Artists celebrate new home at Green Line Arts Center

For years, Sydney Chatman rehearsed wherever she could, converting her own living room into a stage, transforming a room at the local community center and even reimagining a local muffler shop. When the University of Chicago opened the Green Line Performing Arts Center this past Saturday, it gave the writer and director-as well as countless other local artists-a permanent anchor for their creative pursuits. "Being in a space like that feels like home," said Chatman, who teaches theater at the University of Chicago Charter School. "I'll be able to really plant myself." Chatman is the founder of the Tofu Chitlin' Circuit , a producing performance collective on Chicago's South Side. On the evening of Nov. 10, four of its young members commanded a room inside the center, donning aviator caps and goggles, golden capes and light-up shoes-an ode to both black girlhood and pioneering pilot Bessie Coleman. The group was one of several invited to the opening of the new Washington Park performance hub, a celebration that drew nearly a thousand visitors to the black brick building tucked underneath the CTA rail line.