DePaul University Awards The 2020 Cunningham Commission For Youth Theatre To Ricardo Gamboa

The Theatre School at DePaul University has announce that Ricardo Gamboa has been awarded the 2020 Cunningham Commission for Youth Theatre. Gamboa is a Chicago native who has dedicated their career to devising and writing plays that focus on the experiences of the city's working-class communities and youth of color. They are a member of Free Street Theater, an alumnus of The Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit, a resident playwright with Chicago Dramatists, and the founding adult creative partner of the politically charged ensemble The Young Fugitives. Gamboa is the recipient of a Joyce Award and an International Connections Award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The Cunningham Commission for Youth Theatre was established at The Theatre School to honor the memory of the Rev. Donald Cunningham, a Chicago priest, playwright, and lover of theatre. The Cunningham Commission was established by an endowment gift from the Cunningham family and is presented annually. Playwrights from the Chicagoland area and alumni of The Theatre School are eligible to apply each year.

"The stated purpose of the commission is to encourage plays for young audiences that affirm the centrality of religion, broadly defined, and the human quest for meaning, truth, and community," Gamboa said. "So, much of what we know is that oppression works by chipping away at our spirit, our sense of possibility, and of our own potential. The systems that we live in whether it be colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy or whatever want this, they want us to feel disoriented, insignificant and alone. For my entire career, my theatrical output has been dedicated to making theater that centers and that is created by, with, and for Chicago's communities of color. I have always viewed theater for us as theater that must be restorative and give us some of the feelings that are robbed from in our oppression: feelings of belonging, of being worthy of better, of deserving of understanding, and of being able to imagine alternative futures for ourselves," they said.

Through the Cunningham Commission, Gamboa will be writing a play that is tentatively titled The Resisters. The play will explore themes of friendship, collective power, and the potential of art to transform our circumstances. Gamboa will develop The Resisters over the next year with input from the Cunningham Commission Selection Committee which includes Theatre School faculty members Michelle Lopez-Rios, Jeff Mills, Coya Paz, and Committee Chair Phil Timberlake.

"This play will speak to the realities of our time and to the power of community and art," Timberlake said. "It will engage with issues of activism, struggle, and friendship. The purpose of the Cunningham Commission is to support encourage work for young audiences that illuminate the human quest for meaning, truth, and community. Ricardo Gamboa and The Resisters fit the bill perfectly."

The Theatre School intends to produce the plays created through this commission in its award-winning Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences series. Chicago Playworks has welcomed 1,523,850 audience members since it began in 1925.

"I grew up in Chicago," Gamboa said. "So often, I felt the theater I saw at school assemblies and field trips was not reflective of my reality. Later, as a theater artist committed to making work for young audiences and as a theater educator working with theaters across Chicago, I found this was still the reality. Chicago youth of color and their stories and lives were not reflected in theater for youth in Chicago that usually opted for productions of 'classics' or adaptations of books on the reading lists of standardized education. I wanted to propose a play that was accessible, relatable, and wholly reflective of what it means to grow up in Chicago."