The Happiness Club is a chance for young Chicagoans from all neighborhoods to put on a show
CHICAGO -- We live in harsh and harmful times. All you need to do is look at the violence over the Fourth of July holiday. But behind the horror, good can emerge, hope survives.
Marc and Maureen Schulman have three daughters, now adults and leading successful and fulfilling lives, but the family will tell you that among the most rewarding and influential years of the girls’ young lives were those spent in the company of other members of the Happiness Club.
“The girls were really into singing and dancing and when they saw these kids of the Happiness Club perform, they begged us to let them join the group,” says Maureen. “They auditioned and got in and all three of them made great friends and had the most wonderful, creative time.”
That was more than two decades ago and Chicago’s Happiness Club remains in the hopeful business of changing young lives. Founded and still guided by a desire to bring arts and entertainment to children living in underserved neighborhoods, it has consistently attracted children from less beleaguered areas too.
It is in the nonprofit Happiness Club, which rehearses once or twice a week and performs some 60 shows a year, where a child from Roseland can meet and get to know a kid from Streeterville. It is where children can break down some of the barriers that separate us, diminish the fear that shadows the urban landscape.
“It enables us to discover we are all more alike than different,” says Maureen. “That is one of the reasons Marc and I are still involved, even though our daughters are no longer dancing and singing on stage.”
The young performers write original songs with messages focused on such of-the-moment matters as gangs, drugs and violence, topics such as racial harmony, self esteem and staying in school They perform these in a hip hop style that has been called “’West Side Story’ meets ‘Fame’ meets MTV.”
Performances are all over, the kids traveling beyond the borders of their own neighborhoods and suburbs, and there is great world-expanding value in that. The club has performed at street fairs and at the United Center during Bulls games, at schools and at Navy Pier. It has been to Lollapalooza. It has opened for Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. The group has also performed at Taste of Chicago and the Chicago Theatre, at Comiskey Park and Lambs Farm in Libertyville. The group regularly puts on shows at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago and area hospitals. It has been dancing and singing at the White House.
Navy Pier and the Park West are the next stops, the latter for a benefit event Sunday featuring a silent auction, all sorts of food (including Eli’s Cheesecake because that is the business the Schulmans run), a performance and the presentation of the Artist of the Year Award to Jamila Woods, the acclaimed Chicago-based poet-singer-songwriter.
I first encountered this group shortly after it was founded in 1992 by Gigi Faraci Harris, a documentary filmmaker and video producer who said at the time, “We may not always be able to change our neighbors or our neighborhood, but we can make a change in ourselves. … If our show convinces even one child to avoid gangs and drugs, to stay in school or break through stereotypical barriers, we’ve accomplished a lot.”
Harris would eventually leave the organization after making a compelling 1998 film called “The Happiness Club Doin’ It Right.”
The Happiness Club has long been run by the delightful and passionate Tanji Harper, who tells me, “It was 24 years ago, when I was teaching dance at a dance studio downtown, that a young girl in one of my classes told me she needed to learn a dance for this Happiness Club she had just joined. I did and the next she told me the Happiness Club was looking for a new choreographer and I jumped at that chance.”
The native South Sider is now the artistic director with a small staff and is happy to have, she says, “So many parents who are dedicated and involved. Not all of the children have stable home lives, so to see adults willing to help, to carpool for the kids, bring lunches… That is not only a comfort for some but an inspiration too. In them, the kids find adults who can help them make the right choices. Some are Happiness Club alums.”
Much of the work takes place at the Harold Washington Cultural Center, with rehearsals once or twice a week. And the area is peppered with Happiness Club alumni, such as Dorothy Jean Tillman II.
She is an 18-year-old who has just earned a doctorate in integrated behavioral health from Arizona State University, one of the youngest ever to accomplish that. She is also the granddaughter of former alderperson Dorothy Jean Tillman I. As my colleague Kate Armanini wrote, “Dorothy tries to carve out a sense of normalcy for herself through creative outlets. She’s a member of a youth dance group, the Happiness Club, and frequently performs at the Harold Washington Cultural Center.”
She also quotes Tillman saying, and it’s hard to think of a better endorsement for the Happiness Club, “When I hear music, I can’t help but dance. When I feel feelings, I can’t help but want to write poetry. When I see something hilarious, I can’t help but want to put it in a play.”
