Tsehaye Geralyn Hébert won the prestigious Alliance-Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award for her play, The C.A. Lyons Project. A 1969 graduate of St. Joseph’s Academy, this nationally acclaimed playwright graduated from Northwestern University and earned an MFAW from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the first African-American woman, the first person with a disability and, as she describes it, “the first person to hold an AARP card” to win the award, having entered graduate school post-retirement.
“Winning the Alliance-Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Award is a leap forward into the world of professional theater,” Tsehaye said. “Stellar professionals at the Alliance Theatre – actors, directors, choreographer, dramaturg, costume designer, set designer, lighting designers – brought their A game to the project. It was a great place to land, and it was great to work with them. Among the five Bass Awards, Atlanta’s Toni Awards, The C.A. Lyons Project won four of its five nominations. It was one heckuva a professional introduction.”
Winning such recognition for her play is even more remarkable given the health challenges she faced midway through writing it. She became critically ill, on life support and suffering paralysis, before slowing regaining her mobility, speech and health. “The entire year I spent from illness to recovery I listened to that soundtrack in my head: blues, jazz, hip-hop, rap, classical, experimental and folk music,” she said. “That helped me to recover. The work had to cohere and to coexist into a narrative structure. In retrospect, it’s a metaphor for the American polity and for its healing as I healed.”
A self-described citizen playwright and performance artist, Tsehaye is a Frank McCourt Memoir Prize finalist and is recognized as one of Thirty Chicago Writers to Watch (Guild Literary Complex). One of 80 artists selected to celebrate Gwendolyn Brooks’ 80th birthday, she most recently published the short story, Off the Wall, in Chicago Quarterly Review #33, An Anthology of Black American Literature edited by novelist and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson. She has served as an artist and playwright-in-residence, most recently at Chicago State University.
“Our parents raised us to be citizens, and I honor them as a citizen playwright,” Tsehaye said. “My parents’ attitude was, ‘If there isn’t a door, build one. If there isn’t a doorknob, make one!’ When I complained about the lack of roles for Black actresses, my mother said, ‘Write your own plays!’
“Women pushed past historic boundaries when I came of age. I knew I could be anything I wanted to, but I didn’t personally know any writers nor any playwrights. I was expected to read, study, do chores and be of service to our family and community. Our parents expected us to engage politically in the world around us, in our state, in our city and in our neighborhood. We didn’t have a choice. The times made us. Dad reigned at one end and my mother on the other end of the dinner table. You brought your best behavior, your manners and vibrant political debate nightly. It was the middle of the modern Civil Rights era. I never ever won an argument, by the way.”
As a cultural activist, Tsehaye founded Cook County Women Writers Workshop in the Cook County Jail and taught writing with Gallery 37/After School Matters, Chicago Dramatists, Pegasus Theatre’s Young Playwright’s Program and Madonna-St. Joseph Center, among others. She sits on Piven Theatre Company’s honorary board and is a founding member of Artists Design the Future (ADtF), a women-led company advocating affordable ownership, innovative adaptive design and creative reuse for artists and creatives. ADtF recently received funding for its project to build accessible, inclusive, artist-owned work/live space for artists, creatives and people with disabilities.
Tsehaye’s artistic inspiration comes from a variety of sources, ranging from life and spirituality to family, art, music and literature. Her dad managed the Lincoln Theater and Hotel, where she spent a great deal of her childhood. Her mother was a gifted musician, able to play any instrument. Her family home was filled with song. Her uncle played blues harp, her husband is a celebrated guitarist, her daughter is a DJ and her son is a producing musician. “I don’t think I can underestimate the critical role music plays in inspiring my work and development as a writer from a very young age until now,” she said.
When Tsehaye arrived at SJA, it was newly integrated. She said the landscape allowed her to train a longer lens on the two worlds she navigated. “SJA expected us to be our best,” Tsehaye said. “We were studious and focused, be it in math classes or participating in sports or clubs. When I’m teaching a writing class at a school or at the county jail, I imagine Sister Felix [Loup] correcting our grammar with precision. Studying linguistics in college made me appreciate her even more. Art Club with Mr. James Burke and Drama Club with Mrs. Drusilla Balkom gave me direction and the opportunity to learn craft inside and outside class.”
Tsehaye is unfalteringly proud of her south Louisiana roots. She says her birthplace – “the land of gumbo, Mardi Gras and storytelling” – continues to influence her art to this day. “A proud African-Creole Southern Louisiana woman, I’m an ambassador,” she said. “Using French Creole leads me to explain language and linguistics. I’m inspired by our cultures and traditions. Second great-grandfather Dorlis Aguilliard, a renown Creole folk teller, inspires me across generations. I’m still discovering his legacy. Geography is important, whether it’s a gritty urban scape or rural America, my inspiration extends conversations across centuries.”
Mindy Brodhead Averitt
Communications Director