Theatre Director and Professor

6428 N Maplewood Avenue
Chicago, IL, 60645
Cell: 502.387.6789
Email: chack@iglou.com
http://www.shpieltheatre.com

Connecting Heritage, Performance, Identity, Experience, and Learning

David Y.Chack, from Chicago and Louisville, was honored in 2008 as a semi-finalist for the Charles Bronfman Visiting Chair in Innovative Jewish Communities. Executive Director of the Association for Jewish Theatre, Chack is on the faculty at DePaul University in The Theatre School and teaches Holocaust Theatre and Performance, The Impact of Jews and Jewish Culture on American Theatre and Performance, and Identity Theatre. He is also the Producing Artistic Director of ShPIeL – Performing Identity a theatre and performance incubator, accelerator and producer. We do works that are transcultural yet authentic in their search for identity and come from a Jewish root either in narrative or in values.

He has received numerous awards for his artistic and community work including the Elie Wiesel Award for Jewish Arts and Culture , The James McDonald Award for Interfaith Understanding at the University of Virginia, The Best Director Award for the Louisville Jewish Film Festival and the Emerson College EBONY Award for Intercultural Activities. His numerous projects of directing, teaching, curating and producing take him between Chicago, Louisville, New York, Boston, and  Israel. He has worked with Jewish Community Centers, Hillel Foundations, the Virginia Humanities Foundation, the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, the Louisville Orchestra, All About Jewish Theatre, Hillels Around Chicago, The Theatre Museum  in New York City, the Jewish Theatre Ensemble at Northwestern University, the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School of Hebrew University, and the Museum of the City of New York which is now (2016) hosting an exhibition that Professor Chack initiated on the Yiddish Theatre and American Theatre called From the Bowery to Broadway. He continues to write regularly on theatre and performing arts and has contributed articles to American Theatre Magazine, The Forward, Moment Magazine,  All About Jewish Theatre, Genesis 2, the Louisville Eccentric Observer, and the Virginia Festival of American Film Journal.