Theatre Blog of Darryl Maximilian Robinson

Exactly 50 years ago, one month from today's date, on December 21, 1973, a skinny, apprehensive, stage-frightened, 13-year-old, African-American kid walked upon a makeshift stage in the gym at a now nonexistent middle school, the West Side of Chicago's Robert H. Lawrence Upper Grade Center, to play the role of Mr. Jones in that Chicago Public Schools facility's holiday play for students and staff entitled "A Black Christmas Carol." By the end of the second school day performance of that work ( after receiving ample laughs and applause ), the kid knew, above all else, he wanted to be an actor, a professional actor in The Theatre, and he would do all that would be required of him as a Student of The Performing Arts to achieve that goal. During his high school years, ( as a Student Performer at Albert G. Lane Technical High School and Whitney M. Young Magnet High School for The Performing Arts, and as A Guest Student Actor Performer at Josephinum High School...

NOTING THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF PLAYING ONE OF THE WINDY CITY'S MOST HISTORIC FIGURES! For a time, in 1983 ( just two years after winning the 1981 Fort Wayne News-Sentinel Reviewer's Recognition Award for Outstanding Thespian of the Season for a gallery of his stage roles, particularly for the part of Fagin in a revival of Lionel Bart's classic musical "Oliver!" at Enchanted Hills Playhouse of Syracuse, Indiana ), for the highly-regarded Urban Gateways arts and educational organization, your humble servant in The Theatre, Chicago-born and stage-trained actor and play director Darryl Maximilian Robinson, toured to numerous public and private schools throughout the greater Chicagoland area playing the Caribbean Island-born, African-American, French and English speaking Frontiersman and Founder of The City of Chicago, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable ( 1745-1818 ), in local playwright Alice Rubio's highly-effective, one-act historical drama "Chicago: A Tale ...

REMEMBERING TWO EXCALIBER SHAKESPEARE COMPANY OF CHICAGO REVIVALS OF LITERARY CLASSICS NEAR CHINATOWN AND IN OAK PARK! Your humble servant in The Theatre, Darryl Maximilian Robinson recollects a pair of shows which help a theatre artist to remember that it is better to try and fail at staging and performing in a great dramatic and literary masterpiece than to to be a hit in a show ( which after a sold-out, critically-praised run ) no one can remember six months after it closes. It is better to fail with a work one truly cares about, than to succeed with a work one doesn't give a damn about. Like the multiple mix of reviews each of them received, Darryl Maximilian Robinson, Founder of The Excaliber Shakespeare Company of Chicago, has mixed feelings regarding both his performances and direction of the 1995 ESC revival of William Shakespeare's romantic fantasy "The Tempest," in which he appeared as the Duke and the Wizard Prospero, and staged with a talented ...