The small theater was rocking as hard as a storefront church on Easter Sunday.
Two hundred people had packed the house at the ETA Creative Arts Foundation for the season opening. But nobody goes to ETA just to see a play. It’s the total experience, which this night called for clapping, singing and talking back to the actors.
“You tell her, Blue,” one woman yelled to a character in “This Far by Faith” as he tried to woo his girlfriend back. “Go on, then, girl,” shouted another when the girlfriend turned him down.
During intermission, the house manager went onstage, as she does every performance, to award a prize to the person holding the ticket stub selected in a drawing. The drawing and the ETA Magic Calendar, a lottery that awards patrons up to $250 in cash, are the most popular of the many incentives ETA uses to keep people coming back.
This isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect at the theater. But ETA takes pride in being different.
Halfway through the second act, following a rousing gospel number, the music director toppled off his stool and collapsed onto the floor, leaving his electric keyboard idle the rest of the night. The actors barely missed a beat as he was carried offstage and rushed to a hospital.
The ensemble finished the show, including a wedding scene and a resounding gospel grand finale, accompanied by the two remaining musicians, a drummer and a bass guitarist.
The cast received a standing ovation.
At the end of the nearly three-hour show, Abena Joan Brown, ETA’s president and producer, walked onstage and announced that director Rufus “Maestro Bones” Hill would be OK. Then she turned to the business of ETA, speaking with the valiance of a Fortune 500 executive whose corporate stock just soared 10 points.
“What you saw tonight was a demonstration of talent and competence,” she said to an attentive but weary audience. “Whatever it is we have to do, the work goes forward. We don’t say, `Oh my God, Rufus!’ “
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Miles from the Goodman and the Steppenwolf theaters, Brown reigns over ETA, her own cultural conglomerate nestled deep in Chicago’s South Side.
It is the city’s largest black arts institution. And with an annual budget of slightly more than $1 million — a fraction of what mainstream theaters spend — ETA does what white-owned theaters cannot: attract large numbers of African-Americans.
Despite largely mediocre reviews in the press, more than 90,000 youths and adults each year are drawn to the various programs at the training and performing complex, where the stories that unfold onstage are written by black people for black people and reflect the lives they lead every day.
“In most of our (black) theaters, we don’t see it as art for art’s sake. We see it as something that is integral to the community,” said Brown, a Chicago native who co-founded ETA in 1971. “The theater should resonate so that when you sit out there looking at whatever it is, it makes you feel. You see yourself and you say, `I know that.’ “
The concept dates to 1920, when African-American educator W.E.B. DuBois wrote: “The Negro Arts theater should be a theater about us, a theater by us, a theater for us, a theater near us.”
ETA adopted that philosophy in the beginning and continues to live by it, Brown said.
“If you’re doing something and people don’t respond to it, it means you haven’t really conceptualized it accurately and you ought not be doing it. This is a basic community organization principle,” said Brown, who once worked as a program services director for the YWCA. “My vision for ETA is a shared vision because people want to have a place to which they can go on a regular basis.”
With nothing more than a vision and a $2,000 signature loan from South Shore Bank as a down payment, Brown set out 18 years ago to build an institution that would preserve and perpetuate African-American creative arts. Supported by a strong board of directors, comprised of prominent business people and community leaders, who raised more than $1 million, including $170,000 in city grants, Brown mounted a movement to transform an abandoned storm-door factory near 75th Street and South Chicago Avenue into a $1.3 million performing arts facility that serves as an anchor in a neighborhood stifled by urban decay.
“Before we got this building, we were vagabonds, moving from place to place,” Brown said. “We clearly needed a place of our own.”
ETA — which Brown points out is much more than a theater — worked its way from its origin as an obscure talent agency, Ebony Talent Associates, to become what some say is the pre-eminent black arts institution in Chicago and one whose organizational style has been widely emulated.
It is the only black-owned theater in Chicago and one of a handful in the country that owns its building. In addition to a 200-seat theater, the facility houses a library, art gallery, office spaces and classrooms.
Three years ago, as a testament to its financial stability, ETA announced a $1.5 million endowment campaign, a major investment toward long-term security at a time when most non-profit theaters, large and small, are scrambling for dollars. The fund, started with a $235,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, now stands at $905,000. ETA is the only black theater in Chicago to start an endowment and is among an elite group of small and medium-sized theaters in the country that has one.
“It’s really a lot of people, who are African-American, rolling up their sleeves and who are determined not to allow this theater to fail because of what it represents to the African-American community of Chicago,” said Milton Davis, a banking executive and chairman of ETA’s 26-member board of directors. “It is a great venue for keeping black history alive in our country.”
About 44 percent of ETA’s income is earned from its programs and productions. The rest comes from individual and corporate donations and private and government grants.
Last year, ETA bought the vacant 28,700-square-foot lot across the street from the complex. Recently, the theater purchased a smaller adjacent lot and its 5,000-square-foot building. The board is developing a plan to raise $10 million to build a multipurpose entertainment complex on the land and create a major cultural district on the South Side.
Though no plans have been finalized, Brown said, the complex would include a second theater, or transfer house, where ETA’s hit shows can run indefinitely; a cabaret to showcase comedians, singers and small bands; and a restaurant of some type.
“ETA is probably one of the pioneering theaters in America in terms of black theater,” said Woodie King Jr., producing director of the New Federal Theatre in New York. “All theaters are struggling financially, whether it’s the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center or the Goodman Theatre.
“And if white theaters are suffering, black theaters are even worse. The hope (for survival) is in seeing theaters like ETA. They’re the light at the end of the tunnel.”
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In the Chicago arts community, Abena Joan Brown is often referred to as the “Grand Ye Ye,” a title awarded the elder mother in an African village. But at home, in the black community, she is simply the “ETA Lady.”
It has gotten to the point where she cannot leave her house without being recognized — an indication that her years of community building have paid off.
“I jokingly say this, but it’s true. I can’t go to the store on Saturday without my makeup. I have to carry my persona with me at all times,” said Brown, who lives within walking distance of ETA.
In some ways, Brown’s job has gotten easier. In the early years, she not only ran the theater, she acted in the plays and directed them. Every night she was there, greeting the people as they entered the door. Today, those duties are handled by a full-time staff, including an artistic director, a house manager, a box-office manager and a stage manager — all of whom, she said, could take over the reins of ETA.
“Many institutions are built around people and personalities rather than missions. If I left tomorrow, ETA would go on,” said Brown, who adamantly refuses to give her age.
What she did to get ETA to this point is no different than what politicians do to get elected: walk the streets, talk to anyone who will listen and show up anywhere at any time.
“From 1979 to about 1981, we didn’t hear too much about her,” said Chuck Smith, an artistic associate at Goodman and a co-founder of the Chicago Theatre Company. “Everybody thought, `Aw, they’re not doing anything.’ What she was doing was going out there beating the bushes, making sure people knew she was there.
“When she opened her doors, she had lines of people trying to get in to sit on hardwood chairs in the gallery and see shows that were still developing. There were so many people, you couldn’t get in.”
Marieth Mitchell was one of those early patrons. Years later, she enrolled her son, Kel, in a children’s acting class at ETA. Today, he stars in two hit shows on Nickelodeon, “All That” and “Kenan and Kel,” and is in the film “Good Burger.”
“I have very high esteem for ETA. They’re a great asset to the community,” said Marieth Mitchell. “It gives our children, and adults, an opportunity to see what it’s all about in a professional environment. That’s what I really like about it. It’s not a hole in the wall.”
Kel, 19, credits ETA with his big break into show business.
“If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am now. As a youth, I was always hanging out,” said the actor, who has been nominated for a CableAce Award for best actor. “Like everybody else, I could have gone any way. My mom wanted me to try something new. Getting onstage with others who were hanging out like me was good.”
According to Brown, 70 percent of people who attend performances come in groups of 10 or more. Last year, 300 church groups, sororities, fraternities and community organizations held theater parties as fundraisers.
Some groups make money by purchasing tickets for $8 and selling them for about $20, Brown said. Those that purchase 75 or more get to hold a reception after the show and mingle with the actors.
For 10 years, George Fletcher, a coach for the Jackie Robinson West Little League, has raised money for the ballclub by organizing groups of 150 people to attend ETA’s Valentine’s Day performance.
“We sell out every year. It’s something we enjoy and folks who really aren’t in the upper echelon can still participate,” he said.
“I want every seat filled because it’s good public relations and marketing for us,” Brown said. “Most of our publicity is by word of mouth. During my opening night curtain speech, I tell them what’s going on and then I say, `Now run and tell that.’ They always do.”
