disability art and advocacy projects, DCAL uses a peer support and collective care model in which disability community members and art therapy graduate students collaborate as disability culture makers for social change. Bodies of Work is a part of the Department of Disability and Human Development within the College of Applied Health Sciences at University of Illinois-Chicago.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Jonas Becker, New Normal at the MCA

Jonas Becker’s New Normal explores how we, as individuals in society, adjust to large-scale cultural trauma, environmental deterioration, the loss of civil liberties, and increased financial precarity. As conditions erode over time, expectations shift silently for some, for others violently. The performance follows an improvisational score in which six trans-masculine performers respond to the slow violence of our current moment through endurance and illusion, struggle and support. Rocks that appear heavy are made of paper, and gestures where performers entangle each other oscillate between aggression and care. Importantly, some radical bodies resist normalization, while for others, the new normal is nothing new. The performers test their limits, adjust and readjust, responding physically to diminishing environmental standards and political conditions. This presentation expands on an In Progress showing of the work in the MCA’s main atrium in 2019, with an emotionally resonant arrangement of motion, sound, and lighting.

Run time: 45 minutes

Chicago Performs is organized by Tara Aisha Willis, former MCA Curator, with Laura Paige Kyber, Curatorial Associate.

Access Information:

Prior to the performance the lights will be set low. Please let a staff member know if you need assistance to your seat.

Audio Description and CART captioning are provided for the performance on Sunday, September 10.

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

Blown fuses, real and metaphorical, punctuate the action with flashes of pent up energy in this acclaimed play. The diminutive heroine frequently plunges the dilapidated house she shares with her alcoholic mother into darkness by playing her dead father’s records at a volume matched only by the soulful power of her vocal impressions. Little Voice has a hidden talent: she can emulate every chanteuse from Judy Garland to Edith Piaf. She hides in her room, crooning and dreaming of love, while her disheveled mother mistakes a seedy agent’s interest as affection rather than enthusiasm for the gold mine buried in her daughter’s throat. This is an engaging fairy tale of despair, love and finally hope as LV finds a voice of her own.

This performance includes captioning.

All gender, accessible restrooms are available on site.

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

Blown fuses, real and metaphorical, punctuate the action with flashes of pent up energy in this acclaimed play. The diminutive heroine frequently plunges the dilapidated house she shares with her alcoholic mother into darkness by playing her dead father’s records at a volume matched only by the soulful power of her vocal impressions. Little Voice has a hidden talent: she can emulate every chanteuse from Judy Garland to Edith Piaf. She hides in her room, crooning and dreaming of love, while her disheveled mother mistakes a seedy agent’s interest as affection rather than enthusiasm for the gold mine buried in her daughter’s throat. This is an engaging fairy tale of despair, love and finally hope as LV finds a voice of her own.

This performance includes captioning, audio description and a touch tour (tentatively scheduled for 2pm.)

All gender, accessible restrooms are available on site.

Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellows Reading with The Poetry Foundation

Join us for the first public reading of the 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellows together at the Poetry Foundation. The Poetry Foundation awards five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships annually. Among the largest awards offered to young poets in the US, the $27,000 prize is intended to support exceptional US poets between 21 and 31 years of age.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Introducing the 2023 Fellows

Bhion Achimba (they/he) grew up in rural southeastern Nigeria and came to the US as a Scholar-at-Risk fellow at Harvard University. Their manuscript Cantos from the Crossing won the 2023 Center for Book Arts chapbook prize and will be published in November 2023. They earned an MFA in literary arts from Brown University; edit Dgëku, a literary magazine that publishes writing by queer Africans; and serve on the editorial board of TransitionMagazine.

Roda Avelar (she/they) is a trans woman poet from Fresno, California. She earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of California Riverside, where she taught creative writing and English composition, and a BA in English literature from California State University Fresno. She was a Milkweed Editions summer intern in 2019, and a 2022 Community of Writers fellow. She creates work that imagines queer people and people of color in science fiction, mythology, and queer liberation.

Ariana Benson (she/they) is a southern Black poet born in Norfolk, Virginia. Their debut collection, Black Pastoral, won the 2022 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Benson has received a Furious Flower Poetry Prize, a Porter House Review Poetry Prize, and the 2021 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. Benson is a proud alumna of Spelman College, where she facilitates creative writing and storytelling workshops for HBCU students. She strives to fashion vignettes of Blackness that speak to its infinite depth and richness in her writing.

Chrysanthemum (she/her) is a poet, a performance artist, and a public historian. Her honors include the 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship from Lambda Literary; fellowships from Artist Communities Alliance and Kundiman; and a championship with her team at the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam and the first-ever FEM Slam. Chrysanthemum was born to Vietnamese parents in Oklahoma City, where she came of age around the NW 39th Street and Asian American enclaves. She now calls Providence, Rhode Island, home.

Willie Lee Kinard III (he/they) is a poet, designer, and musician. Kinard earned a BFA from the University of South Carolina and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. His publications include Orders of Service, winner of the 2022 Alice James Award, and a self-published chapbook/mixtape, chroma. The recipient of fellowships from The Watering Hole and the Pittsburgh Foundation, Kinard is from Newberry, South Carolina, and currently teaches at the University of South Carolina.

In-Person Attendance
Masks are strongly encouraged and available at check-in for those who would like to wear one. Please note that some event performers may choose to perform without a mask. The Foundation reserves the right to update this policy if community levels of COVID-19 increase significantly. Read our full COVID-19 Health & Safety Guidelines.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ruth-lilly-and-dorothy-sargent-rosenberg-fellows-reading-tickets-698630892807?aff=oddtdtcreator

Poetry Off the Shelf: Ben Okri with The Poetry Foundation

Join us for a special US appearance by acclaimed Nigerian-born British novelist and poet, Ben Okri.

Ben Okri is a playwright, poet, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, anthologist, and aphorist who has also written film scripts. His works have won numerous national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction. His books include the eco-fable Every Leaf a Hallelujah, the genre-bending climate fiction Tiger Work, the poetry collection A Fire in My Head, and the novels Astonishing the Gods, The Last Gift of the Master Artists, and Dangerous Love.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

In-Person Attendance
Masks are strongly encouraged and available at check-in for those who would like to wear one. Please note that some event performers may choose to perform without a mask. The Foundation reserves the right to update this policy if community levels of COVID-19 increase significantly. Read our full COVID-19 Health & Safety Guidelines. Guests are encouraged to register in advance. (<link to Eventbrite)

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-off-the-shelf-ben-okri-tickets-691014000477

Lucha Teotl at Goodman Theatre

Pro wrestling bursts onto the stage in a high-octane, immersive, 90-minute thrill ride.

It’s a night in the theater that you’ll never forget. Experience the heart-pumping action ringside, as the Goodman transforms into a professional wrestling arena—a perfect backdrop for the high drama and rich cultural history of lucha libre. Originally developed with Prism Movement Theater and produced in partnership with CLATA as part of 2023 Destinos Festival, actors and luchadores (wrestlers) in masks representative of Aztec gods play out an exciting wrestling story about family, honor, tradition and redemption.

American Sign Language-Interpreted Performance
Friday, October 27 at 7:30pm
Use code SIGN for $30 tickets

Touch Tour and Audio-Described Performance
Saturday, October 28
12:30pm Touch Tour & 2:00pm Performance
Use code AUDIO for $30 tickets

Spanish Subtitles Performance
Saturday, October 28 at 7:30pm
Use code SPANISH for $30 tickets

Open-Captioned Performance
Sunday, October 29 at 2:00pm
Use code OPEN for $30 tickets

Large-print programs, Braille programs, and assistive listening devices available upon request at our guest services desk. Visit the link here to a webpage of comprehensive Access information.
https://www.goodmantheatre.org/show/lucha-teotl/

Open Doors: Harriet Monroe Editors Panel with The Poetry Foundation

In conjunction with the exhibition opening for Harriet Monroe & the Open Door, we will host a conversation with Poetry’s four women guest editors from 2021-22: Esther G. Belin, Su Cho, Suzi F. Garcia, and Ashley M. Jones.

Moderated by Carmen Giménez, this conversation shifts the frame of the Open Door series to spotlight the creative labor of editors to open up poetry as a porous category. The name of the series honors the legacy of Poetry’s founding editor Harriet Monroe, who declared in 1912, “The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut.”

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Esther G. Belin is an urban Indian, born at an Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup, New Mexico and raised in the greater Los Angeles area. She has two poetry collections, From the Belly of My Beauty, and Of Cartography, and is one of the editors of the anthology of Navajo literature, The Diné Reader. She is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and lives on the Colorado side of the Four Corners region.

Su Cho is a poet, essayist, and the author of The Symmetry of Fish (Penguin Books, 2022) which won the 2021 National Poetry Series. She lives in South Carolina where she is an assistant professor of English at Clemson University.

Suzi F. Garcia is the author of the chapbook A Home Grown Fairytale (Bone Bouquet, 2020). She is the co-publisher of the award-winning independent press, Noemi, and along with José Olivarez, is a poetry editor for Haymarket Books. In addition, Suzi is the review manager for the Lambda Literary Review, which has been serving the queer literary community for over 30 years. Suzi is a CantoMundo Fellow, a Macondista, a Lambda Literary Fellow, and participated in the first ever Poetry Incubator at the Poetry Foundation. She has served as a CantoMundo steering committee member, CantoMundo regional director, and a board member for the Latinx Caucus.

Ashley M. Jones is the poet laureate of Alabama. She is the first person of color and the youngest person to hold this position in its 93 year existence. Jones is the author of three award-winning poetry collections, most recently Reparations Now! She is the co-editor of WHAT THINGS COST: An Anthology for the People. Her work has been featured by CNN, the BBC, Good Morning America, ABC News, and the New York Times. Jones is the associate director of the University Honors Program at UAB and she teaches in the Low Residency MFA Program at Converse University.

Carmen Giménez (moderator) is publisher and director of Graywolf Press and the author of several books, including Be Recorder, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award.

In-Person Attendance
Masks are strongly encouraged and available at check-in for those who would like to wear one. Please note that some event performers may choose to perform without a mask. The Foundation reserves the right to update this policy if community levels of COVID-19 increase significantly. Read our full COVID-19 Health & Safety Guidelines. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-doors-guest-editors-panel-tickets-691003188137?aff=oddtdtcreator

Chicago Poet Laureate Celebration with The Poetry Foundation

Join us for the kickoff to our Fall 2023 season with a celebration of Chicago’s Poet Laureate, avery r. young, at Harold Washington Library. He will perform alongside other poet laureates E’mon Lauren Black (Chicago Youth Poet Laureate), Nandi Comer (Michigan), Angela Jackson (Illinois), Amanda Johnston (Texas), and Airea D. Matthews (Philadelphia).

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

avery r. young is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, 3Arts Awardee, poetry editor for Bridge, Cave Canem fellow, and co-director of the Floating Museum. His poetry and prose have been featured in The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Teaching Black, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, and AIMPrint, among other publications, and alongside images in photographer Cecil McDonald Jr’s In The Company of Black. He is the composer and librettist for a new commissioned work from Lyric Opera of Chicago titled safronia, and full-length recording tubman (FPE Records), the soundtrack to his collection of poetry, neckbone: visual verses. Learn more at averyryoung.com.

E’mon Lauren Black is a multi-hyphenate artist and educator from the Wes & Souf side of Chicago whose works explores her coined philosophy of “hood-womanism.” She is the first Youth Poet Laureate of Chicago and has been featured in Vogue magazine, Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune. She is the host and creator of the hit talkshow, The Real Hoodwives of Chicago, originally produced by her production company, BlkHoneyBun Productions, LLC. Her first book of poems, COMMANDO, was published by Haymarket in 2017.

Nandi Comer is the Poet Laureate of Michigan. She is the author of American Family: A Syndrome (Finishing Line Press) and Tapping Out (Northwestern University Press), which was awarded the 2020 Society of Midland Authors Award and the 2020 Julie Suk Award. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, a Callaloo Fellow, and a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow. She currently serves as a poetry editor for Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora and as the co-director of Detroit Lit.

Angela Jackson is a Chicago poet, playwright, and novelist. She has received numerous honors for both fiction and poetry, including the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Her poetry collection All These Roads Be Luminous (1998) was nominated for the National Book Award, and her debut novel, Where I Must Go (2009), won the American Book Award. In addition to Comfort Stew, Jackson has written several other plays: Witness! (1978), Shango Diaspora: An African-American Myth of Womanhood and Love (1980), and Lightfoot: The Crystal Stair.

Amanda Johnston is a writer, artist, and the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry magazine, The Offing, and the anthologies Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, the Watermill Center, and American Short Fiction. She is a founder of Torch Literary Arts and a former board president of Cave Canem .

Airea D. Matthews’ irst collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which received the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Matthews is also the author of Bread and Circus, a memoir-in-verse that combines poetry, prose, and imagery to explore the realities of economic necessity, marginal poverty, and commodification through a personal lens. Matthews received a 2020 Pew Fellowship, a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and was awarded the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Matthews earned her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. In 2022, she was named Philadelphia’s Poet Laureate. She is an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College where she directs the poetry program.

In-Person Attendance
Masks are strongly encouraged and available at check-in for those who would like to wear one. Please note that some event performers may choose to perform without a mask. The Foundation reserves the right to update this policy if community levels of COVID-19 increase significantly. Read our full COVID-19 Health & Safety Guidelines.

Livestream Attendance

The YouTube livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

Please note that advanced registration on Eventbrite does not guarantee entrance, as events at the Harold Washington Library are first come first serve.

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

Accessibility: ASL Interpretation, captioning,

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chicago-poet-laureate-celebration-tickets-691945717267?aff=oddtdtcreator

Celebrating the Visiting Teaching Artists of Forms & Features (virtual) with The Poetry Foundation

Join us for a virtual reading featuring 2023 Forms & Features Visiting Teaching Artists Samira Asma-Sadeque, Giulia Ottavia Frattini, grace (ge) gilbert, Lisa Low, L. Renée, and Hua Xi. Forms & Features is the Poetry Foundation’s series of free online creative writing workshops for adults.

Samira Asma-Sadeque is a New York-based Bangladeshi journalist, poet, and educator. She writes about the immigrant experience, mental health, hate speech, and gender violence in both her poetry and journalism. Her poetry appears in HBO’s Take Out with Lisa Ling, PBS’s ALL ARTS, Button Poetry, and has been featured at the Rubin Museum, among other platforms. She is a Brooklyn Poets fellow, Tin House alum, and Best of the Net nominee. Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, and Al Jazeera, among other publications.

Giulia Ottavia Frattini is a poet and writer based in Berlin. She is currently involved in art-oriented practices and collaborates as a contributor for several art magazines while developing her literary path. She perceives words as metamorphic elements, and her prime focus gravitates toward the unfolding of identity, language’s physicality, and lyricism’s disruption.

grace (ge) gilbert is a hybrid poet, essayist, and collage-worker based in Brooklyn. They received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. grace is the author of three short collections: the closeted diaries, NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK, and today is an unholy suite. Their work can be found in the Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, The Offing, the Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. They currently teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. They have received support and scholarships from City of Asylum’s Emerging Poet Laureate program and Bread Loaf, and served as the MCLA Under 27 Writer-in-Residence Fellow at Mass MoCA.They are passionate about making the hybrid arts accessible to all. Learn more at gracegegilbert.com.

Lisa Low’s poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, the Massachusetts Review, Poetry, the Southern Review, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction won the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize. She has an MFA from Indiana University and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Cincinnati. Her debut chapbook, Crown for the Girl Inside, won the 2020 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming from YesYes Books.

L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer living in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she works as assistant director of Furious Flower Poetry Center and assistant professor of English at James Madison University. Nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and two Pushcart Prizes, her work has been published in Obsidian, Tin House Online, Poetry Northwest, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. The granddaughter of proud Black Appalachians, she won the international 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize and Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award, among others. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation and the Watering Hole, L. Renée holds an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University, where she was nonfiction editor of the Indiana Review, and an MS in journalism from Columbia University, where she was a Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Moore Fellow. She has received support from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc., Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Peter Bullough Foundation, the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Monson Arts, Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, and others. Learn more at Lreneepoems.com.

Hua Xi (she/they) is a poet and artist. Their poetry has appeared in the New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. They previously won the Boston Review Poetry Contest and was the 2022 Poet-to-Come Scholar at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. They sometimes teach poetry workshops with the Spatial Poetry Project.

The Zoom link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. Poetry Foundation events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

Accessibility: ASL interpretation, captioning

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrating-the-visiting-teaching-artists-of-forms-features-tickets-673835890287?aff=oddtdtcreator

Talk | José E. López and Carla Acevedo-Yates at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Join us for an exhibition opening conversation between the curator of the entre horizontes, Carla Acevedo-Yates, and Puerto Rican writer and activist José E. López for a wide-ranging conversation on the past and present of Puerto Rican activism.

Accessibility: ASL interpretation, English captioning, Spanish Captioning, wheelchair accessible

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-jose-e-lopez-carla-acevedo-yates/

Sensory-Friendly Morning at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Sensory-Friendly Morning is a free program for all people who benefit from visiting the MCA without large crowds and other sensitive environmental elements. This includes visitors with sensory sensitivities, disabilities, autism, PTSD, dementia, and more. On these mornings, lighting at the museum is dimmed, sounds from artworks and environmental noise is kept at a minimum, and a quiet space is available to visitors for breaks. During Sensory-Friendly Mornings, preregistered individuals and their families can visit the museum to explore exhibitions at their own pace, and join a Chicago-based artist for a sensory-friendly art-making experience. The museum is closed to the general public until 11:30 am; at that time, the lights and artworks return to usual operations.

Sensory-Friendly Morning aims to be a welcoming space to experience contemporary art in a judgment-free environment.

Accessibility: sensory-friendly, ASL interpreted, captioning, low lighting, quiet room, Spanish captioning, wheelchair accessible

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/sensory-friendly-morning-6/

Dance | Reclaiming Memories of the Black Ark: A Celebration of Chicago’s Social Dance History at South Shore Cultural Center

Co-organized with Honey Pot Performance

Coinciding with the career survey exhibition Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, a series of MCA programs activates Gary Simmons’s sculptural installation work, Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark. Inspired by the Black Ark—Lee “Scratch” Perry’s famous recording studio in Kingston, Jamaica, where he pioneered dub reggae—Simmons’s sculptural installation serves as a flexible stage for conversations, music, and performance.

For this day-long celebration of Chicago’s social dance history, the piece is being temporarily installed under the glittering chandelier of the South Shore Cultural Center Dining Room to commemorate the importance of the neighborhood and the history of Black social culture in Chicago.

CART captioning provided, except during the dance party.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/dance-reclaiming-memories-of-the-black-ark-a-celebration-of-chicagos-social-dance-history/

Summer Screenings: Nowhere Special (UK) at Chicago Cultural Center

DIRECTED BY Uberto Pasolini
SYNOPSIS
Thirty-five-year-old window cleaner and single father John has dedicated his life to raising his son. Given only a few months to live, he traverses Belfast, visiting homes of the working class and wealthy alike. He has a singular goal: to find the perfect family to raise his toddler Michael. How can he carry out this impossible task? Inspired by true events in the UK, Nowhere Special is a tender tale of pure love, profound heartbreak, and parenthood.

https://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/film/nowhere-special/

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, assistive listening devices, captioning, large print program, wheelchair accessible

DisFest at Chicago Cultural Center

A celebration of the disability arts with some of Chicago’s best disabled artists and performers! Join us after the parade for short-films, live music, dance, art activities, and a fun photo op in the magnificent and air-conditioned Chicago Cultural Center!

https://www.reinventability.com/disfest

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, audio description, captioning, quiet space, sensory friendly, wheelchair accessible

Summer Screenings: Soft (Canada) at Chicago Cultural Center

DIRECTED BY Joseph Amenta
SYNOPSIS
Three friends fall in love with summertime Toronto’s lively nightlife. Young, queer, and unapologetically self-confident, the trio spends their days holding court and plotting to sneak into a nightclub. When one of their caregivers goes missing under suspicious circumstances, reality comes crashing in and their seemingly unbreakable bond is tested. Featuring remarkable performances from its young actors, Soft is a tender portrait of youth, friendship, and life on the city’s margins.

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, assistive listening devices, captioning, large print program, wheelchair accessible

https://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/film/soft/

Genevieve Ramos: Crip Paint Power

Curb Appeal Gallery is pleased to announce our second exhibition “Genevieve Ramos: Crip Paint Power”. This exhibition debuts new work created as part of Ramos’s Feminist Crip Paint Power, a multi-year project exploring the love, care, and interdependency in disability communities through the lens of disability justice and feminism. Stemming from relationships with disabled BIPOC femmes and through a series of curated interviews and photoshoots in partnership with the photographer Colectivo Multipolar, “Crip Paint Power” features four portraits of leaders in Chicago’s rich disability network, including community organizers Candace Coleman and Michelle Garcia, artist and educator Sandie (Chun-Shan) Yi, and the artist activist Reveca Torres. The exhibition includes a documentary film and zine created in collaboration with the Disability Culture Activism Lab at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Following the close of “Crip Paint Power”, the portraits of Coleman, Garcia, Torres, and Yi will be on permanent display at the Disability Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Curb Appeal is an apartment gallery located in the Heart of Chicago, run by Todd Garon and Sandy Guttman. As an organization, we are interested in the intersection of art and accessibility. We draw inspiration from the neighborhood topology of our historic storefront space and its visibility to the community in which we are sited. Our large windows and sidewalk stoop encourage passersby to peer in as well as invite themselves into our live/workspace. Grounded in the idea of “home” with an ethic of accessibility, Curb Appeal reimagines what both an apartment and a gallery can be.

For more information, please contact info@curbappeal.gallery.

Curb Appeal is wheelchair accessible. As part of the exhibition, there is a documentary film that is open captioned. All the paintings include image descriptions, made available through QR code. Additionally, the zine that accompanies the work is available on the Curb Appeal website. Masks are required for entry and will be provided if needed. Please note, Curb Appeal is an apartment gallery and doubles as a home to our gallery dog.

https://www.curbappeal.gallery/

2023 Accessible Juneteenth at UIC Quad

Accessible Juneteenth 2023
Place: the UIC Quad (behind UIC Student Center East); 750 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL
Date and Time: Saturday, June 17th, 2023 from 1pm to 5pm (Open mic livestream from 2:15pm to 3:15pm on Zoom and Chicagoland DPOCC Facebook page)
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Come and celebrate our second Juneteenth where we celebrate the black disability community and the victories we accomplished! We want to make Juneteenth a fun and important accessible experience for all, including disabled people in the African Diaspora.

RSVP at https://go.uic.edu/2023_AccessibleJuneteenth_RSVP to get event notifications!

This year, we will have a DJ who will bless us with music fit for our Accessible Juneteenth celebration. There will be food, giveaways, and resources given out by vendors also, including from Black-owned and disability-owned/friendly organizations and businesses.

We will host an open-mic where you can share your talents in singing, spoken-word, playing instruments, and more! Sign up at https://go.uic.edu/2023_AccessibleJuneteenth_OpenMic_Signup by June 9th at 11:59pm CT, or sign up in-person at the event. But hurry, because spots are limited!

If you’re not able to attend the celebration in person, that is okay! You can join us virtually; we will host a livestream of the open mic portion of the event. Register for the livestreams at https://go.uic.edu/2023_Virtual_AccessibleJuneteenth_Stream, or watch the livestream on Chicagoland DPOCC’s Facebook page on June 17th.

ASL will be provided for open mic portion; live captioning will be provided for the livestream of the open mic portion

More event details TBA as we get closer to the day; stay tuned for updates.

This event is brought to you by:
Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition
The Institute on Disability and Human Development at UIC
Access Living
UIC Disability Cultural Center
Chicago Disability Pride Parade
Whole Foods

https://fb.me/e/O6EJFU1V

Keep Stepping Screening (Australia) at Chicago Cultural Center

SYNOPSIS
In Sydney, Gabi and Patricia train to compete in Destructive Steps, Australia’s largest street dance competition. Both are pushing themselves mentally and physically in hopes that winning the contest will open new doors and possibilities for a better life. The film spans seven years and provides viewers with intimate access to the breathtaking artform of street dancing. Keep Stepping illuminates the multicultural, passion-filled subculture and tells a moving story about love, obsession, and the transformative power of dance.
Summer Screenings is Cinema/Chicago’s annual free film series that casts a spotlight on a different country’s national cinema each week all summer. DIRECTED BY Luke Cornish

Cinema has always been fascinated with the city as a “character”— a living, breathing organism that shapes the world around it. This program showcases the myriad ways in which cities are depicted in cinema and how people live, love, move through, and seek connection in urban spaces.
Featuring stories set in cities all around the globe—from the bustling cafes of Bogotá to the seaside cityscapes of Gothenburg and Galway to glittering black and white portraits of Taipei and Seoul to the streets, skyways, rivers, and trains right here in Chicago—these films express the rich, diverse personalities of cities on screen and how they mold and influence how we live.
Films are unrated. Viewer discretion is advised.

Tickets are available to claim 2 weeks before the screening.

Accessibility

Summer Screenings: Nowhere Special (UK) at Chicago Cultural Center

SYNOPSIS
Thirty-five-year-old window cleaner and single father John has dedicated his life to raising his son. Given only a few months to live, he traverses Belfast, visiting homes of the working class and wealthy alike. He has a singular goal: to find the perfect family to raise his toddler Michael. How can he carry out this impossible task? Inspired by true events in the UK, Nowhere Special is a tender tale of pure love, profound heartbreak, and parenthood. DIRECTED BY Uberto Pasolini

Summer Screenings is Cinema/Chicago’s annual free film series that casts a spotlight on a different country’s national cinema each week all summer.
Cinema has always been fascinated with the city as a “character”— a living, breathing organism that shapes the world around it. This program showcases the myriad ways in which cities are depicted in cinema and how people live, love, move through, and seek connection in urban spaces.
Featuring stories set in cities all around the globe—from the bustling cafes of Bogotá to the seaside cityscapes of Gothenburg and Galway to glittering black and white portraits of Taipei and Seoul to the streets, skyways, rivers, and trains right here in Chicago—these films express the rich, diverse personalities of cities on screen and how they mold and influence how we live.
Films are unrated. Viewer discretion is advised.

Tickets are available to claim 2 weeks before the screening.

Accessibility

Talk | Barak adé Soleil with SHIFT Community Participants at MCA

Please join us for a communal dialog with award-winning artist Barak adé Soleil and members of the local Black and Brown neurodiverse and disabled community who are part of adé Soleil’s newly commissioned work SHIFT.

SHIFT, a multidisciplinary project for the MCA’s Frictions series, has two components:

An installation located on the first floor of the MCA during the performance’s run, intentionally next to a spiraling staircase that goes up to the museum’s fourth floor. Barak is creating a film that will be installed and projected onto a diamond-like platform. In this dreamlike video installation, bodies both at rest and as they shift are visible onscreen at life-size and larger-than-life scale. The presence of Black neurodiverse and disabled bodies is amplified from many angles, infiltrating the architecture of the museum’s iconic public stairwell. Whereas these bodies might otherwise be violently misinterpreted as either lazy or near death, adé Soleil offers rest—and the intimacy of everyday gestures—as forms of political resistance for Black people.
A gathering on Saturday, May 6, where members of the Disability community will join adé Soleil in a “promenade” throughout the museum’s public areas; at times they will ascend the staircases and take up space to make visible and apparent the power of community presence. The use of the word promenade is intentional, drawing from its definition: “to take a leisurely public walk, ride, [wheel] or drive so as to meet or be seen by others.”
SHIFT is curated by Tara Aisha Willis, Curator of Performance & Public Practice at the MCA.

Access Information
ASL interpretation, CART captioning, and live audio description are provided. AD devices are available at the museum, and audience members may also use their personal devices to access the audio description through a URL provided on-site.

This event has relaxed viewing protocols and sensory-friendly lighting.

ASL provided.Audio description available.Haptic elements used.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-barak-ade-soleil-with-shift-performers/

Talk | Gary Simmons at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

On the opening of his first comprehensive survey exhibition, Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, multidisciplinary artist Gary Simmons is joined by the curators of the show, René Morales, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, and Jadine Collingwood, Assistant Curator, for a wide-ranging discussion of his powerful work.

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, captioning, Spanish captioning

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-gary-simmons/

A.B.L.E. presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

This spring, A.B.L.E. returns to the stage and our classical roots with a multimedia version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, updated for our social-media obsessed times. Our modern adaptation by A.B.L.E. teaching artist Emma MacLean focuses on the themes of connection and disconnection. The king and queen of the fairies are fighting, the mechanicals are rehearsing a play but no one knows their lines, and the Athenian teens keep changing their relationship status. Join ABLE’s ensembles – 34 actors with intellectual and developmental disabilities as we miss texts, drop calls, and wander love struck in the Athenian forest.

This multimedia production will weave Shakespeare’s words with original scenes, monologues, songs, and dances devised by our ensembles, as well as animated film sequences from VFX designer Brock Alter. The virtual ensemble will narrate the tale for us as the in-person ensembles take the stage Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

With your ticket, you have the option of participating in a 45 minute interactive workshop led by A.B.L.E.’s team of Creative Associates and Teaching Artists. Audiences can experience some of the games and activities A.B.L.E. used to bring their ideas to the stage, get a touch tour of key costume pieces and props, and try A.B.L.E.’s signature “dropping in” method. This exclusive opportunity is only available to 20 ticket holders each day – reserve your spot when booking your ticket.

Event Details:
Sunday June 11th at 2pm (pre-show workshop & touch tour at 12:30pm)

Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater
800 East Grand Avenue
Chicago IL 60611

Tickets: All tickets are Pay-what-you-can, general admission
Online: ableensemble.com/events
Phone: 312.595.5600
In person: at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater box office

Access: Performances will be open captioned and dual ASL interpreted.

COVID Policies: To ensure A.B.L.E.’s immunocompromised performers and community members feel safe and welcome, all audience members must remain masked for the duration of their time in the theater complex.

https://www.ableensemble.com/events

A.B.L.E. presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

This spring, A.B.L.E. returns to the stage and our classical roots with a multimedia version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, updated for our social-media obsessed times. Our modern adaptation by A.B.L.E. teaching artist Emma MacLean focuses on the themes of connection and disconnection. The king and queen of the fairies are fighting, the mechanicals are rehearsing a play but no one knows their lines, and the Athenian teens keep changing their relationship status. Join ABLE’s ensembles – 34 actors with intellectual and developmental disabilities as we miss texts, drop calls, and wander love struck in the Athenian forest.

This multimedia production will weave Shakespeare’s words with original scenes, monologues, songs, and dances devised by our ensembles, as well as animated film sequences from VFX designer Brock Alter. The virtual ensemble will narrate the tale for us as the in-person ensembles take the stage Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

With your ticket, you have the option of participating in a 45 minute interactive workshop led by A.B.L.E.’s team of Creative Associates and Teaching Artists. Audiences can experience some of the games and activities A.B.L.E. used to bring their ideas to the stage, get a touch tour of key costume pieces and props, and try A.B.L.E.’s signature “dropping in” method. This exclusive opportunity is only available to 20 ticket holders each day – reserve your spot when booking your ticket.

Event Details:
Saturday June 10th at 7pm (pre-show workshop & touch tour at 5:30pm)

Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater
800 East Grand Avenue
Chicago IL 60611

Tickets: All tickets are Pay-what-you-can, general admission
Online: ableensemble.com/events
Phone: 312.595.5600
In person: at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater box office

Access: Performances will be open captioned and dual ASL interpreted.

COVID Policies: To ensure A.B.L.E.’s immunocompromised performers and community members feel safe and welcome, all audience members must remain masked for the duration of their time in the theater complex.

https://www.ableensemble.com/events

Sensory-Friendly Morning at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Sensory-Friendly Morning is a free program for all people who benefit from visiting the MCA without large crowds and other sensitive environmental elements. This includes visitors with sensory sensitivities, disabilities, autism, PTSD, dementia, and more. On these mornings, lighting at the museum is dimmed, sounds from artworks and environmental noise is kept at a minimum, and a quiet space is available to visitors for breaks. During Sensory-Friendly Mornings, preregistered individuals and their families can visit the museum to explore exhibitions at their own pace, and join a Chicago-based artist for a sensory-friendly art-making experience. The museum is closed to the general public until 11:30 am; at that time, the lights and artworks return to usual operations.

Sensory-Friendly Morning aims to be a welcoming space to experience contemporary art in a judgment-free environment.

Accessibility: Sensory-Friendly. ASL Interpretation

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/sensory-friendly-morning-5/

Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon at Lookingglass Theatre

Hooray! Lucy and Charlie just got hitched…and they’re embracing the worst of the American dream. They do what they want. Take what they want. They’re First Generation Asian American Renegades. In love. And on the run.

Featuring original country western and folk songs, directed by Amanda Dehnert (Peter Pan (A Play), Eastland), Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon tracks a young couple as they rev it down quintessentially American highways and across stereotypic borders, fleeing expectation and trawling up trouble along the way.

Direct from his Broadway debut in Almost Famous The Musical, Artistic Associate Matthew C. Yee’s world premiere musical romp gives a nod to America’s past, takes tally of its present, and blows its future wide open.

Open Captioned performance begins at 7:00 PM.

Please contact our Box Office to reserve your seats!

https://lookingglasstheatre.org/event/lucy-and-charlies-honeymoon-2022/

Writing Care Scenes: A Workshop & Skill Share with 2023 3Arts/Bodies of Work Residency Fellow, Kennedy Dawson Healy

Writing Care Scenes: A Workshop & Skill Share with 2023 3Arts/Bodies of Work Residency Fellow, Kennedy Dawson Healy
Thursday, May 4th, 4:30pm to 6:30pm (Or join us virtually at 5:00pm!)
Haymarket House
800 W Buena Ave, Chicago, IL 60613

Join us for a workshop on writing play scenes about care. Learn about how Kennedy found grounding in writing about issues surrounding care through her in-progress project Care: The Musical. Then take time to develop your own scene that volunteers can share back to the group.

RSVP: https://writingcarescenes.eventbrite.com/

Program:
4:30 – 5:00 pm: Light refreshments and creative printmaking & zine stations* will be available outdoors.
5:00 – 6:30 pm: Workshop & skill share will be hosted in door.

*Creative printmaking & zine stations will be presented by Soph Schinderle (they/them) and Lizzy Dixon (they/them), who have collaborated with Kennedy during her residency. Schinderle and Dixon are both graduate art therapy students in the Community Practice and Helping Relationship Class, department of art therapy and counseling, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

Access Information: Haymarket House is located in Uptown on the corner of Buena and Clarendon. Please enter through the parking lot off Clarendon where there is a ramped side entrance. ASL interpreters, CART, and a Personal Assistant will be available at the event. Masks are required for all who are able to wear them. There are two accessible bathrooms and the large event space has an air filter. For any other accessibility requests, please reach out to Beth Bendtsen at bbendtsen@accessliving.org at your earliest convenience.

Host Information: This event is part of the 2023 3Arts/Bodies of Work Residency Fellowship. Bodies of Work is a part of the Department of Disability and Human Development within the College of Applied Health Sciences at University of Illinois-Chicago.

Supporter Information:
This program received generous support from the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities, Shirley Ryan Abilities Lab and Disability Culture Activism Lab at SAIC.

The contents of this event were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90RTCP0005). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this event do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, as well as grants to 3Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Joyce Foundation.

Image description (attached flyer): Pastel pink and purple watercolor background with black, purple and blue text. There is a small circular photo of Kennedy, a white, fat, disabled femme, who smiles with their head turned slightly to the right. The back of their power chair is visible over their shoulder. Overlaid on the back ground is text with event information, including the bullet points: Outdoor refreshments, Creative printmaking & zine stations, and Scene writing workshop & sharing. Along the bottom are the logos for the event sponsors.

https://writingcarescenes.eventbrite.com/

Gwendolyn Brooks Panel: Reflecting on a Chicago Legend at The Poetry Foundation

Join us for a roundtable discussion of legendary Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks and her book Blacks with Nora Brooks Blakely, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Kelly Norman Ellis.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Nora Brooks Blakely, a former teacher, founded Chocolate Chips Theatre Company (1982-2011) and was its primary playwright. The daughter of two writers, Henry Blakely (Windy Place) and Gwendolyn Brooks (the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize), Brooks Blakely founded Brooks Permissions in 2001 to license and promote her mother’s work through programming and publications that demonstrate Gwendolyn Brooks’s continuing relevance. After writing plays and musicals for decades, she recently released her first children’s book, Moyenda and The Golden Heart, a Kwanzaa origin tale. Learn more at flyingcolorsunlimited.com.

Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti—poet, author, publisher, and educator—is regarded as an architect of the Black Arts Movement and is the founder and publisher of Chicago’s Third World Press. Madhubuti has published more than 36 books, including Think Black; Black Pride; Don’t Cry, Scream; and We Walk the Way of the New World . His poetry and essays have been selected for more than 100 anthologies. he National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have recognized his poetry, and he has won anAmerican Book Award, Illinois Arts Council Award, Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, and Hurston/Wright Legacy Prize in poetry for Liberation Narratives. His latest book, Taught By Women: Poems as Resistance Language, New and Selected, published in 2020, pays homage to the women who influenced him. Madhubuti is a recipient of the 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Kelly Norman Ellis is the author of Tougaloo Blues and Offerings of Desire; her poetry has appeared in Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry, Spirit and Flame, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Boomer Girls, ESSENCE, Obsidian, Calyx, and Cornbread Nation. She is a recipient of a Kentucky Foundation for Women writer’s grant and is a Cave Canem fellow and founding member of the Affrilachian Poets. Ellis is an associate professor of English and creative writing and chairperson for the Department of English, Foreign Languages and Literatures at Chicago State University.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. If you will not comply with this requirement, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gwendolyn-brooks-panel-reflecting-on-a-chicago-legend-tickets-621192251747

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, captioning

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gwendolyn-brooks-panel-reflecting-on-a-chicago-legend-tickets-621192251747

LAST NIGHT AND THE NIGHT BEFORE at Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Monique and her daughter Sam are on the run. From what, they will not say. Showing up on their family’s doorstep in Brooklyn, the surprise visit raises more questions than it answers. As the specter of their abandoned life in Georgia creeps back into focus, the family is forced to consider what must be sacrificed to raise a child in an often-cruel world. Donnetta Lavinia Grays’s heartbreaking and poetic portrait of love–Black, queer, familial–is a bold tribute to the enduring promise of tomorrow.

Accessibility: captioniong

https://cart.steppenwolf.org/17307/17377

CineYouth Film Festival 2023: Chicagoland Screening at FACETS

The exhilarating work of Chicago’s next generation of filmmakers is showcased in this eclectic collection that celebrates the vast array of creative expressions emerging from our city. These films will screen with Open Captions, and the Q&A will feature Live Captioning.

Note: Films in this program contain themes or language that may not be suitable for all ages.

Accessibility: open captions, live captions

https://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/film/cineyouth2023-chicagoland/

CineYouth Film Festival 2023: Virtual Chicagoland Screening with Chicago International Film Festival

The exhilarating work of Chicago’s next generation of filmmakers is showcased in this eclectic collection that celebrates the vast array of creative expressions emerging from our city.

Note: Films in this program contain themes or language that may not be suitable for all ages.

Closed Captions will be available with these films on our online platform.

https://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/film/cineyouth2023-chicagoland/

Please note, there are also in-person screenings. This post contains information for the virtual screening only.

Maggie Bridger | Scale at High Concept Labs

Limited capacity. Advanced registration is required.
Masking is required for this performance.

Using the pain scale as a primary source material, Scale places medicalized methods of quantifying pain in conversation with alternative ways of reading and attending to pain emerging from the disability community, ultimately proposing new ways of caring for the bodymind in dance. These complex interactions between medicalization, care, and community are explored through movement, video, and the use of access tools for both performers and audience members. Scale invites audience members to attend to their own embodied experience of the piece, offering pillows, blankets, and other care objects as tools for curating the way they engage with and experience the work. Scale poses questions around the ways that we perceive pain, ultimately reaching toward a more compassionate and disability-informed way of creating and performing dance.

Each performance is followed by a Crafting Care event that serves as a sort of informal “talk back” with some of the artists, as well as an opportunity to join in the crafting practice that informed much of the work of Scale. Audience members are encouraged to bring their own crafting projects, participate in a group embroidery project, or simply share space and chat about Scale in community with the artists and other audience members.

COLLABORATORS
Performers: Maggie Bridger, Jordan Brown, Joán Joel, Alex Neil-Sevier, Robby Lee Williams
Costumes and Visual Art: Reveca Torres
Sound Design: Shireen Hamza
Crafters: Margaret Fink, Sandy Guttman, Alison Kopit, Ashley Miller
Access information

ACCESS DURING PERFORMANCE
Captions, American Sign Language, audio descriptions, opportunities to rest, and sensory notes are incorporated into the performance in ways that we hope generate a unique, thoughtful experience for each audience member. The methods we’re using to incorporate these elements into the performance are experimental and may differ from the ways these tools are encountered in other arts spaces. We are continuing to learn, develop, and experiment alongside our community and welcome feedback on these elements, particularly from members of the community that rely on these various tools to access performance.

COVID Protocols:
Masking is required in the performance space. Mana Contemporary, though, is a shared building that does not require masking and there may be unmasked people outside of the performance space. You are welcome to bring your own mask or grab one of the high quality masks available to audience members in both adult and child sizes at the building’s entrance. All performers will be masked, though there is a moment in the work where performers layer masks one on top of the other, which may cause their masking to be less effective for a short period of time.

Arriving at Mana & Wayfinding:
All audience members will enter the ramped entrance to Mana Contemporary located on the west side of the building near the Throop street entrance to the parking lot. Audiences will then be guided through the building to the performance space by the performers, two of whom use ASL and will be able to guide Deaf and hard of hearing audience members. The first 30 minutes of the performance time is dedicated to audience arrival and getting situated in the performance space, so there is no need to rush or worry about arriving precisely on time. There is time to rest, chat, and get settled.

A library around the corner from the performance space will be used as a “quiet space” that folks can use to get a break from the performance, if needed.

Access Tools and Sharing Space:
The show runs about an hour and a half with the first half hour dedicated entirely to audience members arriving and getting settled for the performance. Upon entering the space, audience members will be offered access devices and care tools to help them feel as comfortable as possible throughout the performance. Some of the tools we have available are:

4 blankets
3 small weighted blankets
9 pillows
2 large beanbags
Yoga mats/exercise mats
Instant hot and cold packs
Stim tools
3 ear defenders

In addition to these, you are very welcome to bring your own tools/devices. We invite you to move, stim, rest, and generally make yourself comfortable during the performance. Our tools/devices will be cleaned with scent-free detergent/cleanser between each performance.

We ask that audience members refrain from wearing any scented perfume, cologne, lotion, etc. However, Mana Contemporary is a shared space where tenants will sometimes burn incense or use other scented products. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee a fully scent-free environment.

https://highconceptlabs.org/events/maggie-bridger-scale

Open Door: Gregg Bordowitz, Asia Calcagno, Terri Kapsalis & Ugochi Nwaogwugwu at the Poetry Foundation Building

Join us for an Open Door reading with Gregg Bordowitz, Asia Calcagno, Terri Kapsalis, and Ugochi Nwaogwugwu. The Open Door series highlights creative relationships in Chicago, including mentorship and collaboration.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Gregg Bordowitz is a writer, artist, and activist. He currently serves as the director of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, New York.

Asia Calcagno is a writer and educator from Chicago. Calcagno’s writing has been featured in literary magazines and anthologies such as Third Coast, Poetry magazine, The Golden Shovel Anthology, West Trade Review, Smartish Pace, Black Femme Collective, and Respect the Mic. She holds an MFA from Bennington College, and spends her time educating, consulting, and using storytelling to create more effective educational spaces. She is a 2022 Luminarts Creative Writing Fellow and a 2022–2023 Ingenuity Constellation Fellow.

Terri Kapsalis is the author of Jane Addams’ Travel Medicine Kit, The Hysterical Alphabet, and Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Kapsalis’s writing has appeared on Literary Hub and in edited volumes and journals, including Short Fiction, The Baffler, Denver Quarterly, Public, and Parakeet Magazine. A founding member of Theater Oobleck, she has performed in over 30 productions. Since 1991, she has been a collective member and health educator at the Chicago Women’s Health Center and co-founded TGAP (Trans Greater Access Project) and the Integrative Health Program. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ugochi Nwaogwugwu is a multidisciplinary creative–a professional poet, singer, songwriter, composer, musician, poetry instructor, and teaching artist. Nwaogwugwu has executive produced, written, and coarranged three album projects, and her poetry has been been published in Storm Between Two Fingers and Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different, both international anthologies out of the UK. Her poems are also featured in TheGolden Shovel Anthology and Wherever I’m At. Ugochi created an original pan-African poetry form called Ike (pronounced ee-KAY) paying homage to her Igbo culture (Nigeria, West Africa). She also has written newsworthy essays including “Not My President,” published by Third World Press.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. If you will not comply with this requirement, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-door-gregg-bordowitz-asia-calcagno-terri-kapsalis-ugochi-nwaogwu-tickets-602679098407

Elif Batuman in Conversation with Performance by Macie Stewart at Epiphany Center, Chase House

Pulitzer Prize Finalist Elif Batuman is one of the biggest names in literature. Her newest work Either/Or continues the story of her first book, following Selin Karadag, a young woman exploring adulthood. Join this decorated author in a conversation about Kierkegaard, literary beauty, and the journey of life. Following the conversation, Chicago composer and multi-instrumentalist Macie Stewart will perform a suite of her poetic, baroque-tinged folk songs with saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi. The evening concludes with a special presentation of DJs Brian Case’s and Bobby Burg’s legendary and long-running Smith’s Night at Danny’s Tavern.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/batuman-stewart/

Chicago’s James Beard Foundation Award-Winning Chef & Author Sarah Grueneberg at Epiphany Center, Chase House

James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef, Sarah Grueneberg knows a thing or two about great ingredients. Drawing on her long love affair with Italian cooking and the methods she uses at her renowned restaurant Monteverde, Sarah begs us to feature veggies as the main attraction in her new cookbook, Listen to Your Vegetables: Italian-Inspired Recipes for Every Season. Join Chicago Humanities as we sit down with this award-winning chef and chef Rick Bayless for an intimate conversation and tips on how to up our vegetable game.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/sarah-grueneberg/

Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton at The Riviera Theatre

A native of Park Ridge, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton’s middle-class upbringing taught her the value of hard work, determination, and the importance of public service. Now, she’s returning this spring to talk about how Chicago provided the foundation upon which she built her life and career. Join her for a far-reaching, intimate conversation about her work advocating for civic engagement through Onward Together, her thoughts on current affairs, and her connection to Chicago’s own beloved local activist, Joanne Alter.

This event will have ASL Interpretation, audio description, open captions, and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/venues/riviera-theatre/

An Evening with Gigi Gorgeous and Gottmik at Chop Shop

Youtube star, author, transgender activist and advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, Gigi Gorgeous, and American drag performer, actor, make-up artist, and the first transgender male to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Gottmik are ready for real talk about their transition journeys. Join these two queer icons as they discuss their newest book, The T Guide: Our Trans Experiences and a Celebration of Gender Expression―Man, Woman, Nonbinary, and Beyond, and discover the knowledge you need to be the best ally you can be and better understand what it means for those who embark on this journey.

Come enjoy dinner and drinks at Chop Shop before or after the conversation with Gigi Gorgeous and Gottmik. A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/gorgeous-gottmik/

A Night Out with Andrew Rannells at Music Box Theatre

Does a job, a home, and a killer wardrobe make you a true adult? Andrew Rannells isn’t so sure. If he’s so successful in his forties, then why does he still feel like an anxious twenty-something? Were the triumphs of his life actually failures? And were his failures his real triumphs? At Chicago Humanities, the Tony-nominated actor will sit down for a witty, fun, and poignant conversation that looks back over his career– from the Broadway stage (The Book of Mormon) to the silver screen (Girls, Big Mouth)–to ask what success and “adulting” really mean and whether he will ever feel like he has enough.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions, audio description, and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/andrew-rannells/

A Night Out With Andy Cohen at Park West

New York Times bestselling author, beloved TV host, and executive producer of The Real Housewives, Andy Cohen is the busiest man in show business. Now, he’s taking on the most important role of his life: dad. With a three-year old son and a baby girl born in May, late-night parties have been replaced by late-night feedings. Join Chicago Humanities for a lively evening with this Watch What Happens Live! host as he reflects on his year filled with housewife drama, a mayoral feud, and a renewed understanding of how family really changes everything.

This event will have open captions, audio descriptions, and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/andy-cohen/

Jonathan Eig on the Life of Martin Luther King Jr at Chop Shop

There’s no better biographer working right now than Chicago’s own Jonathan Eig. He has helped us understand some of the most monumental lives of our times, such as Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, and Al Capone. Eig’s newest subject is one of the most important figures in U.S. history: Martin Luther King Jr. But what is new to say about MLK? Plenty, it turns out. Join Eig and The Interview Show’s Mark Bazer for a conversation that will shed new light on this extraordinary American life. Following the conversation, Chicago jazz group The JuJu Exchange performs selections from their latest project, JazzRx, and share the emotional journey they and their fans took together to bring this healing music to life.

Come enjoy dinner and drinks at Chop Shop before or after this event.

This event will have open captions, audio description and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/eig-jujuexchange/

Physicist Michio Kaku on Quantum Computing at Epiphany Center, Epiphany Hall

In his new book Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything, Kaku attests that this technological breakthrough could allow humanity to do everything from create nuclear fusion reactors that create clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of a meltdown to unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s. Join Chicago Humanities as we sit down with this renowned scientist as he simplifies this important yet complicated topic in a way only Michio Kaku can.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/michio-kaku/

Adam Gopnik On the Art of Mastering A New Skill at Epiphany Center, Epiphany Hall

Longtime New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik investigates a foundational human question: How do we learn—and master—a new skill? In his newest book, The Real Work, Gopnik apprenticed as an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor to understand the process of mastering new skills, how it happens, and if anyone can do it. Join Chicago Humanities as we sit down with this brilliant writer, for a conversation that seeks to answer the ultimate question about why and how we humans relentlessly seek to better ourselves.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/adam-gopnik/

From the Lab to the Page: Brandon Taylor and Weike Wang at Epiphany Center, The Sanctuary

Real Life by Brandon Taylor (National Book Foundation’s 2023 Science + Literature Selected Title) asks what it means for a queer Black man to pursue a career in academia and science. Join Taylor and award-winning author Weike Wang for a conversation presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation about the real science within Real Life, and the possibilities for better representation—both in science and in fiction.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/brandon-taylor/

A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution at Epiphany Center, Chase House

You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand your legal rights. Elie Mystal, The Nation’s legal analyst, justice correspondent and frequent MSNBC guest, makes it easy to digest what rights we have, what rights are being taken away, and how we can protect those rights. Join author Brandi Collins-Dexter (Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future) for an enlightening one-on-one conversation with Mystal who brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain why the Constitution is trash but doesn’t have to be.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/elie-mystal/

Stacey Abrams: Rogue Justice at The Vic Theatre

#1 New York Times bestselling author, voting rights advocate, and history maker Stacey Abrams returns to Chicago with her latest thriller novel, Rogue Justice. Join Chicago Humanities for an evening with this political leader as we delve into the art of fiction, current issues affecting our democracy, and how we can all use our voices to impact our communities.

This event will have open captions, audio description, ASL interpretation, and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/stacey-abrams/

Costume Designing Black History with Ruth E. Carter at Music Box Theatre

Ruth E. Carter is one of the most renowned and celebrated costume designers working today having designed more than 40 films over the course of 3 decades and winning Oscars for Best Costume Design for her work on Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. At Chicago Humanities, Carter will explore the passion for history that inspired her period pieces and her journey into Afrofuturism, as well as what it’s been like working with such film legends as Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Chadwick Boseman, Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong’o, and more.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/ruth-e-carter/

Hebru Brantley in Conversation at Chicago History Museum, McCormick Theater

The preeminent African American pop artist of his generation, Chicago-born Hebru Brantley straddles the worlds of fine art, street art, and hip-hop, while he’s name-dropped in rap songs and collected by the likes of Jay-Z and LeBron James. Join Chicago Humanities for an upbeat, life-affirming chat about the work of this painter, sculptor, and designer whose work attempts to restore innocence to depictions of Black youth, normalize images of Black children at play, and suggest an entirely new mythology through the creation of Black superheroes.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/hebru-brantley/

A Conversation with Playwright V (Eve Ensler) at Francis W. Parker School

Tony Award-winning playwright of the theatrical phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, V (formerly Eve Ensler) sits down for an unflinching conversation about her newest, deeply personal work, Reckoning. On her travels from Berlin to Oklahoma to the Congo, V has spent her life spearheading global movements to end homelessness, the climate disaster, and especially violence against all women and girls. At Chicago Humanities, V will sit down with author Rebecca Makkai (I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel) to help us all learn how to create change, survive love, and connect to our greater purpose. ​ The conversation will address the meaning and critical importance of personal and political reckoning in a country that is being controlled and destroyed by its past.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/v-eve-ensler/

How Chicago Became a Latino Metropolis at Chicago History Museum, McCormick Theater

In the second half of the 20th century, Chicago has grown into a Latino metropolis, boasting flourishing neighborhoods such as Pilsen and Little Village. Despite Mexican Chicagoans facing intersecting forces of wealth-driven gentrification and anti-immigrant policies, Chicago has become a city of refuge, mutual aid, and economic power. Join Professor of History at Georgetown University Mike Amecua and Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez for a conversation on Chicago as Latino metropolis.

This event will have open caption and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/latino-metropolis/

The Injustices of the American Criminal Justice System at Chicago History Museum, McCormick Theater

As the former Cook County public defender, Allen Goodman has dedicated his life to defending his clients against routine police abuse, prosecutorial misconduct, and unjust sentencing. We are excited to welcome him to the Chicago Humanities stage for a conversation with Rudi Batzell, assistant professor of history at Lake Forest College, on Goodman’s memoir Everyone Against Us and the human suffering that is at the heart of the American criminal justice system.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/allen-goodman/

American Conservatism: From Reagan to Trump at Chicago History Museum, McCormick Theater

When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan. This leaves out the current ideals of conservatism, the recent presidency of Donald Trump, and the ambiguous future of the Republican party. Co-founder of The Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti (The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism), American Journalist Mary Katharine Ham, and former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Olivia Troye, sit down for a conversation led by author and senior writer atThe Dispatch David Drucker (In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP) on the state of the conservative movement – where it started and where it’s going.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event wll have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/american-conservatism/

Talk | Access Praxis: Cripistemology and the Arts at MCA

The MCA Advisory Partner organization Bodies of Work invites you to Access Praxis, a collaborative and participatory event in The Commons. Combining theory and practice, “praxis” is ideas in action.

For this iteration, we are joined by disabled artist-researchers Alana Ackerman, Stephanie Alma, Tommy Carroll, Justin Cooper, and Nic Wyatt as they explore their embodied experience of disability through a series of videos detailing their crip epistemologies. Following the video presentation, they will be joined by Dr. Carrie Sandahl, co-director of Bodies of Work, and Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Jones, co-founders of Crip*: Cripistemology and the Arts, for a moderated discussion on the disability experience and the valuable knowledges that stem from it.

This will be a hybrid program held in-person at the MCA Chicago and virtually. American Sign Language interpretation, CART-captioning, and verbal description will be provided in the video presentation and the panel discussion. The MCA Commons is wheelchair accessible and offers gender neutral facilities. While masks are not required for entry to the museum, we encourage masking for all in-person attendees. For any other access needs please contact Daniel Atkinson at DAtkinson@mcachicago.org.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/access-praxis-cripistemology/

Talk | Shamel Pitts in Conversation With Jafari S. Allen at Wirtz Center

Join us for a talk between On Stage: Frictions artist Shamel Pitts and Jafari S. Allen, author of There’s a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (2021), for a wide-ranging conversation on Pitts’ practice and current project with the MCA, Touch of RED. This event will be held off-site at Wirtz Center For Performing Arts at 710 N Lake Shore Drive.

This event will have ASL Interpretation and CART.

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/talk-shamel-pitts-in-conversation-with-jafari-s-allen/

Scott Aukerman: the Hilarious World of Comedy Bang Bang! at Venue Six10, Feinberg Theater

Writer and comedian Scott Aukerman’s weekly podcast, Comedy Bang! Bang!, is filled with zany characters, celebrity interviews, and chaotic improv. It’s now available as a book, Comedy Bang! Bang! The Podcast: The Book, and features brand-new anecdotes and opinions from characters of the iconic show. Join Aukerman and Mark Bazer, host of The Interview Show, on the Chicago Humanities stage for a hilarious behind-the-scenes conversation about his new book.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/aukerman-bazer/

Surprise: Reading Jane Austen Again at First United

Jane Austen is famously a writer of comedy, but many readers turn to her work in times of difficulty and sorrow, not merely to escape, but because Austen, with her wonderful capacity for surprise, seems to make room for these darker times. So author Rachel Cohen found during the period of ordinary joys and sorrows when her children were born, her father died, and she read nothing but Austen. Join Cohen for a conversation about her latest work, the Austen Years: A Memoir, as she explores the surprise mingling of sorrow and joy – in Jane Austen’s life, in Sense and Sensibility, and in what draws us back to Austen through reading and films of our own day.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/rachel-cohen/

Ayad Akhtar and Eboo Patel: On Offense at Venue Six10, Feinberg Theater

One of the greatest tensions in American society exists between preserving freedom of speech and respecting the sensitivities of marginalized communities, and it has been manifesting increasingly in academics, business, and the arts. Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, novelist, and President of PEN America, joins Interfaith America Founder and President Eboo Patel in conversation to explore how to hold space for intellectual liberty and creative expression without sacrificing the dignity of individual identities and beliefs.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/akhtar-patel/

The Supreme Court’s New Era at Venue Six10, Feinberg Theater

With the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, and the subsequent reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has taken a dramatic turn to the right. Gain insight into how we got here and the changing judicial landscape with a panel of experts: CNN senior legal analyst Joan Biskupic, whose latest work Nine Black Robes examines the historic consequences of the Supreme Court’s drive to the right, law professors Aziz Huq and Joyce Vance, and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/supreme-court/

Beto O’Rourke in Conversation at First United

Democrat Beto O’Rourke rose to national prominence with competitive campaigning in Republican Texas. Now, the former El Paso Congressman is turning his energy toward voting rights, an essential part of a productive democracy. In his new book, We’ve Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible, O’Rourke connects voting rights and democracy to the major issues of our time, sharing what he saw, heard, and learned while campaigning throughout the 254 counties of his home state during his Senatorial and gubernatorial runs. Join Chicago Humanities as we sit down for a conversation on just how essential it is that the sacred right to vote is protected and that we each do our part to save our democracy for generations to come.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/beto-orourke/

Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison on Police Brutality at Venue Six10, Feinberg Theater

As Minnesota’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison prosecuted the police officers in the murder trial of George Floyd and grappled with how to deliver justice to the Floyd family while putting an end to police brutality once and for all. Now, in the face of new stories of police abuse filling the news once again, Ellison joins Chicago Humanities to ask the key question: how do we break the wheel of police violence and finally make it stop turning?

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/keith-ellison/

The Photography of Ralph Ellison at Venue Six10, Crown Hall

In April 1952 Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man, his first and only finished novel and a work that is regarded today as one of the most important American literary works of the twentieth century and a stark account of America’s racial divisions. Alongside Ellison’s notable written works survives an archive of photographs he took throughout his life, spanning the 1940s–90s. Now 29 years after his death, Ralph Ellison: Photographer is the first book dedicated to Ellison’s photography practice. Join editors Michal Raz-Russo (Gordon Park Foundation), John Callahan (Lewis & Clark College), Bethany Collins and writer Adam Bradly (UCLA) in a conversation on Ellison’s photography, career, and creative.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/ralph-ellison/

Congresswoman Katie Porter: Championing Change at Venue Six10, Feinberg Theater

Congresswoman Katie Porter is known for challenging those in power and using her iconic whiteboard to demand answers on behalf of the American people. However, few know of her journey from Iowa farm girl to a single mom who had never run for office defying expectations by winning her seat in a historically conservative district in Orange County, California. Join Porter for an intimate conversation about her family, career, her new book, I Swear, and her upcoming run for the US Senate.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/katie-porter/

Lane Moore with Mara Wilson: How To Make Friends As An Adult at Chop Shop

Comedian Lane Moore wrote the book on How To Be Alone but building real, healthy friendships as an adult is ten times more difficult! In her new book You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult, Moore shares everything she’s learned about how to finally make friends as an adult, how to identify your attachment style, choose better friends, become a better friend yourself, and how to handle friendship breakup grief, which can be even more brutal than most romantic breakups. Join Lane Moore and writer/actor Mara Wilson (Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame, Matilda) for a fun-filled evening full of stories, advice, and sharing as we try and figure out a better way to find our chosen family.

Come enjoy dinner and drinks at Chop Shop before or after the conversation with Lane Moore and Mara Wilson. A book signing will follow this program.

This event will have open captions, ASL Interpretation and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/moore-wilson/

Rainn Wilson On the Importance of Spirituality at Francis W. Parker School

Rainn Wilson–beloved comedic actor, producer, writer–brings his unique perspective and humor to the traumas of our modern world. Wilson is calling for a Soul Boom, a spiritual revolution that could help us solve some of today’s biggest issues, including mental illness, racism, sexism, climate change, and economic injustice. The Office star will sit down with the Vice President of Second City, Kelly Leonard, in Chicago for a chat about spiritual thinking and profound healing, peppered with plenty of Kung Fu and Star Trek references, as only Rainn Wilson can.

A photo opportunity with Rainn Wilson will be available only for audience members who pre-order or purchase on-site pre-signed copies of Soul Boom.

This event will have open captions and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/rainn-wilson/

Susanna Hoffs: From Pop Star to Novelist at Chop Shop

Susanna Hoffs is a legend in the music industry. As the co-founder of the Bangles, she produced three platinum-selling albums and is the voice behind indelible pop hit after pop hit. Now, this famed songwriter has ventured into a new kind of writing with her debut novel, This Bird Has Flown, a story of music, secrets, and sex. At Chicago Humanities, Susanna will take the stage with the host of The Interview Show, Mark Bazer for an in-depth conversation about her new novel, the music business, and her illustrious life. Following the conversation, Susanna Hoffs will be taking the stage for a brief solo performance.

Come enjoy dinner and drinks at Chop Shop before or after this event.

This event will have open caption and ALDs.

https://www.chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/susanna-hoffs/

What the Constitution Means to Me at TimeLine Theatre

What the Constitution Means to Me is a “slyly crafted piece of persuasion and a tangible contribution to the change it seeks” (The New York Times) and a “singularly charming, politically urgent and cathartically necessary play” (Los Angeles Times) that shows “how broad concepts of law and governance effect individual lives in the most intimate ways” (The Guardian).

Fifteen-year-old Heidi earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In this hilarious, hopeful, and guttingly human debate-meets-play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the relationship between four generations of women—all while grappling with the founding document that, for better and worse, shapes their lives.

What the Constitution Means to Me became a sensation upon its premiere at New York Theatre Workshop in 2018 and went on to a five-month Broadway run with Schreck in the leading role, garnering Tony Award nominations for Best Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. A national tour—launched in 2020, paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and resumed in 2021—followed. The play has been filmed, again with Schreck performing, for Amazon Prime Video.

TimeOut New York declared: “Here is something that every citizen must see: It’s theater in the old sense, the Greek sense, a place where civic society can come together and do its thinking and fixing and planning.” On the heels of the reversal of the foundational Roe v. Wade ruling, What the Constitution Means to Me is bound to feel even more relevant, profound, and searing than during its original run and Broadway debut. In the end, Shreck’s personal stories reflect our own, as does her passion, her laughter, and her outrage at a document that deserves to be challenged as much as it is upheld.

Accessibility: captioning

https://timelinetheatre.com/calendar/?month=June+2023&event=27464

Chicago Inclusive Dance Festival at Mayor’s Office for People with Disability Field Office

Join us anytime throughout the day for accessible dance events! Have fun while earning how to be more inclusive in your practice. We’ll be moving together, enjoying a showcase of works in progress, watching a short film, engaging and building community that includes dancers with disabilities.
FREE events with adjacent free parking and CTA nearby.
10:00-11:45 Everybody Can Dance inclusive movement workshop.
12:00-12:20 Informal showing of 3 works in progress.
12:20-1:45 Lunch with DIY Access stations open to provide hands on instruction for providing AI captions online.
1:45-2:30 AccepDance workshop (based on Autism Movement Therapy)
2:45-3:00 Film Showing “JMAXX and the Universal Language.”
3:00-3:30 Panel Discussion with JMAXX and the filmmaker
3:30-4:30 Adaptive Hip Hop workshop

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, audio description, captions, wheelchair accessibility

Will Rawls, [siccer] at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Will Rawls presents a new interdisciplinary work, [siccer], that addresses the relationship between blackness and image-making through a live performance accompanied by a video installation on the museum’s first floor.

Encompassing dance, photography, and sound, [siccer] experiments with stop-motion, a filmmaking technique in which subjects incrementally shift positions between photographs to produce the illusion of movement. Throughout the performance, an automated camera snaps an image every few seconds while the intervals between shutter clicks offer brief interludes when the camera fails to capture the dancers’ movements. As the performers improvise during these gaps between photographs, they rescript the terms through which blackness and queerness are made visible. [siccer] is also being presented as a video installation on the museum’s first floor throughout the duration of the Frictions suite, beginning on April 6.

Accessibility: captioning, ASL interpreted, audio description, assistive listening devices

https://visit.mcachicago.org/events/will-rawls-siccer/

Staff & Friends Reading: Adrian Matejka, Maggie Queeney, Charif Shanahan & Patricia Smith at the Poetry Foundation

Join us for a reading celebrating new book releases by Poetry Foundation staff and friends: Adrian Matejka, Maggie Queeney, Charif Shanahan, and Patricia Smith. Get to know some of the people behind the Foundation’s programs, including Poetry magazine.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Adrian Matejka is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Somebody Else Sold the World, which was a finalist for the 2022 Rilke Prize as well as the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. Matejka’s first graphic novel, Last On His Feet, was published in February 2023. He is the editor of Poetry magazine.

Maggie Queeney is the author of In Kind, winner of the 2022 Iowa Poetry Prize, and the chapbook settler. Queeney is the recipient of the 2019 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, an Individual Artists Program Grant from the City of Chicago, and a scholarship from the Ruth Stone Foundation. Her most recent work can be found in The Kenyon Review, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and The American Poetry Review. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University and reads and writes in Chicago. She is the Library Associate at the Poetry Foundation.

Charif Shanahan is the author of two collections of poetry: Trace Evidence: poems and Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and a Thom Gunn Award. Shanahan is the recipient of a NEA Literature Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Grant to Morocco, among other recognitions. He is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University, where he teaches poetry in the undergraduate and Litowitz MFA+MA graduate creative writing programs. He is a guest editor of Poetry magazine.

Patricia Smith, the 2021 recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, is the author of Unshuttered and Incendiary Art, among other collections. Smith is the winner of a Kingsley Tufts Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a NAACP Image Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her book Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah won a Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and Blood Dazzler was a National Book Award finalist. She is a creative writing professor at Princeton University, a distinguished professor for the City University of New York, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a chancellor in the Academy of American Poets.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. If you will not comply with this requirement, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/adrian-matejka-maggie-queeney-charif-shanahan-patricia-smith-tickets-595052637457

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility

Poetry off the Shelf: Renee Gladman, Eileen Myles & Simone White at the Poetry Foundation

Join us for a reading and conversation with Renee Gladman, Eileen Myles, and Simone White as they celebrate their new book releases.

In Renee Gladman’s Plans for Sentences, Eileen Myles’s a “Working Life,” and Simone White’s or, on being the other woman, longings and plans laid bare accumulate in staccato bursts of life, almost self-generatively. Hovering between genres, these three new books vibrate with willful misdirection, fierce unknowing, and flummoxed dualities. How can the work of writing set life in motion?

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Renee Gladman is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing, and architecture. Gladman is the author of 14 published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians, as well as three collections of drawings: One Long Black Sentence, a series of white-ink drawings on black paper, indexed by Fred Moten; Plans for Sentences, an image/text-based meditation on Black futurity and other choreographies of gathering; and Prose Architectures. She makes her home in New England.

Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, and art journalist whose practice of vernacular first-person writing has become a touchstone for the identity-fluid internet age. Pathetic Literature, which they edited, came out in Fall of 2022. Myles’s newest collection of poems, a “Working Life”, is out in April. Their fiction includes Chelsea Girls, which just won France’s Inrockuptibles Prize for best foreign novel, Cool for You, Inferno (a poet’s novel), and Afterglow. Writing on art was gathered in the volume The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. They live in New York and Marfa, Texas.

Simone White is the author of the collections or, on being the other woman, Dear Angel of Death, Of Being Dispersed, and House Envy of All the World. White teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. If you will not comply with this requirement, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-off-the-shelf-renee-gladman-eileen-myles-simone-white-tickets-595026750027

The Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility

Poetics in Practice: Art Writers Panel at the Poetry Foundation

Join us for a panel on art writing with Camille Bacon, Amarie Cemone Gipson, Daria Simone Harper, and Jessica Lynne during the weekend of EXPO CHICAGO.

Taking up the question of “poetics in practice,” the panel will consider the function and responsibility of art writing in the contemporary moment, the lineages we draw from and are in dialogue with, and what it means to build a viable writing life as writers working in a field that has historically underfunded the production and development of critical discourse. Together, we will ponder, imagine, muse, and speculate towards a reality that can better support the creation and proliferation of our work, as well as that of fellow writers.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Camille Bacon is a Chicago-based writer who is building a “sweet black writing life” as inspired by the words of poet Nikky Finney and the infinite wisdom of the Black feminist tradition more broadly. Through a practice that involves rigorous research and oration in addition to writing, she examines the material function of aesthetics and poetics. More specifically, she is interested in illuminating how aesthetics and poetics can catalyze a collective reorientation towards relation, connection, and intimacy and away from apathy and amnesia. Her work has appeared in Frieze, Cultured Magazine, Studio Magazine, Momus, and Burnaway, among other outlets. She currently manages McArthur Binion’s studio in Chicago, and formerly held positions at GRAY art gallery and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Amarie Cemone Gipson is an art worker, DJ, and creative director. She has held curatorial positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Renaissance Society, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Contemporary Austin, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Independently, her writing has been published in several journals and magazines including Artforum, ARTNews, ARTS.BLACK, Cite, ESSENCE, Gulf Coast, Houstonia, and THE SEEN. Currently based in her hometown of Houston, she created an open format dance party called PHYSICAL THERAPY where she serves as creative lead and resident DJ. As a culmination of her decade-long journey through the realms of art, music, and media, Gipson founded the Reading Room, a Black art reference library whose collection holds more than 300 publications and ephemera with an emphasis on Blackness, visual culture, and the American South.

Daria Simone Harper is a multimedia journalist and writer based in Brooklyn. She is currently Assistant Editor on the Digital Content team at David Zwirner Gallery New York. Through herstorytelling, she aims to amplify emerging Black and brown visual artists, as well as preserve the history of the trailblazing artists, thinkers, and creators who paved the way for us. Her byline is featured in publications including Artnet News, Artsy, Burnaway, CULTURED Magazine, ESSENCE, i-D, W Magazine, and more. She has interviewed and written features on established artists and cultural workers including Carrie Mae Weems, Stanley Whitney, and Antwaun Sargent, among others. Daria also hosts The Art of It All, an art and culture podcast featuring conversations amongst emerging and established artists and arts professionals of color.

Jessica Lynne is a writer and art critic. She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The Believer, Frieze, The Nation, and Oxford American, where she is a contributing editor. She is the recipient of a 2020 Research and Development award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a 2020 Arts Writer Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She is the inaugural recipient of the Beverly Art Writers Travel Grant awarded in 2022 by the American Australian Association.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. If you are unwilling to comply with this requirement, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/expo-chicago-poetics-in-practice-art-writers-panel-tickets-567161965707

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility

Shamel Pitts | TRIBE, Touch of RED at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Shamel Pitts and the Brooklyn-based arts collective TRIBE debut an electrifying new live performance in their ongoing Red Series exploring Black multiplicity and human connection.

The new work, titled Touch of RED, is a duet for two Black men set inside a contemporary boxing ring—a space that might traditionally suggest an aggressive competition between male athletes for entertainment purposes. Yet in Touch of RED, the two dancers imbue this boxed-in site with an intense energy drawn from the power of vulnerability, effeminacy, and the healing that occurs when Black men are allowed to soften, together. During the performance audiences will be seated around the four sides of the ring, which strategically conceals or frames the action. Transforming the space into a pulsing night club dance floor, Touch of RED invites the audience to experience the anticipation, energy, and collective softening that accompanies a good party—and reframe their expectations of time, space, and normative identity.

Accessibility: ASL interpreted, assistive listening devices, audio description, captioning

https://experience.mcachicago.org/overview/5786?queueittoken=e_mcageneral~q_6b855690-c319-4e86-a696-709882d1dd35~ts_1679853767~ce_true~rt_safetynet~h_601a46034f377ef96c08bcd1e98d78ea6c5c8b005d357659c1f90efb3399ab1b

“My Girl Story” Virtual Film Screening and Discussion at Access Living

To commemorate Women’s History Month, the Arts & Culture Project at Access Living is partnering to host a virtual film screening and panel discussion of the My Girl Story documentary on Saturday, March 25 from 12-2pm.

This event will explore the importance of mental health care among Black girls and resources available to them and their families.
My Girl follows the lives of two Black girls from Detroit, Monay and Shokana, who are fighting to become the girls they want to be. The documentary aims to give context to what Black girls across the country are experiencing today and to challenge the institutional and systemic barriers that prevent black girls especially those with disabilities from achieving their potential.
Register via Eventbrite to get the Zoom link:

Access Information:

Live CART captioning and ASL will be provided during the panel discussion.

Partners:
My Girl Story
Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition
Access Living
Empowered Fe Fe’s

Sponsor Information: This event is brought to you by the Arts and Culture Project at Access Living, an independent living center for people with disabilities, Bodies of Work: Network of Disability Art and Culture, Shirley Ryan Abilities Lab, and the Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL), a teaching lab housed under the department of art therapy and counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Bodies of Work is a part of the Department of Disability and Human Development within the College of Applied Health Sciences at University of Illinois-Chicago. The contents of this film were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR grant number 90RTCP0005). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this film do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/my-girl-story-film-screening-and-discussion-tickets-539655914367?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=escb

Maggie Bridger | Lab E: In-Process Showing at Experimental Station

LabE is a series of monthly cohort meetings addressing particular needs of disabled dance artists.

The LabE gathering on April 2nd is designed to be a safe, disability-centric space where artists can come together to share a work-in-progress, try out new ideas, workshop concepts, and experiment with new scores. Hosted by Maggie Bridger, this inclusive event is open to all artists who seek a supportive community where they can connect with peers who share similar experiences and offer and receive support, encouragement, and constructive feedback.

This gathering aims to foster community connections among Deaf, disabled, sick, neurodivergent, and Mad artists while providing a platform for artists to explore their creativity and showcase their unique perspectives.

In-progress projects will be presented by Sydney Erlikh & Deb Goodman.

If you are an artist who is interested in showcasing your art or working through new ideas, please reach out to Maggie at mbridg8@uic.edu to participate in this event.

LabE is open to all Chicago-area dance artists who self-identify as Deaf/deaf/hard of hearing, sick, mad, neurodivergent, disabled or living with a disability, and/or who have lived experience with disability or impairment. This space is particularly meant for those interested in exploring disability and impairment-informed modes of practicing dance.

Additional Access Information is available at https://highconceptlabs.org/news-2/labe-launches-at-experimental-station. For any other questions or requests regarding accessibility accommodations, please contact HCL’s Accessibility Coordinator, Yolanda Cesta Cursach Montilla (yolanda@highconceptlabs.org).

Accessibility: captioning, sensory-friendly, quiet spaces, wheelchair accessible

https://highconceptlabs.org/events/lab-e-april-2

Villette at Lookingglass Theatre

Charlotte Brontë’s undiscovered gem, Villette, offers a hero unlike any you’ve encountered before.

Suddenly without family, friends, or funds, Lucy travels alone to an unfamiliar land, determined to carve a path for herself. An eclectic carousel of characters (and one mysterious ghost!) soon draws Lucy into a complicated maze of multiple doorways leading towards fulfillment or peril – which door should she choose?

From the author of the captivating classic Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette finds brash, honest life in this adaptation by Lookingglass Artistic Associate Sara Gmitter (In the Garden) and directed by Lookingglass Ensemble Member Tracy Walsh (The Old Curiosity Shop).

Accessibility: captioning

https://lookingglasstheatre.org/event/villette-2022/

Chicago Irish Film Festival

Don’t miss the 24th annual festival of the best independent films created by Irish filmmakers celebrating diversity and creativity through short, documentary and feature films.

The Chicago Irish Film Festival proudly presents our Opening Night feature “The Sparrow” at Theater on the Lake on March 2, starting at 6:30pm. Enjoy other films at AMC New City from March 2-5 with director chats, and virtual tickets available from March 6-16, 2023.

All virtual films will have subtitle options. In-person captioning will not be available, however  is available depending on the theater.

Event Calendar

 

“Molly Joyce: Perspective” Exhibition Opening at Curb Appeal Gallery

Curb Appeal Gallery is pleased to announce their inaugural exhibition and the Chicago debut of Molly Joyce’s Perspective. Begun in 2019, Perspective is a sound and video work that captures perspectives of the disability experience. Created through interviewing over 40 participants around topics that encompass elements of disability—including care, interdependence, weakness, and cure—Joyce has composed and performed a work that invites audiences to consider the kaleidoscopic and nuanced experiences that inform what it means to be disabled. Created with disability aesthetics and accommodations in mind, Perspective features open-captioned videos, lending a sense of visual primacy to the stories of the disabled participants and their valuable perspectives. In addition to screening Perspective, Curb Appeal is delighted to host a brief conversation between Joyce and one of the project interviewees, Chicago artist Andy Slater (from 7:00-7:30pm).

Accessibility: Curb Appeal is wheelchair accessible. In addition to open captioning on the video work, we will provide ASL interpretation and CART-captioning for remarks and a brief conversation between Molly Joyce and Andy Slater. Masks are required for entry and will be provided if needed. Please note, Curb Appeal is an apartment gallery and doubles as a home to our gallery dog.

https://www.curbappeal.gallery/

Open Door: Ari Banias, Joss Barton, Alex Jane Cope, and KOKUMO at the Poetry Foundation

Join us for an Open Door reading with Ari Banias, Joss Barton, Alex Jane Cope, and KOKUMO, The Queen of Queer Soul. The Open Door series highlights creative relationships in Chicago, including mentorship and collaboration.

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Ari Banias is the author of A Symmetry, winner of the 2022 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans & Gender Variant Literature, and Anybody. Banias’s poems have appeared in Bæst, Georgia Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Triple Canopy, Verse, Washington Square, and The Yale Review. His work has been supported by fellowships and residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, MacDowell, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among others. He lives in Chicago.

Joss Barton is a writer, journalist, and spoken word performance artist exploring and documenting queer and trans* life, love, and liberation. Barton’s work blends femme-fever dreams over the soundtrack of the American nightmare. Combining prose poetry, non-fiction confessional essays, drag artistry, and spoken word stage performances, Joss examines the myriad states of queer trans womanhoods from historical, political, and pop cultural identities of death, desires, dreams, and disco. Joss Barton’s performance will include special lighting design by Dazzler.

Alex Jane Cope is a poet and translator originally from West Michigan and currently based in Chicago; they previously lived in and around Paris, where they organized a multilingual queer and feminist reading series. Cope ran the Suppertime Writing Workshop through the PO Box Collective, which brought people together monthly for a free meal, a discussion of a few short texts, and accompanying writing prompts. Their work has appeared in publications by The Rumpus, Voicemail Poems, Asphalte Magazine, Pilot Press London, and Hooligan Magazine.

KOKUMO is The Queen Of Queer Soul! And the CEO & Founder Of Born Worthy Records! The world’s first record company dedicated to black, non-cis women, and those who support us!

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. Guests over the age of five must show proof of vaccination and booster up to the level to which they are eligible for their age group. Guests over the age of 18 must show ID alongside their proof of vaccination. If you cannot meet these requirements, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the live-stream details, please register in advance here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-door-ari-banias-joss-barton-alex-jane-cope-kokumo-tickets-524709499237?lang=en-us&locale=en_US&status=30&view=listing

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility

Accessibility: ASL interpreter, captions

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-door-ari-banias-joss-barton-alex-jane-cope-kokumo-tickets-524709499237?lang=en-us&locale=en_US&status=30&view=listing

Celebrating the Poets of Forms & Features (Online)

Join us for a reading and celebration of the diverse voices, rich experiences, and powerful words of poets from around the country, and the world. Poets working in the online poetry workshop and discussion, Forms & Features, will share work created in this online creative community.

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility

Accessibility: ASL interpreter, captions

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrating-the-poets-of-forms-features-online-tickets-525944653617

Athena LaTocha Lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago

Join us in person for a lecture by distinguished alum Athena LaTocha followed by an audience Q&A.

Location: The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.

Athena LaTocha (BFA 1992) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth, and wood while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic cultural histories that are rooted in place.

Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement.

This event is free, non-ticketed and open to the general public.

This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services. The auditorium is wheelchair accessible and hearing assisted devices are available. For additional access requests, visit saic.edu/access.

Accessibility: live captions, assistive listening devices, wheelchair accessible

https://www.saic.edu/events/athena-latocha

Poetry & Grief: Raquel Salas Rivera & Angel Dominguez at the Poetry Foundation

Join us for a reading with Raquel Salas Rivera and Angel Dominguez as part of the Poetry Coalition’s annual nationwide programming series. The Poetry Coalition’s theme for 2023 is Poetry & Grief, taking inspiration from these lines in Ed Roberson’s poem “once the magnolia has blossomed:”“and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson.”

This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Raquel Salas Rivera’s honors include the 2023 Sundial Literary Translation Award, the 2022 Juan Felipe Herrera Award, a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, the inaugural Ambroggio Prize, and serving as the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, among others. Salas Rivera has published six poetry collections and edited Puerto Rico en mi corazón and the literary journal The Wanderer. Among his translations are The Rust of History and The Book of Conjurations. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and works as head of the translation team for The Puerto Rican Literature Project.

Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys, CA by their immigrant family. Dominguez lives amongst the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon, CA. They are the author of Desgraciado (the collected letters), RoseSunWater, and Black Lavender Milk. Their work has been published in BOMB Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, FENCE, Prolit Magazine, SFMOMA Open Space, and elsewhere. You can find Angel in the redwoods or ocean.

In-Person Attendance
All guests over the age of two must wear a mask inside the Poetry Foundation building. Guests over the age of five must show proof of vaccination and booster up to the level to which they are eligible for their age group. Guests over the age of 18 must show ID alongside their proof of vaccination. If you cannot meet these requirements, you will not be granted entry to the event. Please note that some performers may choose to perform without a mask. Guests are encouraged to register in advance.

Livestream Attendance
The livestream link will be shared with registered guests on the day of the event. In order to receive the livestream details, please register in advance here.

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This event will include CART captioning and ASL interpretation. For more information about accessibility at the Poetry Foundation, please visit our Accessibility Guide. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit/accessibility

Accessibility: ASL interpreter, live captions

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-grief-raquel-salas-rivera-angel-dominguez-tickets-539584039387