The Light

CL’s Kevin C. Madigan Recommends: Chicago writer Loy Webb’s first foray into playwriting opened in March at the Horizon and runs through Apr. 17. “The Light” premiered in 2018 at the New Colony in Chicago and received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play before running off Broadway the following year. Webb says she wants her work “to be a neon sign in the darkness: this way out; this way to hope.” The story concerns the intricacies of truth and raises issues of sexual violence and the treatment of women in places dominated by men. Enoch King plays Rashad, a firefighter and single father; Cynthia D. Barker portrays school principal Genesis. “It’s a present-day love story complicated by the many things that go unsaid,” says co-director Marguerite Hannah. “Is surviving our past enough? Is a Black woman’s accomplishments and personal strengths a strong enough salve for emotional wounds? Is gender bias a tangible issue for a community historically defined by racial discrimination?”— KCM