THEATER

just felt like a nice way to begin and end it,” Barrett says.

While she’s walking, Stacey muses with often hilariously accurate teenage perspective on the sights and the neighborhood history she’s been taught—or not taught. Upon seeing Jesse Jackson’s old stomping grounds: “He was a Black man who ran for the presidency. Probably like a hundred years ago.” And then: “That’s pretty neat. They don’t teach us in school about all the Black people that wanted to be president before Obama.” It won’t be the last time Barrett‘s writing pivots with ruthless grace from wry humor to blunt assessment of real-life ongoing travesties.

Barrett had parallel issues in learning about the neighborhood.

“It’s a little di cult fi nding history of the area written by folk of color,” she says. “I think I found one piece online eventually.”

Stacey’s walk is propelled by her desire to convince her mother that she’s old enough to go to a protest. As she explains to the listener, she’s researched the activist groups. She knows who the organizers are. She wants to stand up for what’s right, as she’s been taught. Why does her mother have to be so scared about it?

That’s a question Barrett heard when she started attending protests and eventually organizing with both the Black Youth Project 100 and the #LetUsBreathe Collective.

“I think I started because I didn’t know where to place the feelings I had been having. I had been angry over Trayvon. I was angry over Mike Brown. I didn’t know where to put my anger, and I wanted to be with people who understood and wanted to do something about it. So I started following protests on Twitter. I’d look to see who and where people were. And at Black Youth Project 100 specifically, I finally found this group of young Black women and young queer folks who were not only leading protests, but also doing educational work on how we could actually get to a di erent place.”

In Stacey’s Walk , she delves into history much older than Jesse Jackson. We hear about the impact of redlining and lunch counter protests, and about legendary artists with local roots such as Ramsey Lewis. (Stacey’s hot take on jazz is quite memorable.)

“I think I’m in this moment where I’m less afraid of saying out loud things I might have kept in several years ago,” Barrett says. “We have to invest in Black spaces and Black peo- ple. We have to know the history; we have to think of the future.”

To the birds

Husband-and-wife northsiders Shawn Pfautsch and Jessica Ridenour did not, strictly speaking, create a neighborhood walk. The Green Heron—or—Should I Be Scared? is instead a perambulation around Lincoln Park’s North Pond Nature Sanctuary, as directed by a mother-and-son pair of green herons.

The son heron has the bright idea to migrate to the ocean via foot instead of fl ight, because, he explains, fl ying is too hard. The mother heron agrees to let him walk, provided he can fi nd someone to accompany him. So begins an odyssey involving surfer-dude squirrels, mama muskrats worthy of Beatrix Potter, and the occasional moment of predatory realism as junior begins his great walkabout. Pfautsch and Ridenour play the entire menagerie.

Through it all, Pfautsch wanted to emphasize the little heron’s recurring question about fear as he and his mother encounter myriad creatures great and small.

“We want to honor children’s feelings. I think kids are very sensitive, in a good way, about death and fear and being scared. I think when you’re working on a story, it should be in context of what you’re feeling in the world, what’s happening. And we see a lot of fear right now, for obvious reasons. So we started to think—how can we put the question of ‘Should I be scared?’ into context for kids?”

“There are things the mother says about di erent situations. Don’t be scared, be wary. Trust your instincts, but also look at the information you’re being given,” Ridenour adds.

Pfautsch has been an avid birder for decades, a choice that prompted his heron characters. The graceful birds “skulk around the pond,” and although they can be hard to spot, “there’s absolutely a chance you’ll see them on the walk,” Pfautsch says. But the point isn’t bird-watching so much as storytelling, and Should I Be Scared? fi nds plenty of non-avian flora and fauna to celebrate.

“The most important thing for me is for the audience to have a good time,” says Pfautsch. “I want them to connect with these plants and places, but mostly I want them to enjoy themselves. All of Shakespeare’s plays have clowns. Even the tragedies.” v