Storytellers, dancing take over Schaumburg’s Black History Month performance
Though traditionally a scripted play, Schaumburg’s 26th annual Black History Month performance will headline a group of storytellers while also showcasing their love for dance.
Named after the popular 1982 Indeep song “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life,” the show will feature Chicago-based SOL Collective delivering what founder Shelley A. Davis believes will be a joyful experience for the audience.
The two-hour performance will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts, 101 Schaumburg Court.
“It really is a storytelling showcase,” Davis said. “We hope there will be robust audience participation and dancing in the aisles.”
Rather like an open-mic performance or stand-up show, the five storytellers will not be adopting fictional personas as they tell 10 individual stories linked by an overarching narrative.
Like the village’s past Black History Month performances, the show will be appropriate for all ages and include themes relevant to everyone, longtime producer and Schaumburg native Maurice D. Proffit said.
He saw a slightly different version of this SOL Collective show in Hyde Park last month, a day after hearing the members interviewed on the radio. His earlier plans for the Schaumburg show were falling through and he found himself watching something he says he would have booked a year ahead if he’d been aware of it.
“Seeing it in person exceeded expectations, above and beyond!” Proffit said. “This was a blessing. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. Why didn’t I know about them before?”
Davis said the Schaumburg show will include about half of what Proffit saw in Hyde Park, but there will be additional original material to fill in for two earlier speakers who were from out of town.
“It’s such an important opportunity for us,” she said of the upcoming Schaumburg performance.
Proffit has usually been the director of the February productions, but this is the second year of a new era in which he’s taking an exclusively producer role for other artists’ voices to be heard.
“Working with Shelley has been such a smooth breeze,” he said. “I can get used to this! I kind of like this system.”
Davis created SOL Collective just before the pandemic in early 2020, but the group ended up doing its earliest performances on Zoom. The name “SOL” has a double meaning, as it both stands for the members telling the “Stories of Our Lives,” and symbolizes their identity as women of the sun, she said.
But she emphasized that the performance is consistent with Proffit’s own tradition in Schaumburg in being appropriate for all ages and relevant to all people.
“It’s so relatable across the board for everyone,” Davis said. “Whether they look like us or sound like us, we know our stories are universal.”
Tickets for all seats cost $22 in advance or $27 at the door. To buy in advance, go to prairiecenter.org.