Displaying items by tag: Federal Theatre Project

Court Theatre has opened its 2025/26 season with a thunderclap: Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog directed with remarkable sensitivity and vigor by Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson. This is not only a revival of a classic work from the Federal Theatre Project era—it is also a reminder of how eerily contemporary Ward’s questions of ideology, disillusionment, and power struggles remain nearly ninety years after the play first startled audiences at Chicago’s Great Northern Theatre in 1938.

At its center, Big White Fog dramatizes the life of the Mason family, a striving Black household in Depression-era Chicago. Ward places the Mason living room at the intersection of history’s most turbulent crosscurrents: the false promise of the American Dream, the fiery appeal of Marcus Garvey’s “back to Africa” movement, and the revolutionary fervor of Communism. The fog of the title is both literal and metaphorical—a veil of economic despair, racial injustice, and ideological confusion that threatens to swallow the family whole.

Ron OJ Parson, long admired for his deft handling of Black classics, stages the play with clarity and urgency. Parson respects the density of Ward’s text but never lets the ideological debates bog down the human drama. Instead, he finds the beating heart in the Mason family’s conflicts—the stubborn pride of the patriarch, the sacrifices of the women, the fragile dreams of their children. Parson’s direction makes clear this is not an artifact of theatre history; it is a living work, pulsating with relevance for an America once again convulsed by inequality, polarization, and disillusionment.

The cast assembled for this production is outstanding. Joshua L. Green brings charisma and conviction to Victor Mason, the father whose fierce commitment to Garveyism and economic uplift sets him on a collision course with his family. Green embodies Victor’s unbending pride, making his devotion to a nationalist vision both inspiring and tragic. As Ella Mason, Sharriese Hamilton gives the play its moral core: her performance glows with quiet dignity, balancing love for her family with the weary pragmatism of a woman trying to hold a household together as history presses in from all sides.

Patrick Newson Jr. is superb as Lester Mason, the eldest son, a man who has had to stifle his own dreams, his every ambition weighed down by the crushing realities of family duty and economic hardship. Newson brings a heartbreaking openness to the role, embodying the innocence crushed under the weight of adult failures and historical forces. Greta Oglesby, as matriarch Martha Brooks, is simply unforgettable. Oglesby’s performance is steeped in humor, wisdom, and resilience; she grounds the play in generational memory. Her presence on stage is nothing short of magnetic.

The production’s design team gives Big White Fog a visual richness that matches its thematic weight. Jack Magaw’s scenic design transforms the Court stage into a lived-in Mason household, layered with details that evoke aspiration. Yvonne L. Miranda’s eye-popping 1920s costumes dazzle while grounding each character in their social and ideological context, making the clash of visions as visible as it is spoken. Lee Keenan’s lighting design shifts the mood with precision. Adding another layer of atmosphere, Christopher Kriz’s original compositions during scene changes, underscores the emotional undercurrents of the play and keeps the audience tethered to its restless rhythm.

The ideological clash within the Mason household is the play’s dramatic engine. Victor’s belief in Garvey’s call for Black economic independence and a return to Africa is met with resistance from his family, who seek other paths—through Communism, through assimilation, or through personal ambition. Ward refuses to let any single vision emerge as the sole solution, instead dramatizing the painful divisions that ideological fervor can create within a family. In the end, no ideology rescues them from the crushing realities of poverty, racism, and systemic neglect. This tragic irony is what makes Big White Fog so haunting.

Ward’s writing is radical for its time. To depict a Black family grappling openly with competing ideologies and the hypocrisy of the American Dream in 1938 was nothing short of revolutionary. It’s no wonder Big White Fog had a fraught reception in its original run. Yet the very qualities that unsettled audiences then—its candor, its ideological clashes, its refusal to reduce Black life to stereotype—are what make it feel so piercingly contemporary now.

The play’s questions echo loudly: What system, if any, can deliver justice and dignity to Black Americans? What price must be paid for loyalty to one’s ideals? And can a family survive when its members are torn apart by competing visions of liberation? In today’s America, as the nation debates racial justice, economic inequity, and the limits of free speech, these questions resonate with uncanny force. The Mason family’s divisions mirror our own: parents and children, neighbors and colleagues, citizens and leaders locked in ideological combat while the fog of inequality thickens around us.

Theodore Ward dared to write the truth. At a time when most mainstream depictions of Black life trafficked in stereotype or sentimental uplift (think “Cabin in The Sky”), Ward insisted on portraying the complexity, dignity, and contradictions of ordinary people. His plays carved out space for honest exploration of the Black experience—politically charged, socially grounded, unflinchingly real. Ward’s commitment cost him: his leftist sympathies drew the scrutiny of the FBI, and he was effectively blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Yet his legacy endures, shaping the lineage of Black theatre from Lorraine Hansberry to August Wilson and beyond.

Court Theatre’s revival is more than an act of cultural memory. It is an act of cultural urgency. To stage Big White Fog now is to recognize that the struggles Ward captured in 1938—the tensions between faith and politics, survival and principle, hope and despair—are still the struggles being faced in 2025. Parson and his cast honor Ward’s achievement while challenging us to confront the fog we still inhabit.

In the end, the play offers no easy answers. Ward was too honest for that. But what he gives us—through his words and through this luminous production—is the reminder that theatre can be a forum for grappling with the hardest questions of human existence. Big White Fog demands that we listen, that we argue, that we reckon with the past and the present alike.

Court Theatre has given Chicago audiences a gift in reviving Theodore Ward’s masterpiece. And with Parson’s masterful direction and this ensemble’s unforgettable performances, the fog clears just enough for us to see the truth: Ward’s voice still matters, perhaps now more than ever.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

When: Through Oct 11th

Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.

Running !me: 2 hours, 15 minutes  - 15 minute intermission

Tickets: $27 - $94 Student, Group and military discounts available

773-753-4472

https://www.courttheatre.org

*This review is also shared on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!