personal aspect to Court Theatre’s staging of a new play about civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael. “Charlie used to be babysat by Stokely when he was a kid,” playwright Nambi E. Kelley says, raising an eyebrow to punctuate the statement of unlikely fact. “Charlie” is Charles Newell, the longtime artistic director of the University of Chicago– affiliated theater in Hyde Park, who’s retiring this summer after three decades at Court’s helm.
