Dan Jakes

NPR recently published a report ranking the plays most commonly produced by high school groups in the United States. Even in the current decade, the top spots remain occupied by benign classics like You Can’t Take It with You and Our Town.  By contrast to those popular and safe school picks, creative, young Chicago artists have a particularly good reason to gloat. On top of youth ensembles like Albany Park Theatre Project, About Face Youth Theatre and Free Street staging personal and challenging works this year, a new collective aims to introduce teenage students to the ins and outs of professional production. “It’s really not until you leave college and are cast in one of these shows or form your own company that you see it,” says Joel Ewing, lead theater teacher at Edgewater’s Nicholas Senn Arts Magnet High School and cofounder of the Yard, which partners Senn Arts students with professional theaters. Ewing is referring to the press releases, contracts, rental agreements and other practicalities required to bring dramatic concepts to production.  With Senn teaching artist Mechelle Moe, a veteran actor and ensemble member with the Hypocrites and TimeLine Theatre Company, Ewing kicks off the Yard’s first season this fall with two collaborations on mature-themed works: Kirsten Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar with Raven Theatre and Sean Graney’s The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide with the Hypocrites, the irreverent and modern ensemble Ewing describes as his “first thea