2021 Festival Recap: Big Personalities

Find out what famous figures had to say during this year’s festival.

We spent most of 2020 keeping track of our favorite actors, authors, and artists from the comfort of our own homes. But at the fall edition of the Chicago Humanities Festival, we finally had a chance to share a room with some of these notable personalities, learning about their lives and their latest projects in person rather than through a screen.

At the Music Box Theatre, actor Alan Cumming spoke about his new book Baggage: Tales From a Fully Packed Life, which explores his adventures in Hollywood and unpacks his philosophies about life after years of working in show business.

“I think life's like a series of patterns. I say that life is like the same show with different costumes... the same things keep happening, the same circumstances,” Cumming explained. “I guess wisdom is when you see those patterns repeating and you decide to make a different decision about one of them.”

In front of a sold-out crowd at Chicago Symphony Center, journalist and The 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones described how her work is intended to make people reexamine the origins of the United States. Speaking about how early Black resistance and cultural contributions are omitted from history books, Hannah-Jones outlined the many ways in which Americans have been taught “a history of a country that does not exist.”

Touching on his recent decision to come out and his time spent working for the Obama administration, actor Kal Penn chatted with VICE Media co-founder Suroosh Alvi at the Harris Theatre, outlining some of the stories Penn tells in his memoir, You Can’t Be Serious. Penn explained how he confronted his parents about the way they felt when he decided to pursue acting instead of becoming a doctor.

“They said, ‘We were never embarrassed, how’d you get that in your head? We were scared,'” Penn said. “'When we came to America, we didn’t know that [acting] was a career that someone could actually have.'”

Broadway actor Sutton Foster came to Columbia College Chicago to share stories from her recent book, Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life. When she’s not singing on stage or starring in TV shows, Foster is an avid crocheter who has used the act of creation as a way to navigate strained relationships and find productivity in empty hours.

“We're so attached to our phones and screens and there's something really satisfying about making something that exists, that's real," Foster said. “At the end of the day, I'm not just [doing] hours of mindless scrolling and I've actually created something, and I’m like ‘Ha ha, I’ve made a washcloth!”