Updates from Red Tape Theatre

Following the close of My Name Is Inanna, Red Tape is excited to feature Coco Sho-Nell’s Why’s It Gotta Be WHITE Christmas! This in-person, one-night-only event will take place on December 18th from 10pm to 12am, and is the perfect spike to add to your holiday eggnog!

This is a paid fundraiser event for Red Tape, and tickets are available now!

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

Concerning WSYWAT
 
We are indebted to the writers of the We See You, White American Theater demands and all the artists of color who have spoken up over the past few months (and for far too many years) to address the systemic inequities that have been rooted in the American theater for too long. WSYWAT offers us a roadmap to becoming not just an effective antiracist organization, but one that better serves the entire community. We will be releasing more detailed plans in the coming weeks, but we want to share a few of the current efforts and actions that Red Tape Theatre is taking towards responding to this momentous initiative:
 
  • We are engaging our leadership, staff, and ensemble in anti-racism and EDI training.
 
  • We are developing action plans and policies for each of our organization’s departments, including our board, artistic leadership, production, literary, development, marketing, and audience services.
 
  • We are re-evaluating our mission and core values to make sure our efforts going forward are proactive, continuous, and rooted in our company’s identity.
 
  • We are re-evaluating the factors that have led to Red Tape Theatre consisting of primarily white staff and company membership, and how that can be rectified moving forward. 
In addition to the above, Red Tape Theatre will continue to be guided by our commitment to the Free Theatre Movement, offering all our programming to the public free of charge. Doing so has enabled us to engage with more diverse and inclusive stories, artists and audiences. However, our work towards becoming a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive theatrical organization is an expansive process that we are excited about continuing. We’ll have a lot more news in the coming weeks and we’re excited to move in a direction that makes the Chicago storefront theater community a more equitable and welcoming environment for all.
 

More updates from Red Tape

Our Mission

We believe it essential to the welfare of our community that its members are able to see the world from multiple perspectives. Red Tape Theatre challenges audiences to think differently by disrupting expectations and by redefining the boundaries of the theatrical event. We apply our unique visual aesthetic to the social, political and cultural stories of our time, creating immersive and thought-provoking experiences for our audiences.

We are a free theatre.
We are an immersive theatre.
We are a theatre of images.
We are a theatre of ideas.

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The Free Theatre Movement

“The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.” – John Kane

FTM Final Final

Red Tape believes that access to the arts is essential for our community’s ability to engage in a free exchange of ideas. As an art form, the immediacy of theatre provides a powerful platform for this exchange. We strive to remove the barriers that exist between our community and an increasingly commodified culture. Since 2018, we have offered all of our mainstage theatrical productions to the public free of charge.

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Who We Are

Red Tape Theatre is committed to the creation of new and experimental work through collaborations with our ensemble, playwrights, musicians, dancers, and visual artists. Red Tape’s plays invite our audiences to re-imagine their world and serve a vital purpose in our community: to arrest attention and create empathy.

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Work With Us

Red Tape Theatre prides ourselves on providing a supportive home for our artists and administrators. We are working to create a team of innovative thinkers, working across disciplines to create risky theatre. It is recommended that you see a Red Tape production before submitting.

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