Abby Thompson and Filament Theatre Receive 2024 Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship

The League of Chicago Theatres has awarded the 2024 Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship to artivist Abby Thompson and Filament Theatre to collaborate on development of the play Alex in Windyland. The fellowship is funded by the McMullen & Kime Charitable Trust and administered by the League of Chicago Theatres.

The 2024 Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship is an annual grant awarded to a Black Theatre Artist to fund a residency or collaboration with a Chicago area non-profit organization. Thompson and Filament will collaborate on the development of the new play Alex in Windyland.

Now in its fourth year, the Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship offers early to mid-career Black theater artists the opportunity to work with a Chicago-based non-profit organization in a supportive environment. The Fellowship provides the Artist with a grant of $20,000 and the Partner Organization receives $7,500 to support their work with the Artist. The fellowship is administered by the League of Chicago Theatres and funded by the McMullen & Kime Charitable Trust. Applications were reviewed by an external panel of Chicago directors, actors, playwrights and administrators.

League of Chicago Theatres Executive Director Marissa Lynn Jones comments, “We are honored to administer this fellowship, a generous gift from McMullen & Kime Charitable Trust, to support the work of Black theatre artists in honor of Sam Roberson, a respected teacher, actor, director, artistic director and champion of social justice theater. Sam was one of the first people I worked with when starting my career and I am honored to keep his legacy alive in this way. We're excited to announce Abby Thomson as this year's recipient and are excited to see the implementation of her artivism in this project. Through this partnership with Filament, we look forward to Alex in Windyland engaging Chicago's youth and exposing them to important themes within the foster care system in Chicago.” 

Filament Producing Artistic Director Reji Simon adds, “Filament Producing Artistic Directoradds, “Filament Theatre is thrilled to partner with Abby Thompson on her development of Alex in Windyland. Having begun developing this project through Filament’s new work residency SPARK, it is a gift to continue this work with Abby as she centers and amplifies youth voices through storytelling.”

Abby Thompson comments, “It's a rare opportunity for an independent artist to be given the financial support for the time to devise, play and create alongside other artists of color in Chicago! To build upon this already begun new play development project, Alex in Windyland, of this magnitude requires resources and finances and I am grateful to the League of Chicago Theatres for the chance to do so. This is a dream come true to be given this opportunity to create, meet, and journey alongside local artists in the city to tell powerful stories.”

Each year, the Fellowship is focused on a particular area of concentration in theatre arts. Previous recipients of the Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship are Tonika Lewis Johnson and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble for The Folded Map Project (Artist/Activist, 2023, Kristiana Rae Colón (Playwright, 2021), who worked with Congo Square Theatre to develop homan + fillmore, an afrofuturistic, hybrid-media work and community healing-focused work based on the 2016 Freedom Square encampment at Homan & Fillmore, and Jerrell L. Henderson (Director, 2022), who will present AmericanMYTH: Crossroads, a new genre-defying historic reckoning with five performers mixing live theatre, shadow puppetry, lights, and immersive sound, currently scheduled to be staged at Free Street Theater in the Fall of 2023. This year, the application was open to Artivists – individuals who combine art with activism.

About Alex in Windyland

Alex in Windyland is a new play in development that explores youth in the foster care system. The play explores themes and metaphors based on real life research and experience working alongside youth in Chicago’s foster care system. While facilitating theater workshops with the youth, the play’s characters, setting, and plotlines began to develop. All of the content in the play is originally sourced from youth curated ideas as well as dramaturgical and research interviews with community members such as child psychologists, case workers, mentors, etc. The original content and plot were chosen by a group of youth curators as part of a 6-week developmental artist program, SPARK, with Filament Theatre. Through every step of the process, the voice of youth has been the center. Through further development of this project, local Chicago youth in foster care can continue to have their voices heard and important, impactful stories told to the greater community. This piece will bring together birth, foster, and adoptive families of these youth to listen to one another, reconcile, and interact with this immersive, art piece.

About Abby Thompson

Abby Thompson is an Emmy Award winning voiceover artist, performing artist, and teaching artist. Abby has performed, written, and devised theater for social justice, immersive experiences, and theater for young audiences. She has a desire to work on empowering art that engages the community and amplifies untold stories of the marginalized, promotes life skills, and provokes social change. In 2022, she won an Emmy award for her voiceover on Seattle’s PBS’s Muhammad Ali Documentary Program Promotion Campaign. Abby is currently performing in Albany Park Theatre Project's production of Port of Entry, true stories of immigrants and refugees in Albany Park, as well as CAMP's Production of BBC's Bluey: An Immersive Adventure. She is currently the Production Manager/ Assistant Producer for Bridge to Freedom's Some Sort of Saint. Abby has performed professionally with First Stage Children’s Theater, Filament, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and African American Children’s Theatre. She has taught theater professionally with Chicago Children’s Theatre, Steppenwolf, Northlight, Storycatchers Theatre, Collaboraction, Filament Theatre, and Columbia College Chicago. Abby is an intermediate salsa dancer, poet, and arts education advocate. In 2023, Abby was awarded Filament Theatre’s SPARK Artist in Residence, developing a new play, Alex in Windyland, in partnership with Lydia Home Home Association.

About Filament Theatre

The mission of Filament Theatre is to create a more equitable society by celebrating and amplifying the perspectives and experiences of young people through the performing arts.

Filament Theatre creates imaginary worlds in which young people have agency and autonomy to explore and express the ideas they are passionate about – whether that’s new information, a challenging social situation, or a form of artistic expression. We need stories to help us encounter new worlds, meet new people, and practice how we might behave in that new situation. Without that kind of imagination, we will be unable to navigate the challenges that face our future.

At Filament, the word PLAY is both a noun and a verb. Its audiences join in the play at every step, from family dramaturgy workshops, to participatory pre- and post-show activities, to the performances themselves. Past work includes a play where the audience rides bicycles, a play with two actors playing 26 characters, a totally audience-driven interactive installation, a play in a restaurant with a five-course meal accompanying the story, a play in a sandbox, a play that toured the rooms of an old mansion, a choose-your-own-adventure play, a play with a symphony orchestra, a whole bunch of which were commissions by Chicago playwrights. All of the work is accessible to multigenerational and neurodiverse audiences.

The production process welcomes young people into the room as essential collaborators, working alongside adult professionals to craft and explore the world of each play, elevating young people as experts and positioning adults as allies. Centering youth voices and perspectives is key to every step of the creative process; not only does it give young people a crucial platform in a society that undervalues their input, but it makes the art more relevant, truthful, and creative. As the company grows, Filament is testing and exploring ways to expand youth leadership within all aspects of the organization.

Now in its fourteenth year, Filament Theatre is an anchor cultural organization for the Six Corners business district in Chicago’s Portage Park. It serves approximately 8500 patrons annually through its theatre programming, camps, school residencies, and classes. As the only theatre of its kind in Chicago, Filament is a vital home for innovative artists and young people finding and using their power through the performing arts.

About The Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship

The Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship funds a residency for early to mid-career Black theatre artists based in Chicago for a one-year partnership with a Chicago area theatre. Each year, the Fellowship will be focused on a particular area of concentration in Theatre Arts.

The artist and partner organization will work together toward a public performance of a play, performance piece, or other performance endeavor. Each year, an artist will be awarded $20,000 for participation in the program. The partner organization will be awarded $7,500 for its support of the artist.

About Samuel G. Roberson Jr.

After graduating from Howard University’s Theatre Arts Department in 2005, Samuel G. Roberson Jr. began his theatre career with an apprenticeship at The Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis, where he spent three years defining his desires for acting, writing, directing, and social justice theater. During this time, he began writing and using his artistry to draw attention to issues important to him. He successfully wrote and produced two plays, And They Said I Wouldn’t Make It: A story of Hope, an autobiographical one man show about his fight with cancer as a child. And Same Difference, a 2 man show that deals with black male identity, and the pressures one experiences to act, sound and look a certain way in order to fit in to society.

After his success in Minneapolis, Sam made the move to Chicago where he continued pushing boundaries within the arts and within himself. Through his work with several prominent Chicago Theatres, including Steppenwolf, The Goodman, Northlight, Victory Gardens, Writers Theatre and Congo Square, as well as Spike Lee’s film, Chiraq, Sam made a name for himself not just as an artist but as an activist and leader within the theatre community. In addition to continuing to produce and perform his one-man show, Sam also founded the Make Me A Match Project (M3P), a non-profit organization focused on raising awareness about the need for bone marrow donors within the African American community. Through his efforts with M3P, he helped register donors that resulted in bone marrow matches.

In 2013 he was elected the Artistic Director of Congo Square Theatre. Under his leadership, Congo Square presented the world premiere and subsequent remount of Kelvin Roston’s award winning and Jeff-nominated Twisted Melodies, both productions directed by Sam. He created Congo Square’s signature conversation series, Owning Our Worth, which has hosted culturally specific theater leaders of color in public dialogue for talks on issues relevant to the theatre community at-large. He felt very strongly that it was his duty as an influential member of the community to advocate for more diverse work and casting throughout the Chicago Theatre scene. He also helped bring together a cohort of artists to create Chicago Artists Against Injustice using his artistry as a way to start difficult conversations around issues that often divide us. Wanting to spread his work to Chicago’s youth, Sam founded Congo Square's Education program, Y-BOOM (Young Brothers Owning Our Mission), a literacy-based leadership program that provides a safe environment for adolescent African American men. It was his work with Y-BOOM that garnered the attention of the 3Arts organization who awarded him a 3Arts award for service and leadership as an artist in his community.

For all of Sam’s accomplishments and contributions, there was much more that he had hoped to achieve before succumbing to pneumonia in 2017. But he lived everyday he was given to his fullest, and gave all that he could of himself in hopes of inspiring others to do the same. When asked once, "What wakes you up in the morning?," he responded, "Knowing that at some point in my day, I am going to have a positive impact on someone, somewhere." We are most pleased to honor such a beloved, brave and committed truth teller through the Samuel G. Roberson Jr. Resident Fellowship.

The McMullen & Kime Charitable Trust

Melinda McMullen and Duncan Kime serve as advisers to the McMullen and Kime Charitable Trust. They have been involved in Chicago theater for two decades. McMullen has served on the boards of Congo Square and Lookingglass Theatre Company, and the Trust has been particularly active in supporting the work of Black artists, including HeLa at Sideshow Theater, Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure and most recently Her Honor Jane Byrne, both of which were produced at Lookingglass Theatre Company.

About Chicago Theatre 

Chicago theatre is the leader in the U.S. with more than 250 theatres throughout Chicagoland, comprising a rich and varied community ranging from storefront, non-union theatres to the most renowned resident theatres in the country, including 6 which have been honored with Regional Tony Awards, and the largest touring Broadway organization in the nation. Chicago’s theatres serve 5 million audience members annually and have a combined budget of more than $250 million. Chicago produces and/or presents more world premieres annually than any other city in the nation. Each year Chicago theatres send new work to resident theatres across the country, to Broadway, and around the world. For more information, visit www.chicagoplays.com.

The League of Chicago Theatres’ Mission Statement

Theatre is essential to the life of a great city and to its citizens. The League of Chicago Theatres is an alliance of theatres, which leverages its collective strength to support, promote and advocate for Chicago’s theatre industry. Through our work, we ensure that theatre continues to thrive in our city.

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