Saturday, February 1, 2014

Jackie Taylor Of B.E.T. Celebrates "The Power Of One"



Jackie Taylor of Uptown's Black Ensemble Theater is featured today in ComEd's series The Power of One, in which neighborhood heroes are recognized for the good they do.  It just takes one person to start something great.  Her page says:  "As Founder of the Black Ensemble Theater, Jackie has spent over 30 years empowering people to make their dreams come true. Watch and share the powerful video of Jackie's story and see how she is uplifting people from her Uptown neighborhood through the power of performance."  She is a treasure and Uptown is blessed to have her endless energy here.
  • To follow the entire series, click here.  
  • For UU's coverage of Ms. Taylor over the years, click here.

18 comments:

  1. Why do they call it the Black Ensemble Theatre? Why is it not African-American? Or why should it be African-American or Black? I am JUST CURIOUS. Any Thoughts? I am just curious, and not trying to start a race war on UU. It seems like a great place. Educate me!

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    1. Whenever a person equates black with African-American, I am reminded of the author who dubbed Terence the "first African-American playwright in the Roman Empire." That having been said, African-American would likely be appropriate here, as I doubt that many non American Africans perform at the theater. In all likelihood, it just a matter of branding. The company was formed in 1976 -- I don't even know if "African-American" was in common use at that point. As evidenced by the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), organizations are reluctant to abandon a brand that they have invested years into building, even when certain aspects of the name have become impolitic.

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  2. Jason, why should anyone except B.E.T. educate you? Why not contact them and find out right from the source?

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  3. Its called black ensemble becauseobviously its an all black cast for the most part

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  4. If you've never been to a show, you really must go! The talent, costumes and venue are fantastic.

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  5. It's a relic from a time when blacks had to have their own segregated everything basically. Thankfully, that time is long over. I am just as uncomfortable with a Black Ensemble Theater as I would be with a group of whites organizing a White Ensemble Theater to the exclusion of others. I wish them plenty of success, but I'm not really interested in attending the performances of a theater group whose first and foremost qualification for their actors is that they all be black, white, yellow or red. The very notion is ridiculous.

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    1. The reason that a 'white ensemble theatre' would be more offensive than Babes with Blades, BET, orTeatro Vista (Latino theatre company) is because these are oppressed groups, where as 'white' is not. Check your privilege. I see a lot of theater (last season, September 2013-September 2014, I saw about 70 shows) at venues large and small, and while there was some here and there, there was not much diversity in casting amongst those shows. While I'm not a fan of BET, I don't think that their "first and foremost" qualification is for actors to be of a particular race. I think it's to tell stories from a group of people that are often not told in traditional theater.

      Also--I don't think blacks had to "have their own segregated everything"... I think that was imposed upon them. Have you ever heard of Plessy v. Ferguson, or even Brown v. Board of Education?

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    2. Then you are missing some wonderful shows and performers.

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    3. If you keep on expressing silly thoughts, I'm going to start calling you Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, and this message board Downton Update.

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    4. Psst,

      CN and Garyscan.............U've been trolled.

      It's highly developed trolling and there is the tiny possibility that Schulyer Pierson is "for real", but I doubt it. Not that there aren't real people out there who are just as pretentiously stupid as the comments that SP made.

      In real life I picture a real life SP in a small storefront theater. Said theater would likely be in Rogers Park. SP and four friends/comrades would be dressed as mimes and fake clapping at the end the play their other comrade wrote and directed "Trolling the Masses".

      There would be more people onstage than in the audience and afterwards they would head to the local coffeehouse which has a scarecrow with a Ronald Reagan mask in the window.

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    5. I was referring to UR, the guardian of unmarketable Victorian homes, and now the one million and first person to draw the subtle but unmistakeable parallel between the KKK and a cultural heritage group for minorities. Congratulations - your balloons are in the mail!

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    6. I totally forgot about this post. SP, I expect some pretty strange things to be posted on blogs, but I never thought in a million years that anyone would interpret my comment above to suggest that blacks segregated themselves! Of course it was imposed upon them!

      I have experienced a lifetime of what it means to be discriminated against due to your DNA, but I no longer support organizations that discriminate based on your DNA no matter how beneficial they think they're being. There's plenty of evidence out there that the vast majority of us were either never racist or now know better as it should be. I just hope that in the next election all of us vote based on our political beliefs and the candidates' qualifications rather than on how his or her DNA is arranged.

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  6. "The mission of the Black Ensemble Theater is to eradicate racism and its damaging effects upon our society through the utilization of theater arts. BE is the only theater in the nation whose mission is to eradicate racism. Other organizations work to diversify audiences, but none utilize theater to bring races together in a community which embraces similarities and fosters dialogue, understanding and acceptance."

    If you want to read more about Jackie Taylor, who is a force of nature, rather than weigh in with opinions about whether or not you think the Black Ensemble Theater is necessary, go to the website and learn.

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  7. I understand BET wants to tell stories from a perspective that is often ignored, and I think that their mission to use theater to "eradicate racism" is a noble one. However, I don't understand how they do that with the shows they put on. It seems like every show they do there is simply a revue, and I don't know how that stimulates conversation. There was The Black Cinderella, which made jokes about "colored people time"--always a bit late. How can they say they're eradicating racism when they rely on stereotypes to as jokes in some of their stories? I feel like this theater company is just a place for the artistic director to showcase herself. There are playwrights out there who tell stories from the perspective of people of color--August Wilson wrote a ten play cycle, for goodness sake, and A Raisin in the Sun is one of the classics of American theater--and yet it seems like these last two seasons, at least, have been nothing but revue after revue.

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  8. Hum. Interesting thoughts. I am going to check it out and buy some tickets. I am glad they are here.

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  9. Ms Taylor's theatrical performances might beat the band, but her performance shoveling snow on her sidewalks has been abysmal this year.

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