For more than 20 years, Harry Links – an actor best known for his roles in TV shows and movies such as “The Blacklist”, “Dollhouse” and “Justice League” – has been a consultant for the Chicago-based Black Theater Company. Square Theatre. The company, which does not have a permanent exhibition space, has struggled to find venues for performances, a situation that Lynx says is very common for many black arts organizations.
“You can count how many black theater companies in the country actually have bricks and mortar,” Lynks says. diverse. “It’s shocking, but it’s true.”
This experience made Lynx wish there was a center in Chicago that could serve as a hub for black artists in the city. In the end, he decided to make this vision a reality.
On April 19, Lennix give a prize A $26 million grant from the State of Illinois to fund the Lillian Marcy Center for the Performing Arts. Located at 4343 S. Cottage Grove Ave, in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, this center aims to serve as a performing arts space for black artists and creators, with a museum that archives and highlights black artists throughout history.
According to Lennix, active development of the Lillian Marcie Center did not begin until 2018, when it partnered with David Wade to help kick-start the project’s efforts. The two assembled a team including Keith Giles, a project developer in Chicago, and investor Mike Wardlow to search and find a site for the center.
Lynx hails from Chicago, where he grew up on the south side of the city as a child, and spent several years working as a teacher in the city’s public school system. He is very proud of his roots, referring to Chicago as “the home of black culture.” The Lillian Marcy Center is named after two important women in his life: his mother Lillian, and Chicago Public School principal Marcella Gilley, who served as a Lynx mentor during his time as a teacher. Lennix plans to place a strong emphasis on community engagement in its curriculum for the center, including an apprenticeship program for students interested in theater and partnerships with public schools.
One of Lennix’s main hopes for the center is that it will help rebuild Bronzeville’s public neighborhood. He points to other centers of this kind, such as the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, as examples of how these projects can revitalize surrounding businesses and communities. Lennix’s goal is for Bronzeville, a historic hotspot of nightclubs and theaters, to experience a similar effect.
“You can just see that neighborhood improvement is definitely going to follow,” says Lynx. “And so I think the quality of life and the vibrancy of the neighborhood and the inspiration of the people who see it who live in that neighborhood, I think it’s been well studied and well documented… So I think we’re putting the oxygen back into something that was a cultural void.”
He hopes that the Lillian Marcy Center will serve as a center for black artists in Chicago in the same way that the Lincoln Center functions as a center for New York culture.
“This is kind of a microcosm in a way, but it’s also big and ambitious,” says Lennix. “Not a big footprint but our goals and intentions are just as big. We must believe, a conservatory, a school where if you want to study the best of black ballet, dance, etc., why should you leave Chicago to do it?”
After the center is built, Lennix plans to serve as an ambassador for the center and help run its early years of operations, but plans to step back after that. Executive Director of Arts Taron Patton has been selected to serve as Executive Director of the Center, with Dwayne Perry serving as Artistic Director. Terrence Carey will take over as director of the so-called African American Museum of Dramatic Art. Congo Square Theater is already slated to be one of the companies that will use the center as a performance home.
“The idea is that you assign a team of people who can manage it, who can design it, who can build it, and who can run it,” says Lennix.
Although the $26 million Lennix received from Illinois was a great start, it was still far from the ultimate goal of financing the project. The money, which will go to facilities such as training venues, offices, restaurants and artist residences, is a drop in the sea compared to the $100 million the center is expected to need for construction, which is set to begin in September.
Lennix is currently launching a Capitol campaign with Chicago-based Campbell and Company. He is also looking for individual support and philanthropic work to help raise the funds needed to make his project a reality.
“We’re going to need more money, and I hope we can continue to rely on public support,” Lynx says. “We will be responsible agents of the public’s trust. This is not for our own good. This is for the benefit of the whole world, but starting from home.”
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