Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2019 - 20

"Handle it." Click.
was then a whole lot of money. And I
called up my father, and I said, "Daddy,
they want me to play all these roles
that I don't want to play."
And he said, "Well, bring your ass
back home." He said, "You don't have to
do anything that you don't want to do
no matter what the cause may be. So,
you won't get money that way. Maybe
you'll get money another way." He said,
"But never let money get in your way.
Never let it stop you."
So, I came back, and I decided
that I was going to do something about
the racism, and that's when I created
the Black Ensemble Theater with the
mission to eradicate racism. Lord have
mercy. Y'all should've heard what the
people said: "What?"
I would go to the front desk. "Hello, I'm Jackie Taylor and I have built a
theatre. I have created a theatre. The
mission of the theatre is to eradicate
racism."
"Oh, child, really? That's impossible. Why don't you save... why don't
you go after something that is plausible
to the community, like: Build bridges.
Bring people together. Offer communication and understanding to the
world?"
I said, "No, ---- you." (Fill in the
blank!) I am going to build a theatre

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

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SUMMER 2019

with the mission to eradicate racism
because it's my belief that "the arts-if
it's gonna happen anywhere--it's gonna
happen in the arts" because the arts,
from the beginning of time, the arts
were our communicator. They are our
history. They help us to understand
who we are, why we are, where we are,
and where we're going to go.
So, I said, "No, I am going to keep
my mission, and my mission is to eradicate racism. And if you don't like it, you
can kiss my fill in the blank."
That was 43 years ago. Now, the
Black Ensemble Theater is 43 years
old. We have our own building. It's
called the Black Ensemble Theater
Cultural Center. It is a 55,000-squarefoot theatre. It cost us $20 million to
build.
People said, "How did you do that?
How did you raise $20 million?" We
were a small company. Our budget was
$300,000, and when I took it to my
board and said, "I want to build a theatre, and it's going to cost us $20 million to own our own company."
And they said, "Oh, okay, that's
nice. But no. We're not going... We
can't... We're too small."
So, I said, "Okay." I fired 'em.
My lawyer said, "Oh, Jackie, they're
the Board of Directors. You can't do

that. You can't fire your Board."
I said, "I done already wrote the letters, I'm sorry. I didn't know I couldn't
do that."
So, I got a Board behind me that,
when I told them the dream, they didn't
look at me crazy. They didn't look at me
and say we couldn't do it. They looked
at me and said, "Okay, let's go." And we
raised $20 million because the Black
Ensemble Theater needed a home.
I looked at the theatre and I said,
"Okay, this is a start," because our mission is to eradicate racism, and we
can't just do it inside the theatre-we
have to do it outside the theatre also.
So, I decided, "Okay, we're going to
build a village." The name of this village
is called Free To Be. It has an education center. It has a performance center, it has a theatre technology center,
it has a restaurant, it has a cafe, and it
has places in all the buildings where, if
you want to expound or explode or talk
to the community or give your opinion
about what's going on in the world, you
can-because we need to talk to each
other. And the cost of the village...when
I told my board the cost of the village,
which to start with the base, is $50 million.
I looked at them, I said, "Okay." I
told them about my first Board, and I
said, "Okay, now that I've told you this
story, what you think?"
And they said, "Oh, well, yes, Jackie, we can do this!"
So, we built up the Board. We went
to the city. We just got a new governor.
We're going to have the first black female mayor of Chicago. And, I've called
both of them. So, whoever wins, they
know I'm going to need their support
because we are going to build this village.
We now own three of the properties, and we have one more property to
go before we will have all of the properties that will be part of the village. And
once we raise that $50 million, then
we have to raise another $50 million
to operate the buildings, to operate the
programming.
And I know you might think that
that's a lot of money, but, when you
grow up with no money, money doesn't
mean anything, really. To me, in the
world, there are gazillions-not even
monies that we can even fathom in
Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2019

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