On an early winter evening in the mid 1990s, a young man on a Chicago bus pulls the cord for the next stop. As the bus slows, he studies his reflection in the darkening bus window. His smooth brown skin, long eyelashes, and thin lips go well, he thinks, with his cropped hair. His fingers run along the side of his head, tracing the design his uncle’s barber sculpted last week.

Jerome jogs from the bus stop to the front steps of the two-story brick building, an old elementary school in years past and now home to one of Chicago’s youth theatres. Heading into the large bare room, he throws off his jacket and backpack and joins a group of friends.