THE PURSUIT: A People’s Salon
Featuring the debut of new works commissioned by Illinois Humanities
When
Oct 28, 2026
6:00pm–9:00pm
Cost
Free.
Registration is required.
July 4, 2026, marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
This national anniversary provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the complex legacy of our country’s founding, uplift undertold stories, and showcase diverse perspectives. As a part of its programmatic response to the 250th, Illinois Humanities is commissioning new works from Illinois-based artists and humanists as they reflect on what it means to “pursue happiness” at this moment in our nation’s history.
The first unalienable rights named during the founding of the United States of America are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
- But what does that promise look like in practice, and who has truly had access to it?
- Which aspirations are supported by the structures of our society, and which are constrained by systemic barriers?
- How has the pursuit of happiness shaped American identity, culture, and public life beyond its appearance in the Declaration of Independence?
Illinois Humanities is proud to present THE PURSUIT: A PEOPLE'S SALON, featuring newly commissioned performances from five exceptional artists. Through bold, creative, and thought-provoking work, they explore the promises of democracy, the realities of lived experience, and the many ways people continue to define, pursue, and fight for happiness.
This is an evening-length manifestation of Illinois Humanities’ commitment to approaching the 250th as an opportunity to reflect on the complex legacy of our country’s founding, uplift undertold stories, and showcase diverse perspectives. The evening will feature 4-5 short commissioned performances and presentations that respond to the theme of THE PURSUIT.
The evening is hosted and emceed by Illinois Humanities and includes ample opportunities to interact and reflect with other attendees and participants.
Commissioned Artists
Lisa Beasley
Commissioned Work: Mayday’s Guide for Year 1
Even while shifting into many characters, Lisa Beasley's extensive plethora of experience has presented her multiple opportunities to occupy many rooms and influence change across multiple industries. Originally from Gary, IN, Lisa Beasley attended Emerson School for the Visual & Performing Arts before being accepted into an Historically Black College in Memphis, TN. After graduating with a B.A. in Classical Jazz Studies, Lisa attended acting school in Los Angeles, CA. She pursued a ten-year theater career in Chicago, IL, which led her to work on stages such as Black Ensemble Theater, Court Theater, and Second City. She toured with the Second City National Touring Company where she wrote and performed in two original revues on The Second City, e.t.c. Stage. Lisa is also a member of the improv group 3Peat. Known for her viral impersonations, namely, Mayor Lory Litefoot with a "y," Lisa loves acting, being a satirical clown and writing.
As a leader in the community, Lisa's entrepreneurial skills provide a level of inclusion, autonomy, and creative freedom not found in most traditional workplace environments. Lisa believes in creating inclusive infrastructures where creativity can thrive.
As an educator, Lisa is a professor at DePaul University, teaching students how to authentically show up as themselves and occupy spaces to make an insightful impact through their talents. She also serves as an advisor for the Comedy Arts Program and lends her expertise towards developing the new program.
As an entertainer, comedian and actor, Lisa is known for her performances on KevOnStage's Black People Do Improv, HBOMax's South Side, NBC's Chicago MED (Netflix), The Blackening (Comedy Central), and more. She has been featured in Black Enterprise, Essence, PopSugar, Pink News U.K., Buzzfeed, Syfy, Chicago Reader, The Red Eye, and more.
She is empowered by #blkcreatives.
INSÉKTA
Commissioned Work: FRÍO
INSÉKTA is a Venezuelan-Peruvian director, choreographer, and producer whose work moves between dance, physical theatre, and visual culture. Shaped by migration and cultural multiplicity, their work draws from Latiné Futurism, femme mythologies, and absurdism to create grotesque and exaggerated physical states where the body becomes creature, ritual, and spectacle.
Based in Chicago, INSÉKTA is a 2026 Chicago Dancemakers Forum grantee, a Thodos Dance Chicago New Dances recipient, and a 2026 3Arts Award nominee. Their debut full-length work, MATADORA, premieres this fall at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.
FRÍO, commissioned by Illinois Humanities, is their first commissioned work — a duet tracing one psyche split across time through the states of matter, from frozen paralysis into synchronicity.
Rooted in an indomesticable Latinidad, INSÉKTA's practice treats the body as both battleground and ceremony, prototyping existence rather than utopia.
Follow INSÉKTA: Website: www.insekta.art | Instagram: @houseofinsekta
Mark Turcotte
Commissioned Work: TBD
Writer Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) spent his earliest years on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and in the migrant camps of the western United States. Later, he grew up in and around Lansing, Michigan.
Arriving in Chicago in the spring of 1993, Turcotte rediscovered his love of words and writing and quickly established himself as a unique voice in the city’s thriving poetry scene. That summer he was winner of the First Gwendolyn Brooks Open-mic Poetry Award. Soon thereafter, he was selected by Ms. Brooks as a Significant Illinois Poet and was named to the Illinois Authors Poster. During that time, Turcotte was awarded the 1997 Josephine Gates Kelly Memorial Fellowship from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
Turcotte is author of the books, The Feathered Heart; Songs of Our Ancestors; a chapbook, Road Noise; a bilingual collection, Le Chant de la Route; and Exploding Chippewas (Northwestern Univ Press). His work has appeared in many national and international literary journals. His poem, The Flower On, was part of the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural Poetry In Motion project, which placed poetry placards on public transportation in cities across the United States. He is included in the new and first ever Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. His poem, “Dear New Blood,” was recently featured on the poetry podcast, Poetry Unbound. Turcotte was the recipient of a 2001-2002 Lannan Foundation Literary Award and his work is included in the NEA/Poetry Foundation project Poetry Out Loud.
In 2008, he completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Western Michigan University. After graduation, he served as the 2008-2009 Visiting Native Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He again lives in Chicago and, since 2009, has been Senior Lecturer and Distinguished-Writer-In-Residence in the English Department at DePaul University.
Follow Illinois Poet Laureate Mark Turcotte here.
Photo credit: Photo by Zoey Duchene for an article by Lucia Preziosi in The DePaulia
avery r. young
Commissioned Work: an excerpt from an un-heavy
Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate and American Poet Laureate Fellow, interdisciplinary artist avery r. young is also a co-director of The Floating Museum. Also a recipient of the Walder Foundation’s Platform Award, his art practice spans the genres of poetry, libretto, film, curation, and performance works that have been featured in national and international exhibitions, theater, festivals and anthologies.
avery's theater credits include co-writing and co-producing the soundtrack for Lise Haller Baggeson’s Hatorgrade Retrograde: The Musical, scoring Red Clay Dance’s Rest.Restore.Nourinsh.Move.Heal and writing the libretto for The Chicago Lyric Opera’s Twilight: Gods. He is the featured vocalist on flutist Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening [FPE Records].
avery's full-length recording tubman. is the soundtrack to his collection of poetry, neckbone: visual verses. He is the composer and librettist of a new American opera titled safronia which makes its theatrical premiere at Court Theater of Chicago in Spring 2027.
Follow averyryoung: WEBSITE: averyryoung.com | IG: @avery_r_young | X: @beblk
Ariel Zetina
Commissioned Work: Periphery, or “What Flies in the Air in the Night above the Chicago Skyline as we dance in the club”
Ariel Zetina is a Chicago-based artist, focusing on electronic music production, deejaying, and dramatic writing. She manipulates percussion, vocal repetition, and theatrics, taking inspiration from everything, including techno, Broadway, and the queer club scene worldwide. Her several EPs and debut LP Cyclorama have received acclaim from top music publications, and her DJ sets have erupted dancefloors worldwide.
Ariel's work also takes the form of plays and performances, which have been staged in theatres, gay clubs, classrooms, and museums.
What informs her work?
The herstory of Chicago House music, the oral herstory of trans America, her Belizean heritage, and her existence as a transgender woman of color. No matter what, she includes a healthy amount of camp in her work. She is a resident DJ at the legendary house music club Smartbar, was named a 2023 Chicagoan of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, and yes, she did open for Beyoncé!
Follow Ariel: Website: www.arielzetina.com | IG: @arielzetina
More About...
Jane M. Saks, Curator
Jane M. Saks is a writer, curator, producer, cultural alchemist, educator, arts advocate, creative collaborator, artist, and activist working internationally, challenging and championing issues of gender, sexuality, human rights, race, and power within the worlds of arts, culture, politics, civil rights, academia, and philanthropy. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, and Founder/ President/Artistic Director of Project&: creating new models of cultural participation with social impact. Collaborators creating new works include: Lynsey Addario, Amanda Williams, Kerry James Marshall, aver r young, Damon Locks, Lynn Nottage, Claire Chase, Hank Willis Thomas, Marcos Balter, E. Patrick Johnson, Eve L Ewing, Du Yun, Yance Ford, Hon. Albie Sachs, Daniel Alexander Jones, Red Tremmel, Kaneza Schaal, Tomeka Johnson, Jim Hodges, Christopher Myers, Cheryl Pope, and Jeanne Gang. She is the Producer, Co-Producer, Creative Collaborator, Creative Advisor, Commissioner, and Series Producer on many original creative works. She is the Co-Founder/Artistic Director of Monuments to Movements, creating monuments to collective action/social change; she is a published poet/writer for Chicago Tribune, Crain’s, New Yorker Magazine, Phaidon, Northwestern, Haymarket Press, poems forthcoming in 2028, and literary collaborations with Kerry James Marshall, Jim Hodges, and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle. She is a visiting critic/artist/professor/lecturer/speaker including: Yale, MIT, Harvard, Orleans Parish Prison, United Nations, US Holocaust Museum, Palais De Tokyo, Rwanda Arts Commission, Prospect 5, Nobel Center, Aspen Ideas Festival, New York University, HOMEWORK Beirut, White House (Obama), U.S. Departments of Justice and State, U.S. Senate/Congressional Houses, New School, Whitney Museum, South African Constituional Court. Currently, she is working with four Project& Evolving Democracies Fellows: MacArthur Fellow Amanda Williams, Eric Gottesman, Co-Founder of Four Freedoms, Damon Locks, Award-Winning Artist, and Kaneza Schaal, Pulitzer Prize-winning artist.
She is depicted in Kerry James Marshall’s 2017 permanent public mural at the City of Chicago Cultural Center on Chicago’s Cultural Center building. The mural depicts 20 Women who have influenced the arts/culture/social equity of the city of Chicago. She has received numerous Fellowships/Awards/Honors include: Halsted Center Humanist, Illinois Humanities, Leadership Greater Chicago; 40 Public Interest Business/Professionals; United Nations LGBT Human Rights Leaders, LGBTQ Hall of Fame; Ox-Bow Visionary and Innovator Award, Arts Leaders Award, Equity, Racial Justice and Human Rights (United Nations High Commissioner Award), About Face Theatre Visionary Award, BeyondMedia Justice Award, Pride Index Award African American LGBT communities; National Arts Strategies Fellow, Stanford University Arts Fellowship, GO Magazine “100 Queer Women We Love.” She lives in Chicago with her daughters, Esmé and Elodie.
Jane curated avery r. young’s commissioned work, “an excerpt from an un-heavy."
Ramova Theatre
The Ramova Theatre brings world-class live music to an iconic historical landmark, creating an unparalleled concert experience in the heart of Bridgeport, Chicago.
Ramova Theatre has reopened in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood as an independent live music venue, craft brewery, and taproom. Through meticulous rehabilitation, the century-old movie palace has been transformed into a world-class 1,800+ person live music venue. With cutting-edge technology inside a historical, atmospheric-style backdrop, Ramova Theatre creates an unforgettable experience for artists and concertgoers alike.
Venue Parking and Directions
Parking
Metered street parking is available on Halsted Street and 35th Street.
Accessibility
The venue is an accessible property. There are four multi-occupancy gender-neutral restrooms in the venue, two with stalls and urinals, and two with stalls only. There is directional signage that can help lead you to facilities on each level.
Staff members will assist with use of the elevator.
If you require accommodations to participate in this event fully, please contact Zerline Thompson at events@ilhumanities.org at least 72 hours before the event.
Please list any food allergies when registering.
A People's Salon
A People’s Salon is a series of four energizing evenings of chef-driven meals, creative performances, and lively discussions about the big ideas and cultural movements of our moment. Each salon is curated around important current issues and features artists, thinkers, and organizers who will present original works that spark connections between our lived experiences, expert opinions, and the futures we want to see.
A People's Salon is presented in partnership with Haymarket House and TXA TXA Club.
Register for This Event
Contact
Suite 650, 125 South Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60603
312.422.5580 312.374.6787 Fax
Illinois Humanities is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Illinois General Assembly [through the Illinois Arts Council], as well as by contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations.
Illinois Humanities respects the privacy of its audiences and will at no time sell or distribute personal information to any party not directly affiliated with Illinois Humanities and its programs.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed by speakers, program participants, or audiences do not necessarily reflect those of the NEH, Illinois Humanities, our partnering organizations, or our funders.
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