Registration includes copy of the book "The Billboard"

The Billboard Play

Art imitating life. With the nation at odds over women’s rights to bodily autonomy, Natalie Y. Moore’s work continues the conversation of abortion rights, inspired by actual instances of people erecting pro-choice and pro-life billboards.

Join CFW for a live theater performance of The Billboard.

Acclaimed journalist Natalie Y. Moore’s book “The Billboard” transforms from the page to the 16th Street stage at Northwestern’s Abbott Hall. Moore’s play, directed by TaRon Patton, follows a fictional women’s clinic in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood and their fight with Demetrius Drew, a local irritator running for City Council. When Demetrius puts up a provocative billboard proclaiming, “Abortion is genocide. The most dangerous place for a Black child is his mother’s womb,” Tanya Gray and her Black Women’s Health Initiative are spurred to fight back with their own controversial sign.

EVENT DETAILS

DATE: Saturday, July 9, 2022

TIME: 8:00 pm CST
The performance is 90 minutes with no intermissions.

LOCATION:

Northwestern University’s Abbott Hall
710 N Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60611

COST:

$50 admission includes a copy of the book “The Billboard.”
Additional donations to support our work are appreciated.

Seats are limited; purchase your tickets today!

About Natalie Y. Moore

Natalie Moore covers segregation and inequality.

Her enterprise reporting has tackled race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s work has been broadcast on the BBC, Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Natalie is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and a Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.  Natalie is the author of “The Billboard,” a play about abortion; 16th Street Theater produced the play.

Natalie writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her work has been published in Essence, Ebony, the Chicago Reporter, Bitch, In These Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. She is the 2017 recipient of Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award. In 2010, she received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award for reporting on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. In 2009, she was a fellow at Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, which allowed her to take a reporting trip to Libya. Natalie has won several journalism awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Other honors are from the Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Association of Black Journalists, Illinois Associated Press and Chicago Headline Club. The Chicago Reader named her best journalist in 2017. In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from Adler University. In These Times gave her the 2017 Voice of Progressive Journalism Award. Natalie frequently collaborates with Chicago artist Amanda Williams.

She is a 2021 USA Fellow. The Pulitzer Center named her a 2020 Richard C. Longworth Media Fellow for international reporting. In 2021, University of Chicago Center for Effective Government (CEG), based at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, welcomed her its first cohort of Senior Practitioner Fellows.

Prior to joining WBEZ staff in 2007, Natalie was a city hall reporter for the Detroit News. She has also been an education reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a reporter for the Associated Press in Jerusalem.

Natalie has an M.S.J. in Newspaper Management from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a B.A. in Journalism from Howard University. She has taught at Columbia College and Medill. She is on the board of Seminary Co-op Bookstore and chair of the Harold Washington Literary Awards.