Arts & Entertainment

Elvis Presley, Cabrini-Green and Politics: A Conversation With Black Ensemble Theater’s Jackie Taylor

Next year will mark 50 years since the founding of Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theater. Many well-regarded theaters have come and gone in that time, but BET is still growing under the leadership of its founder and CEO, Jackie Taylor.

Now Taylor has written and directed one of her most personal plays, “Elvis Presley Was a Black Man Named Joe,” currently in previews. It tells a story with music about her and her younger brother’s fascination with Elvis.

WTTW News spoke with Taylor via telephone from her office in the Uptown neighborhood. She spoke about the importance of Elvis in her past and present and her big plans for the future.

WTTW News: I love the title. What is the show about?

Jackie Taylor: It’s a true story about me and my little brother, Joe, and our relationship with Elvis Presley. We were both big fans of Elvis Presley. Growing up in the Cabrini-Green projects on the North Side of Chicago we had one movie theater called the Windsor [1225 N. Clark St., demolished] and that theater played Elvis movies all the time, so that’s how my parents kept us occupied. We’d watch the movies two or three times, then we’d go home and we would sing all the songs and mimic Elvis.

Elvis can be divisive — I’m thinking of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” — like, why was he the king of rock ’n’ roll when we had Chuck Berry and Little Richard? What are you feelings on that?

Taylor: I don’t stress over it. People have their different ideas and opinions, and Elvis himself admitted to studying Fats Domino, whom he told reporters was the real king. He studied Jackie Wilson. He grew up in a Black community and he immersed himself in the Black culture through the church. Anything that you talk about today there’s always two sides to every story, and then there’s the true side that no one will ever know about because Elvis is not here anymore.

“Elvis Presley Was a Black Man Named Joe” is currently playing at the Black Ensemble Theater. (Courtesy of the Black Ensemble Theater)

And he was longtime friends with B.B. King and hired Cissy Houston and The Sweet Inspirations for his Vegas shows.

Taylor: Yes, that’s true.

Do you still like Elvis?

Taylor: Absolutely, I still love Elvis. He’s standing right here in front of me! [laughs]

Favorite songs that he sung?

Taylor: “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You,” “If I Can Dream,” “Love Letters.” I could go on and on.

I saw that you were class president in high school and in the National Honor Society. Were you always a leader or did you grow in the role?

Taylor: Hmm, that’s a good question. I never thought about that before. I guess I just always did what I do.

What was it like growing up in Cabrini-Green in the 1950s and ‘60s?

Taylor: It had its challenges, but it also had its community. We had a very strong, powerful community. What was lacking was male representation, strong male representation. Of course, it had its violence, but that violence became glorified through the press and over-amplified. So I guess for me it was a community like most communities. People lived together. They had different economic resources. They have different jobs and different kind of educations. To me it was just a very normal way of growing up.

Black Ensemble Theater founder and CEO Jackie Taylor in 1979 and today. (Courtesy of Jackie Taylor)

You’ve had quite a career. Last year I saw the movie “Cooley High” [1975] and there you were, one of the teens cast in this classic coming-of-age story.

Taylor: I’ve made several movies, but “Cooley High” was my first. At the time it was great fun because I was making great money and I was working with some wonderful people in the business, Lawrence Hilton Jacobs and Glynn Turman. None of us were teenagers, but we really had a bond, and it just didn’t feel like work.

How did the arts help you as a young person?

Taylor: The arts helped me to focus, to listen, to have confidence in myself, to understand my history. It helped me to get past all of the bullsh-- that I was fed through television, through rumors and news. The arts shape who we are, whether we are artists or not. They are a learning tool that increases your ability to enhance who you are as a human being. You can’t take away the arts. They ain’t going nowhere.

How are you holding up under the new administration? The arts are under attack. Diversity is under attack. It’s seems like we’ve stepped back in time.

Taylor: I don’t call it a step back in time. None of those things have ever left America. We’ve always had to fight for DEI, always. In 2025 we have someone who has enough money to put themselves in a very powerful position that can affect and has already affected millions of people.

I hold up because I believe the pendulum does swing, and just because we’re in what could be called a catastrophic environment right now, we still have to hold on to our beliefs, and those of us who are sincere and who believe in the opposite of what’s being perpetuated right now have to continue to raise their voice, continue to do what is necessary to help that pendulum swing back to some sense of humanity and honor and not be based on the ego of crazy people.

You will also be expanding the footprint of Black Ensemble Theater. Tell us about the Free to Be Village development planned for Clark Street.

Taylor: Free to Be is a community of inclusiveness where everyone that come into it feels safe and free to be whatever they are. It’s a village with many resources. It will have a performing arts education center, a film technology center, places for small mom-and-pop businesses that relate to the mission of BET which is to eradicate racism, and then it has affordable housing for artists, because I believe that artists can change the community in so many positive ways.

It’s also a foundation for helping Black Ensemble Theater to survive, because it will provide revenue streams that are not dependent on ticket sales or fundraising. But revenue comes back to the theater from the properties that we own, and therefore preparing us as we continue to stabilize for the future.

A rendering of the Free to Be Village development planned for Clark Street. (Courtesy of Black Ensemble Theater)

OK. Anything else you can tell us about “Elvis Presley Was a Black Man Named Joe?”

Taylor: It’s wonderful. It’s touching. It gives the audience time to breathe away from the craziness that’s going on in the world today. Last night in the comments after the show some wrote that it ‘fed their soul and lifted their spirits.’ People who want that should come see the production.

“Elvis Presley Was a Black Man Named Joe” is currently in previews at Black Ensemble Theater and runs until April 20.

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Marc Vitali is the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent.

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