APRIL
Friday 1
The subjects of photographer Patricia Evans’s previous excursions into in-depth photojournalism have included Gypsies in France, neo-Nazi demonstrations in Chicago, the building of the Deep Tunnel system, and the restoration of the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel. She’s now turned her lens to the storefront churches of the city’s south side. The photos, begun as part of a collaboration with a couple of U. of C. scholars, will be on display at the A.R.C. Gallery, 1040 W. Huron, through the end of April. There’s a free opening reception tonight from 5 to 8. The gallery’s open 11 to 5 Thursday through Saturday. Call 733-2787 for more.
Party, you will recall, is the long-running play written, produced, and directed by David Dillon that posits a room of frisky homosexuals engrossed in an elaborate and bawdy version of Truth or Dare. (“Do 20 jumping jacks naked.”) The new distaff version is called, appropriately, Girl Party. In it, Dillon and cowriter Virginia Smiley posit a room of frisky lesbians engrossed in–you got it–an elaborate and bawdy version of Truth or Dare. Don’t go if you don’t like breasts. The show’s in an open run at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont; it plays at 7 PM Thursdays and Fridays, 3 PM Sundays. Tix are $17-$18. Call 327-5252.
Randolph Street Gallery is presenting two nights of sound experimentation organized by Steve Clark and Margaret Goddard, who, like all the other artists involved, are students at the Art Institute. Heard Things kicks off tonight with a “fantasy documentary” by Nancy Andrews that uses songs, video, film, and go-go dancing to tell a story about a girl raised by squirrels. A work-in-progress by Louise McKissick shares the bill. Tomorrow night is Tommy Eddy’s Almost Heaven, a “multisensory ritual” that features bird sounds, bells, and tribal vocalizations, and a collaborative piece from Clark and Nancy Andrews that experiments with the violin and the human voice. The shows are at 8 PM. It’s $5, $3 for members and students. The gallery is at 756 N. Milwaukee; call 666-7737 for more.
The performance group that calls itself Spin 1/2 describes its show Parts of Me Function Like a Dream as “a full-length, multimedia concoction of monologues, sketches, stories, and performance pieces” that use “film, slides, original electronic music, and the voices and bodies of ten performers.” It runs Friday and Saturday nights at 8 through April 23 at the Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland; tickets are $8. Call 509-2982.
Saturday 2
Like us, you’ve probably been curious about neutrinos. Weren’t they imagined to have existed before they were actually discovered? Aren’t they supposed to have no matter at all? And is it true that they actually may contain much of the universe’s missing “dark matter”? Get the answers to some of these questions at a University of Chicago lecture series beginning today called The Perplexing Story of the Neutrino. Your host is Nickolas Solomey, a research assistant at the school’s Fermi Institute; the talks take place Saturdays at 11 through June 4 in room 115 of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 S. Ellis. And they’re free. Call 702-7823.
Sunday 3
The Chicago Architecture Foundation’s summer Chicago River cruises start today. For $15 you get to hear CAF docents telling tales about riverfront edifices from Cityfront Center to River City to the Tribune’s printing plant, the Freedom Center. Trips leave daily at noon from the southwest corner of the Michigan Avenue Bridge; an additional trip leaves at 2 on weekends. (More trips will be added to the schedule starting June 11.) Call 902-1500 or 922-3432 for tickets.
Facets Multimedia’s salute to Nagisa Oshima (whose work, according to the Facets programmers, often moved parallel to, and even ahead of, the French New Wave) begins with his most famous and perhaps most shocking film, In the Realm of the Senses (1976), which shows tonight at 5:30 and 7:30 and tomorrow and Tuesday at 7 and 9. The tribute concludes with the U.S. premiere of Max, Mon Amour, a 1986 film that stars Charlotte Rampling in a love triangle with her proper British husband and a chimpanzee. That plays next Friday, April 8, through the following Thursday, April 14. In between come Boy and The Ceremony, playing at 7 and 9 respectively this Wednesday and Thursday. Tickets are $5, $3 for members. Facets is at 1517 W. Fullerton; call 281-9075.
Monday 4
The latest project from Lou Mallozzi’s Experimental Sound Studio is Transported: Sound Installations for Elevators, which can be heard only in the eastern elevators of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. Today through April 15 you can hear Paula Froehle’s Privates and Street-Level Video’s Hood as you ride; from April 16 to 30 the elevators will be broadcasting Mindscape Radio Theater’s Invisible Passport and Ndiko and Nomusa Xaba’s The Song of the Frogs. It’s free. Call 784-0449 for more info.
Canny and opportunistic Luis Gutierrez reflects on his first term in the U.S. House tonight in a free talk at Columbia College. Gutierrez squeaked into the City Council in 1986 after his tie with a Vrdolyak-backed candidate forced a runoff. He became the first Hispanic candidate for Congress from the midwest in 1992, and seems sure to be reelected this November after winning the Democratic primary. Gutierrez speaks at 6 in, appropriately enough, the Congress Lounge of the university, on the second floor at 430 S. Michigan. It’s free, but reservations are required; call 341-3624.
“Hyphen Live,” the monthly reading from the literary magazine Hyphen, presents artist/poet Tony Fitzpatrick and poetry slam capo Marc Smith tonight. Reading by those two plus open-mikers starts at 8:30 at Phyllis’ Musical Inn, 1800 W. Division. It’s two bucks. Call 975-9097.
Tuesday 5
“Before me nothing but eternal things / Were made, and I endure eternally. / Abandon every hope, who enter here.” Those, of course, are the frightening words that bracket the gates of hell in the third canto of Dante’s Inferno (translation by Allen Mandelbaum). Over the next 5,000 lines, Dante relates what his guide Virgil shows him beyond those gates. You can get a handle on this most spectacular and famous of journeys at a six-week lyceum class called Reading Dante’s Inferno at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton. Your guide is DePaul University’s Gary Cestaro; the class meets Tuesdays from 10:30 to noon starting today. It’s $55; call 943-9090 to register.
The new issue of Hammers–which bills itself as “an end of millennium irregular poetry magazine”–is out, and the publishers are celebrating with a free reading today at 5 in the video theater of the Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State. There’ll be a similar affair at 7 next Monday night, April 11, at the Barnes & Noble in Evanston, 1701 Sherman. Call 708-328-7555 for more on either.
Wednesday 6
Out at Work (or Not) is a group that aims to help gays and lesbians attain better working conditions. At a meeting tonight at the Lakeview Ann Sather, 929 W. Belmont, they’re talking about looking for a new job: how to gauge whether an employer is gay-friendly, whether or not to come out during the interview, and so on. Things get under way at 6:30 with a networking session; the program starts at 7. You only pay for whatever you order for dinner. Call 794-5218 for details.
The world premiere of Perpetuum Mobile–by Argentinean-born Canadian choreographer Mauricio Wainrot–is one of the highlights of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s performance tonight to kick off the 1994 Spring Festival of Dance. Over six weeks seven companies will offer programs at the Shubert Theatre, Steppenwolf, and the Harold Washington Library; Hubbard’s in residence at the Shubert, 22 W. Monroe, through April 24 with a program that includes Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs and The Golden Section, the latter set to music by David Byrne. The opener tonight starts at 7. Tickets are $10-$35. Call 902-1500 or 663-0853.
Thursday 7
Lani Guinier–whose nomination by Clinton for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights was effectively borked by Republicans last spring–has collected her law-journal articles in a book called The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy. She’ll talk about her articles and her experience with the Washington grinder tonight at 7:30 at the New Town Barbara’s Bookstore, 3130 N. Broadway. It’s free. Call 477-0411.