“Joy, Justice, and Giant Puppets”
Summertime in Chicago asks everyone to get out and enjoy the city. Free Street Theater’s upcoming show asks you to put that device down and touch some grass. Co-directed by Coya Paz and Sivan Spector, ‘Touch Grass‘ is an interactive puppet play that invites the audience to explore the parks as spaces for connection to nature, self, and community.
Presented in English and Español as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series, the free production features large-scale puppets and “move at your own pace” installations.
I sat down with Free Street’s Coya Paz to discuss the upcoming show, the complex realities of Chicago’s arts economy, and why her brand of theater focuses on “Joy plus Justice.”
Reggie Ponder: Tell me a bit about you, before we get into the Free Street Theater and the puppet show. What should people know about you?
Coya Paz: I am a theater maker whose work is really focused on thinking about how theater can be a tool for partnership in a social justice campaign and community-based work. I do a lot of theater that does not start with a script, but comes out of conversations with community members about what’s going on in our communities. I also teach full-time at the theater school at DePaul University, and I teach Directing, History, and Applied Theater. Free Street was really my baby. I love it so much.
I’ve been in Chicago for about 30 years. I moved here in 1997. But my Chicago relationship is a little more complex than that. I grew up living in Latin America. I lived in a different country every year or two until I was about 12, and then we moved to the States. I moved to Chicago when I graduated from college. Part of why I moved to Chicago is that my biological father is from Chicago, so I was curious about knowing him better.
Fun fact: even though I didn’t grow up in Chicago, I was conceived in Chicago.
Reggie Ponder: I want to probe something you mentioned earlier. Why do you think it seems to be a little easier for people who are not Chicagoans to manifest their destiny in the theater scene here?
Coya Paz: Chicago is one of the most vibrant theater cities in the world, and we’re well-known for being a home for new work and storefront theater. But the reality is that almost all of those are concentrated on the northeast side of the city. So if you are someone who is born and raised in Englewood or Austin or Back of the Yards, immediately your access to theater or exposure to theater goes down. There are only, in the entire south side of the city, seven formal theaters.
The commute to work in professional theater is huge. Whereas if you’re not from Chicago, it’s much more likely that when you move to Chicago you’ll ask, “Where’s a good place to live if I wanna be in theater?” They’ll tell you to live somewhere along the north side of the Red Line, and then that’s where you’ll live, and you’ll meet people, and you audition, and you do work. So there’s a whole complex ecology around how these pipelines work. All the stepping stones that might lead someone to a career making theater are much harder- not impossible, but harder to access if you live in any part of the city that isn’t the Northeast Side.
Reggie Ponder: You brought up empathy earlier, but I grew up in Bronzeville and live on the West Side. When you tell a story about systemic division, I’m not going to experience empathy—that’s already my reality. It seems the people who need that empathy are the wealthier communities, yet you mentioned they aren’t your primary audience. Make the math make sense: who is this theater actually building empathy for?
Coya Paz: I want to clarify that when I was talking about empathy earlier, I was saying that is sort of the base level of what theater makers usually tout as what’s valuable about theater. To me, that is not the number one thing, and it is not about the privileged versus people living in divested communities. To me, it’s more about ethnic division and racial division among people who are living in communities that are divested. Because to me that’s where political solidarity and organizing solidarity could have the most power.
I’m less interested in how we can get wealthy people to care. The reality is our space is at 47th and Ashland. We’re gonna perform it in Gage Park, in McKinley Park, in Back of the Yards, and Brighton Park. The people that are coming out to see those shows are not the people who would otherwise be hanging out in Lincoln Square.
Reggie Ponder: So how do you approach building that solidarity within those neighborhoods?
Coya Paz: The question is more like, how could I get people who are otherwise neighbors but don’t see themselves as having stuff in common? There’s a lot of tension between immigrants and Chicago-born and raised people. To me, the question becomes: how do we work on finding common ground and understanding we are not each other’s enemies in this context? Resources are only limited because the pipeline is being closed off and diverted elsewhere. And so I’m more interested in building solidarity around the notion that we have a shared issue, we have shared problems, and instead of fighting each other for resources, let’s turn our eyes to who does have the resources or who is benefiting from this.
Reggie Ponder: Let’s talk about Touch Grass. Where did that come from, and how does it fit into your tagline of “Joy plus Justice“?
Coya Paz: In the case of Touch Grass, we’re really working on inequities in the tree canopy. Having trees and shade in the neighborhood correlates with a lot of positive health outcomes. We know that trees cool a neighborhood. So if you’re in a community that has less access to air conditioning, having trees in the neighborhood can make a big difference. Trees help with remediating air that has been polluted. In this context, we’re working with the Morton Arboretum’s Tree Ambassador program, which trains people to request trees in their neighborhood. It is very community-driven. If you want a tree, we’ll teach you how to get a tree. That’s where the justice piece of it is on this.
Reggie Ponder: And where does the joy come in with a subject like tree equity?
Coya Paz: Not even the most progressive woke person in the world wants to come see a play and be lectured at. It always has to be fun, and it’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be funny. We liked the title Touch Grass because it is about nature, and we’re performing in the parks. We have a 12-foot adult puppet and a six-foot child puppet, and then there’s a bunch of interactive installations that the audience can move through and interact with and learn about trees in a very fun and cheeky way. One of the stations is about tree networks and root systems and communication, but we turned it into tree gossip. So people will be able to leave tidbits of gossip, pick up tidbits of gossip, and talk to each other through tin can phones.
Reggie Ponder: Are there people you’d like to highlight because they come from Chicago neighborhoods and are doing some things that you’d like to mention?
Coya Paz: We have an amazing cast, and for the first time performing with us this poet, performer, artist named Amari Amai. He is our artist in residence this year, and he is from the West Side, and learning to make puppets and do puppets for the first time, and just an extraordinary performer. The music in the show is written by Dre Mesa, who’s also from Chicago, a Latina person. I wrote the beats for the puppet show, and Sivan Spector built the puppets and really has a sense of how puppets work. But it’s really important to us that something be both culturally relevant and that not just content, but the aesthetics when you come see it, and it feels like something that is for you, not something that was just brought to you from somewhere else.
Reggie Ponder: What is it that you love about this city?
Coya Paz: What I love about the city is that Chicagoans love their city. I am so lucky by nature of the work that I do that I’m often in rooms just full of people who are really passionate about their city, whether they’re artists or organizers or activists. The way that people will come together and throw down and just dazzle. Chicagoans do not BS. One of the things I’ve had to learn is, “We move at the speed of trust.” And I feel like that’s real. Most Chicagoans do not trust an outsider until they do. It’s not a natural thing. So I think that’s healthy given some of Chicago’s history. And I just love it. I love the passion for the city.
Catch Free Street Theater’s “Touch Grass” for free this summer at neighborhood parks across the South and West sides. Remember to bring your own blanket!
July 22 (6:30 PM) – Davis Square Park (4430 S. Marshfield Ave.)
July 24 (6:30 PM) – Cornell Square Park (1809 W. 50th St.)
July 25 (2:00 PM) – Gage Park (2411 W. 55th St.)
July 29 (6:30 PM) – Sherman Park (1301 W. 52nd St.)
July 30 (6:30 PM) – Kucinski-Murphy Park (1635 W. 33rd Pl.)
