{"id":341096,"date":"2025-10-29T16:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T16:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/341096\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T16:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T16:14:15","slug":"the-chairman-returns-chicago-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/341096\/","title":{"rendered":"The chairman returns – Chicago Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, Chicago playwright India Nicole Burton\u2019s Panther Women<\/a> at Perceptions Theatre paid tribute to the women in the Black Panther Party. For Measure of a Man, Burton turns to Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter, who was assassinated by Chicago police in 1969 at 21 as he slept.<\/p>\n

Measure of a Man, produced by Coalescence Theatre Productions and directed by ILesa Duncan, doesn\u2019t offer a straightforward biodrama about Hampton. Instead, Demorris Burrows as Hampton takes us on a powerful collage-like journey through Hampton\u2019s story as being representative of racism and revolution in the U.S. When we enter the theater, Burrows is stretched out facedown on a mattress onstage, a large bloodstain visible on his T-shirt. When he arises (revealing more blood on the front), he seems unsure where he is. Limbo? An alternate universe? No matter. There\u2019s still work to be done. Burton\u2019s play clearly aims for us to see Hampton\u2019s life and activism, not just his martyrdom, as the key to understanding him and the mission of the Panthers and other revolutionaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Measure of a Man<\/strong>
Through 11\/2: Thu\u2013Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, coalescencetheatre.org<\/a>, $40, $25 students.\u00a0
Note:<\/strong> The performance on Thu 10\/31 is a Black-Out Night, \u201cpurposefully reserved for Black audiences to experience and discuss the play. . . . The intention behind this performance is to provide a supportive, safe, judgment-free space for Black theatregoers to experience a show made by Black artists in a space reserved for the Black community.\u201d Members of the Historical Preservation Society of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party<\/a> will be present at the performance and participate in a postshow discussion, followed by a reception in the lobby. Tickets for the Black-Out performance are $20, with a limited number of pay-what-you-can tickets at the door.<\/p>\n

Through a series of sharp vignettes encompassing everything from an imaginary boxing match to a sardonic game show, Hampton reminds us of the deeply ingrained and entwined injustices of capitalism and racism that built our nation. The audience is asked to join in chants, answer quiz questions, and go through the Panther ten-point program, or \u201cbill of rights.\u201d The message that \u201cnothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism is gonna stop us all\u201d couldn\u2019t be more timely. Through it all, Burrows dons a series of different jackets\u2014each marked with a small bullet hole, like a gruesome corsage.<\/p>\n

But while this is most certainly a political call to action, it\u2019s also, as was Burton\u2019s earlier piece, suffused with tenderness about the sacrifices and pain involved in truly committing to the fight for justice. One of the most heartrending parts is when Hampton tries to imagine what his unborn son, who was in utero with his mother next to him in bed when the deadly raid started, might have absorbed in those terrifying moments. His memories of the murder of Emmett Till also remind us that living under the threat of white supremacist violence has long been a feature, not a bug, for many Black citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Burrows\u2019s performance is charismatic and multilayered, drawing at times upon the rhetorical gifts for which Hampton was so noted, and at other times on an easygoing rapport with the audience. And though there is justifiable anger, there is also a palpable sense of the joy that can come with having a vision larger than your own life. \u201cIf you walk through life and you haven\u2019t helped anyone, you haven\u2019t had much of a life,\u201d Burrows\u2019s Hampton tells us. That truly is the measure of this man\u2019s life, but also a yardstick for building our own resistance in these authoritarian times.<\/p>\n

Reader Recommends: THEATER & DANCE<\/p>\n

Reader reviews of Chicago theater, dance, comedy, and performance arts.<\/p>\n

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Kerry Reid (she\/her) has been the theater and dance editor at the Chicago Reader since 2019. <\/p>\n

Graduating from Columbia College in 1987, she worked with several off-Loop theater companies before beginning her arts journalism career by writing pro bono for Streetwise. <\/p>\n

She spent most of the 90s in San Francisco, writing about theater for Backstage West and the East Bay Express, among other publications, and returned to Chicago in 2000. <\/p>\n

Reid was a freelance critic for the Chicago Tribune for 17 years, and has also contributed to several other publications, including Windy City Times, Chicago Magazine, Playbill, American Theatre, and the Village Voice. <\/p>\n

She taught reviewing and arts journalism at Columbia and is currently adjunct faculty at the Theatre School at DePaul University. <\/p>\n

In a past life, Reid also wrote about ten plays or performance pieces. She is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and the recipient of two 2020 Lisagor Awards. <\/p>\n

Reid lives in Rogers Park. She speaks English and is reachable at kreid@chicagoreader.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Kerry Reid\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two years ago, Chicago playwright India Nicole Burton\u2019s Panther Women at Perceptions Theatre paid tribute to the women…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":341097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,168048,168049,168050,5386,168051,1818,168052,4289,168053,77591],"class_list":{"0":"post-341096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-coalescence-theatre","10":"tag-demorris-burrows","11":"tag-fred-hampton","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-ilesa-duncan","14":"tag-illinois","15":"tag-india-nicole-burton","16":"tag-listings","17":"tag-measure-of-a-man","18":"tag-reader-recommended"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115458348227896120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}