The House Theatre of Chicago continues its 20th season, the first led by new artistic director Lanise Antoine Shelley under the theme “The House Reimagined,” with the North American premiere of The Tragedy of King Christophe, the true story of the rise and fall of the first King of Haiti, April 22-May 29, 2022 at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St., Chicago. Press opening is Sunday, May 1, 2022 at 7:30 p.m.
Written in 1963 by West Indian playwright and poet, Aimé Césaire, translated from French by Paul Breslin and Rachel Ney, The Tragedy of King Christophe is set after the Haitian Revolution in 1804. It follows the true historical figure of Henri Christophe, a general in Jean-Jacques Dessalines army who was elected president but chose to declare himself King. Christophe ruled the northern part of Haiti until 1820, as the first and only King of Haiti. Vibrant with music and song, The Tragedy of King Christophe is an elegant display of a story forgotten and untold.
The House Theatre’s North American premiere of The Tragedy of King Christophe by Aimé Césaire (top) will feature (bottom, from left) Christian Bufford, Jyreika Guest, Chris Khoshaba, Keith Illidge, Matthew Lolar, Gabrielle Lott-Rogers, William Anthony Sebastian Rose II and Leslie Ann Sheppard. Poster (top, left) by Delicious Design League.
Sound familiar? As history repeats itself, both in the U.S. and Haiti, director Lanise Antoine Shelley’s bold staging of The Tragedy of King Christophe exposes the tragedy of Christophe’s transformation from a charismatic leader fighting against the oppression of his people to his unfortunate unraveling. Audiences can look forward to an unabashed homage to the changing of guards, in an all-new production that casts a bright light on Haitian and world history, past and present, through an elegant prism of epic storytelling, dance and Haitian music.
The cast for The Tragedy of King Christophe features Christian Bufford (Petoin), Jyreika Guest (Metellus), Chris Khoshaba (Franco de Medina), Keith Illidge (Magny), Matthew Lolar (Hugonin), Gabrielle Lott-Rogers (Commentator), William Anthony Sebastian Rose II (Christophe) and Leslie Ann Sheppard (Madame Christophe).
The production team (at press time) is Lanise Antoine Shelley, director; Mariama Pouye, Assistant Director; Michelle Lilly, scenic design; Izumi Inaba, costume design; Jessica Neill, lighting design; Joshua Schmidt, sound design and composition; Sadira Muhammad, choreographer; Maya Vinice Prentiss, dramaturg and dialect coach; Gaspard Louis, linguistic consultant; and, Dr. Reginald Dewight Patterson, cultural anthropologist.
The Tragedy of King Christophe will debut in the Chopin Theatre Upstairs Mainstage, 1543 W. Division St., in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Previews start April 22, 2022. Press opening is Sunday, May 1at 7:30 p.m. Performances run through May 29. Show times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. Runtime is 1 hour and 35 minutes, no intermission.
Tickets, $20-$50, are on sale now at thehousetheatre.com. Groups of 10 or more can save up to 20 percent by emailing boxoffice@thehousetheatre.com. For more information, visit thehousetheatre.com or follow The House on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
ACCESS SERVICES: Open Captioning will be offered on Saturday, May 7 at 3 p.m. and Friday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m. A Touch Tour and Audio Description will be offered Saturday, May 14 at 3 p.m. A Relaxed/Sensory-Friendly performance is Saturday, May 21at 3 p.m.
COVID SAFETY POLICY: All audience members attending live performances must wear a mask and provide proof of vaccination upon entry. The House and its performers, backstage crew, and staff are likewise complying with vaccination requirements and testing protocols to further ensure the safety of all guests and company members. Please visit thehousetheatre.com/health-and-safety for more information, or email boxoffice@thehousetheatre.com for more information.
SPECIAL EVENT: A Day with Aimé Césaire: Panel and Performance
The House Theatre and The Poetry Foundation are teaming to present A Day with Aimé Césaire: Panel and Performance, Saturday, May 7 at 2 p.m. at The Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior Street in downtown Chicago.
This program will illuminate Césaire’s poetry and plays with a panel of Haitian artists, Césaire scholars and a cultural anthropologist with rare perspectives on his depth, complexity and impact. House Theatre artistic director Lanise Antoine Shelley, director of The Tragedy of King Christophe, will moderate. Panelists include:
Jean Appolon, Co-founder and Artistic Director of Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE), is a successful Haitian choreographer and master teacher based in Boston and Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
James Arnold, Professor of French at the University of Virginia from 1966 to 2007. Professor Arnold co-translated, with Clayton Eshleman, the Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire (2017).
Paul Breslin co-authored with Rachel Ney an annotated translation of Aimé Césaire’s La Tragédie du roi Christophe in 2015, the text now being brought to life in The House Theatre’s production, The Tragedy of King Christophe. Breslin is Professor of English, Emeritus at Northwestern University.
Rachel Ney (Ph.D. Northwestern) is a Senior Lecturer of French at Southern Methodist University where she teaches French cinema, literature, and civilization. With Professor Breslin, they published the revised 2015 translation of The Tragedy of King Christophe.
Dr. Reginald Dewight Patterson is Doctor of Romance Studies from Duke University. He received his Ph.D. completing Commandeering Aesop’s Bamboo Canon where he traces the 19th century history Indian Ocean and Caribbean trade routes of the Creole Printing Press where ‘Aesop’s fables’ translated into creole.
Tickets to A Day with Aimé Césaire will go on sale in March. Until then, for more information visit thehousetheatre.com/cesaire-panel.
The Poetry Foundation is a production partner for The Tragedy of King Christophe.
Auxiliary programs for The House Theatre’s production of The Tragedy of King Christophe are supported by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council.
Select artist bios: The Tragedy of King Christophe
The life of Martinican author, poet and playwright Aimé Césaire (1913 - 2008) spans the 20th century and its anticolonial movements. He is known for coining the term “Négritude,” which he defined as “the simple recognition of the fact that one is Black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as Blacks, of our history and culture.” He was not only responsible for Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (first published in Spanish 1942; original French version 1947; translated as Memorandum on My Martinique, 1947), a widely acknowledged masterpiece documenting the 20th century colonial condition, but he was also an accomplished playwright. Like his poetry and polemical essays, Césaire’s plays explore the paradox of Black identity under French colonial rule. Césaire’s shift to drama in the late 1950s and 1960s allowed him to integrate the modernist and surrealist techniques of his poetry and the polemics of his prose. In what Césaire describes as his “triptych” of plays, La Tragédie du roi Christophe (published 1963, produced 1964; translated as The Tragedy of King Christophe 1970), Une Saison au Congo (published 1965; translated as A Season in the Congo, 1968; produced 1976), and Une Tempête (published and produced 1969; translated as A Tempest, 1985), he explores a series of related themes, especially the efforts of Blacks—whether in Africa, the United States, or the Caribbean—to resist the powers of colonial domination. For more, visit housetheatre.com/aime-cesaire.
Lanise Antoine Shelley (director, she/her) is an actress, director, playwright and the Artistic Director of The House Theatre of Chicago. Most recently she directed her new adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, which opened The House Theatre’s 20th anniversary season last November. Before that, she directed a virtual production of her original play Pretended, developed by Paramount Theatre. As an actress, she is known for Chicago Fire, Empire, Chicago Med, Discovery World, Macbeth HD, and most recently, Goodman Theatre’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. Selected directing credits include Une Tempete (Red Bull Theatre), Blue Man Manakin (Rising Sun Theatre Company), Rastus and Hattie, Black and Blue, and movement consultant for Muthaland (16th Street Theater), Hear Me See Me (Silent Theatre), The Luck of the Irish (virtual reading), Identity Lab (Lookingglass Theatre), The Tenant (Akvavit Theatre), RefuSHE Project (Voices & Faces Project), Rumors (DePaul University), a staged reading of The Convert (Stratford Shakespeare Festival), and assisted David Schwimmer on Plantation at Lookingglass. She holds a BFA in Directing, Acting and Playwriting from Cornish College of the Arts, an MFA from ART/MXAT at Harvard University, and a certificate in Classical Theatre from both BADA in Oxford, England, and Birmingham Conservatory in Canada. Awards/ Fellowships include Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s Chicago Fellow 2016, Victory Gardens Theater’s Directing Fellow 2019, and the Drama League Classical Directing Fellow 2021. She also hosts the podcast When They Were Young: Amplifying Voices of Adoptees available on all major platforms including her website. For more, visit laniseantoineshelley.com.
About The House Theatre of Chicago
The House Theatre of Chicago is Chicago's premier home for intimate, original works of epic story and stagecraft. Founded in 2001, The House is driven by a curiosity for innovative storytellers, and aims to become a laboratory and platform for the evolution of the American theatre as an inclusive and popular artform.
The House was started by a group of friends to explore connections between Community and Storytelling through a unique theatrical experience. Since becoming eligible in 2004, The House has won 24 Joseph Jefferson Awards, became the first recipient of Broadway in Chicago’s Emerging Theater Award in 2007, and was awarded a 2014 National Theatre Company Grant by the American Theatre Wing, founder of the Tony Awards. The 18th season of original work concluded in March 2020 with the world premiere punk rock musical Verböten, which was awarded the 2021 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Citation.
The House Theatre of Chicago 20th anniversary season sponsors include ComEd (lighting sponsor), Greg and Mary Ann Jordan (accessibility program sponsors), and The Arts Work Fund, The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The Illinois Humanities Council, Latham & Watkins LLP, The MacArthur Fund for Culture, Equity, and the Arts at Prince Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, HMS Media and SLOAN. The House Theatre of Chicago is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
For more information, visit thehousetheatre.com or follow The House on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.