Young Chicago Authors is encouraging Chicago’s youth to engage in storytelling to express themselves with poetry and performance.

The blues legend will close out the festival, set for June 6-9.

For more than 35 years, the once bustling Ramova Theatre at 35th and Halsted streets sat vacant, deteriorating in condition. But in 2017, the building was purchased for exactly $1. The goal is to make the theater Bridgeport’s staple entertainment venue.

Earlier this month, it was announced that the theater was under new ownership, as Chicago’s Chance the Rapper and Jennifer Hudson partnered with Quincy Jones and developer Tyler Nevius as the Bridgeport theater’s new ownership group.

Proposals to list the properties on the National Register of Historic Places cleared a key committee hearing Wednesday and will come before the Commission on Chicago Landmarks in October. 

For decades, the Ramova Theatre has languished in neglect. But after years of neighborhood activism and a new redevelopment proposal, the old movie house could soon be transformed into an updated version of its former self.