Dionne Warwick to design Black Ensemble Theater interior
BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic/hweiss@suntimes.com October 6, 2011 6:42PM
The new home for the Black Ensemble Theater is being finished at 4450 N. Clark in Chicago. Today was a sneak preview of it's impressive new home and cultural center. This is the stage area of the main theater. | Al Podgorski ~Chicago Sun-Times
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Updated: November 16, 2011 10:23AM
Dionne Warwick, that cool, blithely rhythmic superstar singer of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, has been hired by Jackie Taylor to create the interior design for the new Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center at 4450 N. Clark.
Warwick (and her design partner, Bruce Garrick) will oversee decoration of the public spaces, including the building’s lobby and restrooms. for the building that is being designed by Chicago-based architect John Morris.
The singer met Taylor and visited the Black Ensemble’s gritty old space on North Beacon Street back in 2006, when the company performed “Don’t Make Me Over: In Tribute to Dionne Warwick.”
“Jackie gave me the guidelines,” said Warwick, who was short on details but said she has taken a peek at the new theater and chatted with Morris. “The color scheme will be in hues of reds, oranges, beiges, browns and grays. It will be a vibrant, classy, comfortable space, with a modern chandelier and memorabilia of the theater’s decades of past productions exhibited on the lobby walls.”
Warwick, whose interpretations of such Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs as “Walk On By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and “Say a Little Prayer” were at the top of the charts for years, said her previous designs were in private residences in California and restaurants that “opened and closed.”
The new Black Ensemble space, set to open Nov. 18 and still very much under construction, contains a technically sophisticated 299-seat mainstage space, offices, dressing rooms and more, as well has a black box studio (to be completed once fund-raising goals are reached).
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