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Chicago theater pioneer dies at 87

Abena Joan P. Brown, co-founder and longtime president of the eta Creative Arts Foundation on Chicago's South Side and a pioneer in and tireless advocate for African American theater, died Sunday after a brief illness.

Brown, who reports listed as 87, helmed eta - the longest running black-owned theater in the Chicago area - for 40 years, from its inception in 1971 until her retirement in 2011. Producing plays by, for and about black people, eta helped lay the foundation for African American theater in Chicago.

Eta grew out of the Ebony Talent Associates Creative Arts Foundation, a talent agency Brown co-founded with Archie B. Weston Sr., Okoro Harold Johnson and Al Johnson in 1969. Two years later the quartet established eta (pronounced et-tah) to "preserve, perpetuate and promulgate the African American aesthetic." Brown - an actor, director, stage manager, producer, arts administrator and fundraiser - was essential to its success. In 1978 she lead efforts to purchase a former window factory on South Chicago Avenue that the company converted to a 200-seat theater, gallery, classrooms and studios. The company subsequently purchased an entire city block with the goal of creating a larger entertainment complex.

A Chicago native with degrees from Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago, she received more than 60 awards including a Joseph Jefferson Award for lifetime achievement.

In a 2001 interview with the Daily Herald, Brown said she was proud of helping build an institution that endures.

"The institution has become larger than the single vision," she said. "That's why institutions are born. They go beyond the lives of the people who start them."

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