NOTES FROM OUR COMMUNITY
Events inspired by TimeLine’s production of Notes from the Field.
Connecting Through Conversation
Saturday, March 23, 2024
12:30pm – 2pm
BUILD Chicago
5100 W. Harrison St, Chicago
ABOUT THE EVENT
Join TimeLine and guest curators Falisa Byers, Justice Ford, and Brian Weddington at BUILD Chicago in Austin for an intimate and artistic community event! Create a visual or written art piece to share, inspired by discussion and listening with fellow community members around the themes of the play Notes From the Field by Anna Deavere Smith.
Refreshments and materials provided. This is an intergenerational event for folks 16+.
FREE! Reservations required
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ABOUT THE GUEST CURATORS
Falisa Byers, LSW is an advocate for youth, with over 10 years of experience supporting youth (8-16 years old) into young adulthood (17-24). She has a passion for helping youth find and exercise their voices and grow into their most authentic selves. Falisa works to equip youth and adolescents with the tools and skills to develop social-emotional learning, coping skills to manage anxiety, depression, interpersonal struggles, and many other issues which youth face day to day. She also has experience in supporting adults through difficult life transitions as well as adults who have experienced trauma, and who live with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Falisa utilizes a strengths-based perspective and a holistic approach that incorporates mind, body, and spirit. She has worked with people of all ages and cultures and feels that it is important to create a safe environment where self-reflection and transformation can occur. Falisa’s specialties include depression, anxiety, and various forms of trauma (e.g. interpersonal violence, child abuse, sexual assault, etc.). She is skilled in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Trauma Informed Therapy, as well as Solution Focused Therapy. Falisa has worked with Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theater, Storycatchers Theater, The Chicago Shakespeare theatre and TimeLine Theatre Company. Falisa is knowledgeable on issues such as mass incarceration, trauma before during and after incarceration, school to prison pipeline, impact of incarceration of women on the community and family, and the prison industrial complex. She has done work with the YWCA as a Medical/Legal Advocate and has had the honor of sitting on a panel for ICASA (Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault). She also sat on Chicago’s PD 3rd 4th and 5th District Domestic Violence subcommittees. Falisa has helped facilitate vision board workshops for men and women who are incarcerated.
Justice Ford is an actress, arts educator, writer and so much more hailing from the Southside of Chicago. In Bronzeville, she grew a passion for the arts that lead her down the halls of ChiArts, as a student in their inaurgural class (2013). After high school, college life wasn’t too promising so she tried her hand as a teaching artist and fell deeply in love with it. Justice has worked with a local organization that teaches theatre to youth impacted by the juvenile justice system, the August Wilson Outreach Program, and is a currently an acting teacher at her alma mater. She also has been a finalist in Complex Magazine’s “Good Looking Out” series for her podcast “unapologetic.” (2018), a recipient of the Golden Key Award from the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards (2010), regional winner of the Goodman Theatre’s “10-Minute Play Festival” (2012), and most recently has been invited to direct a number of shows across the city, including The Artistic Home Theater and Congo Square Theatre. Justice believes wholeheartedly that art saves lives, and as she continues to allow that to manifest in her life she hopes that she is allowed continually opportunities to live out her purpose: to share stories and heal through art.
Brian Weddington is a past instructor of Theatre and Communication with both the City Colleges of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he received his B.A. in Theater. He also holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from Relay the Graduate School of Education. Continuing his studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey earned him the M.F.A. in acting. His professional acting career is extensive and varied with theatrical, film and television work throughout the United States and abroad. Some of his creative works include: Episodes of NBC’s Chicago Fire and Chicago Med, the hit movie Barbershop 2, ABC’s One Life to Live, the National Black Arts Theater Festival production of “The People Who Could Fly”, the Kennedy Center’s theater production of “The Darker Face of the Earth” and “Thieves Carnival”, which was performed at the theater of Southwest Moscow. He has several national and regional television commercials to his credit including All State Insurance, McDonald’s, Century 21 and Home Depot. His service and dedication to arts in education has allowed him to instruct youth within various community programs including The New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Chicago Public Schools Advanced Arts Education Program at Gallery 37, After School Matters, Upward Bound, Project CHANCE and the Boys and Girls Club of America. He is the Managing Director of Theatre Arts and Co-Founder of the HHW School for the Performing Arts, and has completed a book of scenes and monologues from the African American Christian experience entitled “LIFTED”.
Past Events
A reading of TimeLine South’s Recidivism plus T-Shirt Making Project
Thursday, February 29, 2024
4:30pm – 7pm (play reading begins at 5pm)
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 E. 60th St., Chicago
Screening Room
ABOUT RECIDIVISM
conceived and created by the TimeLine South 2022 Ensemble
The students of Connor High are trying their best to navigate their school’s new strict policies but when they learn that a prison is being built blocks away, it sparks a fire within the students to take action towards autonomy. In a battle to break oppressive cycles, they form an alliance to gain respect from those in authority and create a better future for their community.
The 60-minute play reading and a brief post-show discussion was followed by a creative T-shirt making project.
Recidivism poster artwork by Yahir Lira.