Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alum Luis Crespo ’01, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Theatre, is director of Youth Programming for Chicago’s Collaboraction Theatre Company, which presents The Light: A Chicago Youth Theatre Festival July 11 through 14 at the Pentagon Theatre for Social Justice at Collaboraction Studios, located in the Flat Iron Arts Building at 1579 N. Milwaukee in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. The festival features original short plays, devised theatre, dance, and spoken word created by youth from throughout the Chicagoland area using art as a platform for activism. For more information and tickets, click here.

“As a young man, I was always interested in being creative and using my imagination,” Crespo said in a recent interview highlighting the work of Latino theatre artists in Chicago. “From playing out adventures and scenarios as a child, to exploring and experimenting with teen theater and writing in after school programming, to attending Columbia College as a theater major, I’ve always gravitated towards performance and theater. . . . Chicago theater has been a part of my life since I was fairly young and I am lucky to work using theater in youth programming.”