Black Alphabet

08/26/2026

Darius Caffey, our Director of Institutional Partnerships, put it best: "It is a 5K. You can walk. And I do be walking."

On Saturday, September 26, Team Black Alphabet walks the AIDS Run & Walk at Soldier Field — 5K and 10K along the lakefront. We've done it for years now, and we'd like you with us this time.

The money does two things. It funds HIV services across the city through AIDS Foundation Chicago, and it comes back to Black Alphabet to keep our arts and culture programming free for the community in Bronzeville.

Federal and state HIV funding keeps shrinking. Mutual aid is what's left.

You can walk it. You can run it. Or you can skip the whole thing and give $5 — that counts too.

Join the team or donate: https://www.blackalphabet.org/aids-run-walk

This year's theme is Resist, Restore, Renew.

08/15/2026

📌 PLEASE NOTE THE NEW DATE — this event has moved to Saturday, August 22.

Your body has been talking all day. Nobody taught you to listen.

Comfortours is Black Alphabet's 2026 N.O.V.A. Artist in Residence, and on August 22 they're turning the Jamii Center into a room where movement does the talking — dance, poetry, and the kind of self-expression that doesn't need permission.

This isn't a show you sit through. There's guided reflection. There's interactive movement. There's a room full of people figuring out the same thing you are: what it actually feels like to live inside your own skin without arguing with it.

THE IMBODIED
Saturday, August 22 · 6PM
Jamii Center for the Arts and Media
3850 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago IL 60653

Come dressed to move.
RSVP → www.blackalphabet.org/events

Already RSVP'd for the 15th? Your spot carries over — just mark the new date.

08/13/2026

York Walker wrote Covenant. Roundabout produced it, the Goodman
staged it, and the New York Times called it a Critic's Pick.

On Wednesday night he stood at a whiteboard at the Jamii Center in
Bronzeville and spent the evening teaching a room of Chicago writers
how to start one of their own. Black Alphabet hosted it. The workshop
was called The Spark of a Play — inspiration, structure, and the
generative process. It cost nothing to attend.

Here is what was actually on the board. Beginning: who is the main
character, what is the world, what do they want, what are they up
against. Ending: the character's defining decision.

That is the whole architecture of a play, and most people never get
handed it.

One writer in the room came in as a novelist and said she had always
thought playwriting sat outside her realm. She left saying it is the
same work — telling a story in a way that connects with an audience.
She had not written anything in five months. She said she was going
home to write.

Another said to check back in three months, when she would have two
plays finished.

A third said the part that stayed with her was using music and images
to find the idea in the first place, something she had never tried.

A free workshop in Bronzeville did that in one night.

More at blackalphabet.org

What's the play you've been meaning to write?

08/11/2026

"Please don't come in here thinking I'm going to expect you to be this most
perfect human being possible — because that's not a thing, first of all."

That's the only rule at THE IMBODIED, the final performance-workshop from
Comfortours — Sydney Shepard — closing out her summer as Black Alphabet's
NOVA Artist-in-Residence. One judgment-free hour at the Jamii Center in
Bronzeville: movement, laughter, mistakes made on purpose and together. She
promises to laugh at herself first.

It's FREE and everyone is welcome — you don't need experience, rhythm, or a
plan. Donations are always appreciated and go straight back into programs
like NOVA that give emerging Black q***r artists space, support, and a
stage.

📍 Jamii Center for the Arts and Media, 3850 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago
🗓 Saturday, August 15 · 6 PM
👟 Come dressed to move · RSVP at blackalphabet.org

When's the last time you laughed at yourself in a room full of people doing
the same?

08/10/2026

"You need a little break. You need some fun. You need some joy."

That's Comfortours — Sydney Shepard — talking about THE IMBODIED, the final
performance-workshop of her summer as Black Alphabet's NOVA
Artist-in-Residence. One hour of movement and laughter at the Jamii Center
in Bronzeville. No experience needed, nobody's grading you, and if you feel
like you've been taking your life too seriously lately, this is the hour she
built for you.

It's FREE and everyone is welcome — neighbors, families, first-timers, folks
who "don't dance." Donations are always appreciated and go right back into
programs like NOVA that give emerging Black q***r artists space, support,
and a stage.

📍 Jamii Center for the Arts and Media, 3850 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago
🗓 Saturday, August 15 · 6 PM
👟 Come dressed to move · RSVP at blackalphabet.org

Who are you bringing? Come one, come all.

08/04/2026

Your body has been talking all day. Nobody taught you to listen.

Comfortours is Black Alphabet's 2026 N.O.V.A. Artist in Residence, and on August 15 she's turning the Jamii Center into a room where movement does the talking — dance, poetry, and the kind of self-expression that doesn't need permission.

This isn't a show you sit through. There's guided reflection. There's interactive movement. There's a room full of people figuring out the same thing you are: what it actually feels like to live inside your own skin without arguing with it.

THE IMBODY
Saturday, August 15 · 6PM
Jamii Center for the Arts and Media
3850 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago IL 60653

Come dressed to move.
RSVP → www.blackalphabet.org/events

07/31/2026

York Walker wrote a play about a girl in a blue dress standing in the dark.
He didn't know the story yet. He just saw her.

That's where Covenant started — the play that ran Off-Broadway at Roundabout,
landed a New York Times Critic's Pick, and came home to the Goodman this spring.

On August 12, he's teaching how that works.

THE SPARK OF A PLAY
Inspiration, Structure, and the Generative Process
Wednesday , August 12 · 6:30 PM
Jamii Center · 3850 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago

York is a Chicago native, the inaugural recipient of the Vineyard Theatre's
Colman Domingo Award, and a story editor on FBI. He's written for Manhattan
Theatre Club, Victory Gardens, Harlem Stage, and A.C.T.

Bring the idea you can't shake. Leave with a structure for it.

register @ www.blackalpbaet.org/events

07/21/2026

Cincinnati — October 3.

The Black Alphabet Film Festival is coming to Cincy for a full day of
Black q***r film, in partnership with Cincinnati Black Pride.

Saturday, October 3
11 AM — 5 PM
Venue announcement coming soon

Thirteen years, five cities and growing. This is the one where you find the room
you didn't know you were looking for.

Save the date. Tell somebody.

07/15/2026

Happy Jackie Washington Day. Yes, it's a real holiday. It's in the movie.

Every July 15th, Kinloch, Missouri honors Jackie Washington — the diva Jenifer Lewis gave us in Jackie's Back (1999), Robert Townsend's mockumentary that Lifetime aired once and Black q***r folks have been quoting ever since. She never stabbed nobody. He FELL on that afro pick.

Whoopi, Dolly, Diahann Carroll, Tim Curry — everybody showed up for this movie, and it still gets left off the greatest-mockumentary lists. That's fine. We keep our own lists.

Drop your favorite Jackie quote below. Wrong answers don't exist, but "they ALL stole from me" is currently winning.

07/10/2026

The Hyde Park Herald covered Pride South Side this month, and our Executive Director Adam L. McMath is featured throughout.

Adam sat down with Black Gay Table Talk host Kenan Cooper-Gilmore on the Pride Pod Stage inside the DuSable's Roundhouse to talk about our work — and why safe spaces matter more than ever.

The conversation didn't stay light. Adam spoke about the 2023 underground film festival we hosted in Uganda, called the country's largest LGBTQ+ event in over two decades. He talked about the hit our organization took when NEA funding was pulled, and what it means to keep building Black q***r arts spaces in a political climate designed to make them disappear.

"Everybody on our team understood this after we left — there's always somebody that has more challenges than you do. We talked to some folks that came to our festival there, and most of them had a friend that was killed or jailed because of being LGBTQ."

Proud to be part of this, and proud that Tala Roots artist Manasseh took the stage as a headliner.

Read the full piece

Ruebella Sashshay strutted through the crowd gathered at the DuSable Museum’s Roundhouse Plaza, opened her arms, threw her head back in a flourish of blond locks and smiled.