New Directional Players
The New Directional Players, which first performed in 1971, is a thought-provoking theatrical company that presents a variety of works related to the Afrocentric experience. The troupe has explored original literature authored by cutting-edge playwrights as well as classics by the likes of Ntozake Shange and Langston Hughes.
The group touches on social and historical issues through stage performance and has consistently promoted culture and understanding within the local community and beyond. Along with presenting traditional plays, the ensemble also performs poetry, dramatic monologues, one acts, musicals and adapted works.
Artist-in-residence, Sonita Surrat
Sonita L. Surratt is an award winning classically trained vocalist, playwright, actor, director, sound designer, an Artist in Residence at Purdue University's Black Cultural Center, and a member of the Stage Directors' and Choreographers' Society.
Ms. Surratt is a United States Air Force Veteran. Originally from Norfolk VA, she later grew up in Cleveland OH and eventually moved to Upstate NY where she completed her performing arts academic training, performed and taught at both collegiate and K-12 public schools for several years before relocating to Chicago, IL.
Her diverse experience, among many, encompasses opera stages, Off Broadway, and touring with Opera in the Hood. Since her arrival to Chicago, eta Creative Arts Foundation has become her artistic home where she has enjoyed working on premieres by award winning playwrights: Sins of the Father (Director), Lines in the Dust (Sound Designer) Two Twenty-Seven (Sound Designer), If Scrooge Was a Brother (Music Director), The Under-ground Railroad (Director), Sounds of Blackness (Director), Hip Hop Aesop (Director), It Shoudda Been Me (Director), Flow, a hip hop musical (Director), Tearing Down the Walls (Musical Director), The Legend of Buster Neal (Music Director), and Dowager Daughters of Transcendence (Sound Designer). Her other directing and sound designer credits include The Door Game (Director), at the Chicago Prologue Landmark Theatre Festival, Re-Entry (Director) at the Chicago Fringe Festival, Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life (Director) w/Performance Artist Dr. Su'ad Khabeer, Home (Director), Having Our Say: The First 100 Hundred Years (Director), I’m Ev’ry Womon (Playwright/Director), The British Are Coming (Director), The Miracle (Director), Summer and Smoke (Director), and A Young Lady of Property (Director), Valley Song (Music Director), and Halcyon’s Alcyone Festival (Sound Designer).