Celebrate Women's History Month with your family and chosen family! In conjunction with Hull-House's current exhibition, Participatory Arts, we are hosting an afternoon of participatory theater games, free tours, and dance workshops designed to move you in new ways, led by artist and educator, Benji Hart and Donny Acosta of About Face Youth Theatre.
REFRESHMENTS SERVED! No prior experience necessary. All backgrounds and abilities welcome! Workshops are located in Hull-House’s historic Resident’s Dining Hall that is wheelchair accessible. All attendees are expected to participate with their bodies, and not just with their eyes. No voyeurism allowed!
12-1PM - Family Theater Games with About Face Theater & Children's Reading Corner about Movement
1-2PM - FREE Public Museum Tour
2-3PM - Vogue 101: Move the Way You Move
Benji Hart will lead “Vogue 101: Move the Way You Move,” a 1-hour voguing workshop. The workshop introduces the street dance style of vogue to participants, grounding the art form as a tool for resistance, queer liberation, body positivity and empowerment. Hart will teach a brief history of vogue and instruct participants to practice mixing its elements with motions from their daily lives and transform their own movement into an improvised dance phrase. Participants will come away from this workshop with an understanding of how voguing engages physical movement as a form of both personal empowerment and a vehicle for collective resistance. This workshop is available to all levels of experience and is wheelchair accessible. In order to ensure a safe space for expression and movement, space in this workshop is limited. All participants should be ready and commit to the full one hour.
3-4PM - More Family Theater Games with About Face Theater & Children's Reading Corner about Movements!
Benji Hart is the author of Radical Faggot and their work was featured in places such as Salon Magazine, In These Times and Teen Vogue. In 2017, Hart performed their original solo piece Dancer As Insurgent—an exploration of vogue as a form of radical resistance—at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) for the opening of the exhibition, Elements of Vogue.
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (JAHHM) draws upon the legacy of international peace activist and feminist, Jane Addams, and other social reformers who worked, alongside their immigrant neighbors, to create social change on the Near West Side of Chicago during the Progressive Era. The Museum preserves and develops the original Hull-House site for the interpretation and continuation of the historic settlement house vision. Exhibitions and public programs elevate histories of activism, progressive education and democratic principles of participation and exchange, and connect them to present-day social justice issues.
Donny Acosta (He/Him/His) is a queer storyteller, mover, and teaching artist originally from Orange County, California. He is the Associate Director of About Face Youth Theatre, an Outreach performer and teaching artist with About Face Theatre. Donny also is an Artistic Associate with Barrel of Monkeys. About Face Youth Theatre (AFYT) seeks to increase the safety, empowerment and leadership capacity of LGBTQIA youth, and to catalyze youth-led civic dialogue and action within schools and communities. Through the creation and performance of ensemble-based plays in dynamic collaboration with accomplished adult artists, AFYT encourages and supports our youth to become powerful agents for change.
Participatory Arts: Crafting Social Change, Participatory Arts: Artist Workshops, and Participatory Arts Family Days are part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy, with presenting partner The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Participatory Arts is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. The Chicago Community Trust has also provided generous support.
