meet the performers
About Face Theatre
The mission of About Face Theatre is to create exceptional, innovative, and adventurous theatre and educational programming that advances the national dialogue on sexual and gender identity, and challenges and entertains audiences in Chicago and beyond.
About Face Youth Theatre (AFYT) seeks to increase the safety, empowerment and leadership capacity of LGBTQIA youth, and to catalyze youth-led civic dialogue and action within schools and communities. Through the creation and performance of ensemble-based plays in dynamic collaboration with accomplished adult artists, AFYT encourages and supports our youth to become powerful agents for change.
Bril Barrett
Bril is a dedicated tap dancer, whose mission is to preserve and promote tap dance as a percussive art form, foster respect and admiration for the history and culture of tap, and continuously create opportunities for the art form and its practitioners.
Bril is the founder of M.A.D.D. (Making A Difference Dancing) Rhythms, director of The Chicago Tap Summit and founder of The M.A.D.D. Rhythms Tap Academy. His Performance opportunities include Riverdance, Tap Dance Kid, Derrick Grant & Arron Tolson’s Imagine Tap, The Kennedy Center, Jumaane Taylor’s Supreme Love, Democratic National Convention and many others.
As a Taptivist, Bril has spent many years creating an alternative to the schools to prison pipeline that exist for many black and brown youth. A child can go from novice to professional without ever leaving our headquarters inside the historic Harold Washington Cultural Center in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Bril is determined to make a difference in his community by using tap and it’s history to expose our youth to the art form that saved his life!
McKenzie Chinn
McKenzie is an actor, filmmaker, poet, and educator based in Chicago. She is the writer, producer, and lead actor of the feature film Olympia with The Line Film Company/30 Pictures, which premiered at the 2018 LA Film Festival.
She has appeared in independent film and on television, including work with up-and-coming director Sam Bailey (Brown Girls) and a recurring role on CBS’s The Red Line. On stage, she has worked with Victory Gardens, Steppenwolf, and Goodman Theatres, as well as Second City in Chicago, and Woolly Mammoth and the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.
An accomplished poet, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Pank, Rattle, Crab Fat Magazine, and others. McKenzie’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net.
She is a 2015 Leonore Annenberg artist fellow and is part of the acclaimed Growing Concerns Poetry Collective with hip-hop artist Mykele Deville and musician Jeff Austin. The collective released its inaugural album, We Here: Thank You for Noticing, in 2017, and published its first book of poems "Five Fifths" through Candor Arts in 2018.
Mykele Deville
Mykele is a rapper, poet, actor, teaching artist, and author from the west side of Chicago. His solo hip-hop and poetic recordings include Maintain (2019), Peace, Fam (2017), Each One Teach One (2016), and Super Predator (2016).
He has performed on stages across Chicago and led workshops on hip-hop and identity. His work has been profiled in Billboard, AfroPunk, Flood Mag, Bandcamp, Noisey, OK Player, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, The Reader, Consequence of Sound, Vocalo radio, and NPR.
June
Chicago Artist June is known to be a vivacious performer of music and Poetry. Born and raised on Chicago’s south side, June sends a clear message of positivity, making every piece and performance an uplifting experience. June is hitting Chicago’s booming art scene with authentic lyrics and sensational melodies.
While her messages change focus as she grows, she strives to distill sounds true to the many intersections of her identity as a queer, black woman. June is a young performing artist, event host, and multi-talented artist and is founder of 360, a creative collective building to highlight the stories and talents of artists across the city.