Ghost Light Archives - Chicago Reader

Three women are standing together, shot from below. There is a gray background behind them. They are unsmiling, staring into the middle distance. The woman in the middle has her arms crossed over her chest.

Caryl Churchill gets some love from Chicago theaters

by Kerry Reid February 3, 2023February 3, 2023

British playwright Caryl Churchill is having a bit of a moment this month in Chicago. Court Theatre opens her rarely produced 1983 play, Fen, under the direction of Vanessa Stalling on February 10. And Curious Theatre Branch opens This Is Not a Churchill—four plays inspired by her work—this weekend at the Facility Theatre in Humboldt […]

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Olivia Lilley prepares to move on from Prop

by Kerry Reid January 20, 2023January 23, 2023

When Olivia Lilley took on the job of artistic director at Prop Thtr (one of the oldest off-Loop theaters in the city) in 2018, her DIY/punk aesthetic seemed like a good fit for taking the company into the next era. Even before assuming the AD role, Lilley had made a mark with site-specific, immersive productions […]

A group of six Black actors (three women, three men) crouch in a circle, their arms stretched out and supporting each other.

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Looking back at some of the best productions and biggest stories of 2022

by Kerry Reid December 13, 2022December 28, 2022

During 2020, my running joke was that, although there weren’t any plays happening, there was always plenty of drama to report on in Chicago theater. In fall of 2021, we started seeing some theater return, though the season was cut short by last December’s COVID surge. (Not to be confused with the one we’re currently […]

A triptych of headshots. On the left is Dusty Brown, a nonbinary white person. They have short dark hair, light-brown facial hair, and are wearing brown rimmed glasses, a light patterned shirt, and a dark blue plaid jacket. In the center is Michael Dias, a white man with dark gray hair and a gray beard and mustache. He is wearing a light blue v-neck T-shirt. At right is Eileen Dixon, a white woman with short red hair. She is wearing a black knit top with a v-neck.

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Redtwist names new artistic director

by Kerry Reid December 2, 2022December 6, 2022

This has been a year of tremendous changes at the top for Chicago theaters, with Susan V. Booth taking over at the Goodman after Bob Falls’s 35 years as artistic director and Braden Abraham, formerly the artistic director for Seattle Rep, poised to take over as AD at Glencoe’s Writers Theatre in February. Cody Estle, […]

Latinx man with dark hair, wearing a blue golf shirt, stands in front of a colorful mural.

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Jorge Valdivia takes the reins at Chicago Latino Theater Alliance

by Kerry Reid November 18, 2022November 18, 2022

The death of Myrna Salazar, cofounder and executive director of the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), in August, a month before the fifth annual Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival kicked off, was a huge blow to the performing arts community, including Jorge Valdivia, who worked closely with Salazar and CLATA in his role as […]

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Cody Estle flies north for his career’s Next Act

by Kerry Reid November 2, 2022November 3, 2022

The very first Ghost Light column I wrote back in summer of 2020, I interviewed Markie Gray, the incoming managing director for Raven Theatre. Gray was hired to work alongside artistic director Cody Estle, who assumed the job in November 2017 from founders (and married couple) Michael Menendian and JoAnn Montemurro. (The board’s decision to […]

A white woman in dark clothes stands left, her head bent one side and one arm upraised over her head. On the right in the background is an Asian man wearing a white shirt, holding a piece of paper in front of his face. It is a shadowy stage.

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Lucky Plush helps two artists deal with their Unfinished Business

by Kerry Reid October 18, 2022October 18, 2022

Kurt Chiang and Melinda Jean Myers (known to friends as Mindy) have wanted to collaborate for years. But it took a pandemic for the former Neo-Futurist artistic director and the Lucky Plush ensemble member to finally develop a full-length piece together. Unfinished Business, the fruit of that longed-for collaboration (much of it conducted remotely, and […]

Two Black men sit at a table. The man on the left holds a bottle of beer, and is in a black T-shirt. The man on the right is in a purple jacket, drinking a clear cocktail, and is gesturing toward the table, as if explaining something.

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Farewell to Eclipse and Underscore

by Kerry Reid October 7, 2022October 9, 2022

Covering theater in Chicago is sometimes about writing valedictions for companies that have decided it’s time to fold up the tent. In the past couple of weeks, two such announcements came through. Underscore Theatre announced in late September that they were closing permanently. (During the pandemic, the company gave up their storefront rental space at […]

Marissa Lynn Ford, a Black woman, is photographed outside in front of a wall of greenery. She is wearing a patterned blouse with orange, black, and light green colors.

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Marissa Lynn Ford takes the wheel at the League of Chicago Theatres

by Kerry Reid September 23, 2022September 23, 2022

Amid the tidal wave of turnovers at theaters large and small in Chicago the last two years, we also learned this past February that Deb Clapp, the longtime executive director for the League of Chicago Theatres, was stepping away from her job in June. Last week, the League announced her successor: Marissa Lynn Ford, recently […]

Ken Ballard, a tall white bald man in dark trousers and black long-sleeve top covered with a short gray T-shirt stands left. He is holding hands with John Michael, standing right in a striped colorful apron and green socks.

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Mom, meatballs, and ‘fun monsters’

by Kerry Reid September 8, 2022September 9, 2022

Back in 2016, I climbed up the narrow stairs at the Den Theatre in Wicker Park to see a young solo performer embody the residents of a memory care center in Dallas. Based on John Michael’s own two-year stint as an activity planner at such a center, Dementia Me took the form of a birthday […]

Nicholas Dunnigan, a white man with short brown hair and glasses, stands in front of a brick wall. He is wearing a blue shirt open at the neck and with the sleeves rolled up.

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Laugh Factory prepares to go All In with accessibility in comedy

by Kerry Reid August 26, 2022August 29, 2022

The very phrase “stand-up comedy” is arguably ableist: even though there are many working comedians who use wheelchairs or who have other disabilities, comedy clubs (like a lot of entertainment venues) still have a ways to go to address issues of accessibility for patrons and performers alike. But Nicholas Dunnigan is hoping to change that […]

Black-and-white image of Susan V. Booth sitting on metal steps leading up to an el station. The steps have signs warning "Stop. No Entry." She is wearing dark trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pullover sweater

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Susan V. Booth talks about coming home to the Goodman

by Kerry Reid August 10, 2022August 10, 2022

The past two years have seen more upheavals and changes in leadership at Chicago theaters than at any time in my memory, exacerbated by the long COVID-19 shutdown. So perhaps it makes sense that Goodman Theatre went back to the future, so to speak, by announcing Susan V. Booth as their new artistic director late […]

Three headshots. On the left is Myrna García, a Latinx woman, in red-and-orange patterned top. In the middle is Nick Thornton, a white male in a gray patterned top, lying on the floor and propped on his right elbow. On the right is Andrew Biliter, a white man in a dark sweater, who is looking to his right.

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Mudlark expands its community outreach

by Kerry Reid July 29, 2022July 29, 2022

The last time I checked in with Evanston’s youth-oriented Mudlark Theater in April 2020, they were in the midst of pivoting to online workshops and creating digital shows. The company has returned to live classes and performances since then. And now, with the help of two grants, they’re poised to further expand their focus on […]

Photo of Brett Neveu, who is a middle-aged white man with short brown hair. He is shown from mid-chest up, wearing a black shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

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Brett Neveu’s Eric LaRue will hit the big screen with some help from a friend

by Kerry Reid July 14, 2022July 15, 2022

Twenty years later, I still get chills when I think about the final line in Brett Neveu’s Eric LaRue, his drama about the aftermath of a school shooting, in which the mother of a teenage boy who killed three of his classmates tries to come to grips with the monstrous deed. Apparently I’m not the […]

Photo of Monty Cole, a Black man in a black T-shirt, blue denim jacket, and a tan stocking cap

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Swinging for the Fences with Monty Cole

by Kerry Reid June 30, 2022June 30, 2022

In 2016, Monty Cole made his directorial debut in Chicago with Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape at now-defunct Oracle Productions—and what a debut it was. His staging of the story of Yank, a swaggering stoker on a steamship who is ultimately destroyed by a society that sees him only as a brute, brought together a […]