Performing Arts Feature Archives

A young white male, Miles Mykkanen, stands center stage wearing a grocer's apron over a yellow vest and white shirt with a dark tie and trousers. Behind him is a green-and-red set resembling an early 20th-century grocery store, with an old-fashioned cash register on the counter and various items in jars backlit behind him.

Albert Herring balances indie aesthetic with traditional music

by Matt Simonette January 26, 2023January 26, 2023

Benjamin Britten’s 1947 opera Albert Herring (set in 1900) has been a perennial production for Chicago Opera Theater. But the new mounting opening tonight at the Athenaeum, helmed by director Stephen Sposito, promises to infuse Britten’s story with what the company is calling an “indie-film vibe.” Sposito—who was associate director for The Book of Mormon, […]

Six actors of various races and genders stand in a row against a white backdrop. Five of them are wearing light-colored clothing. Mi Kang, who plays protagonist Lucy Snowe, is dressed in a dark Victorian-like dress in the center.

Arts & Culture

Beyond Jane Eyre

by Emily McClanathan January 25, 2023January 25, 2023

Although Charlotte Brontë’s Villette has long been overshadowed by Jane Eyre—its “more popular younger sister,” in Sara Gmitter’s words—the 1853 novel takes the spotlight at Lookingglass Theatre next month in a world premiere adaptation written by Gmitter and directed by Tracy Walsh. Based on a period of bereavement, homesickness, and unrequited love in Brontë’s own […]

Ariella Granados, who uses they/she pronouns, sits right in a chair in front of a green screen. On the left is a green faceless figure dressed in a white shirt and black suit and tie, wearing a pink bobbed wig. An outsize woven boot bearing "tattoos" like a purple star and a heart with an arrow through it inscribed "Mom" is to the left of the green figure. The set is surrounded by various pieces of lighting equipment and tripods

Arts & Culture

‘Utopia is a place that accommodates every body’

by Irene Hsiao January 25, 2023January 25, 2023

Last October, the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) appointed multidisciplinary artist Ariella Granados as its first Central West Center artist in residence. Supported by the MOPD, the National Endowment for the Arts, and DCASE, the residency offers studio space and funding for Granados […]

Rob Lindley, an actor dressed to resemble Andy Warhol later in his life, wearing black clothing and a silver wig, holds a Polaroid camera in front of his face.

Arts & Culture

Warholian diptych

by Jack Helbig January 25, 2023January 25, 2023

Andy Warhol was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, a voyeur who wanted to be a superstar. Thirty-six years after his death we are still trying to suss him out. Which may be why this year we have not one but two plays about Andy Warhol being produced—one at the Buffalo Theatre Ensemble, the other […]

A group of women, several wearing burlesque-type outfits (corsets, garters, stockings, etc.) stand in a row onstage, behind metal grates. We can see their backs reflected in a mirror behind them. One of them is wearing a fuzzy nose covering that looks like a dog's snout.

Arts & Culture

Not your average camp

by JT Newman January 25, 2023January 25, 2023

It’s July 1990, and I am summoned to the corner of Newport and Sheffield over and over again by the lure of my friend Franz’s rooftop parties. But little do I know that just half a block away, Lower Links is beginning a summer of programming that solidifies that corner as a mini-epicenter of performance […]

Pictured are side-by-side headshots of two Black women, both leaders of theater companies in Chicago. On the left is Charlique Rolle of Congo Square. She is wearing black, and is seated with her hands clasped in her lap. She is smiling. On the right is Myesha-Tiara of Perceptions Theatre. She is wearing an orange top.

Arts & Culture

The strength of community

by Sheri Flanders January 25, 2023January 27, 2023

At the end of September 2020, I wrote a piece for the Reader titled “Black artistic leaders take charge at several Chicago theaters,” which framed the influx of new (and preexisting) Black leadership in Chicago theater against the backdrop of a historic disruption in the industry. That disruption was powered in part by COVID-19 leading […]

Frank Galati, an older balding white man with a full beard and glasses, is seated and photographed at a rehearsal. He is wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and his arms are crossed over his chest. There is a big smile on his face.

Arts & Culture

In the room with Frank Galati

by Mark Larson January 17, 2023January 19, 2023

Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and professor Dr. Frank Galati died on January 2, 2023, but his impact on those he worked with and loved (they were one and the same) and his legacy are imperishable. He won two Tony Awards in 1990 for adapting and directing The Grapes of Wrath, and was a nominee in […]

A woman in a black dress reclines in shadowy light. She is holding a puppet figure made of ice. She is barefoot, her feet covered with dirt.

Arts & Culture

Water, ice, shadows, and squirrels

by Kimzyn Campbell January 12, 2023January 12, 2023

For 12 days this month, Chicago will be home to fantastical puppets and artists from Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Norway, Japan, South Africa, Spain, and the United States. The shows in the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival (now in its fifth year) cover a diverse range of topics, from reimagining classic myths and […]

Arts & Culture

Collected stories

by Kerry Reid January 10, 2023January 10, 2023

When Sharon Evans started producing solo work at Live Bait Theater in the late 1980s, storytelling hadn’t yet become a cottage industry in Chicago. “At that time it was a very unusual thing to do,” Evans says. “I remember being told that no one would pay to see a solo performer on an extended run.” […]

Arts & Culture

A whole mess of comedy

by Kerry Reid January 9, 2023January 9, 2023

When I was in theater classes at Columbia College Chicago back in the Pleistocene era (i.e., the late 1980s), certain reverse-snob assumptions came out from time to time about the Theatre School at DePaul (which had changed its moniker a few years earlier from the Goodman School of Drama). DePaul was, to us, the high-toned […]

A street scene featuring the exterior and marquee of the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater

Arts & Culture

Will Victory Gardens ever bloom again?

by Kerry Reid December 21, 2022December 22, 2022

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected since it was first published to reflect that Erica Daniels never served as executive artistic director for Victory Gardens. Chay Yew’s tenure was slated for the end of June 2020, and Daniels resigned before assuming the planned new role. The biggest story of the year in Chicago theater […]

Danny Goldring is pictured standing outside a locked gate in an alleyway, posed as if he's trying to unlock it. He has reddish hair and a mustache, and wears a dark suit with a light shirt and maroon tie.

Performing Arts Feature

Remembering Danny Goldring

by Kerry Reid December 12, 2022December 16, 2022

When news broke over a week ago that Danny Goldring had died at 76, there was (as is often the case these days) an immediate outpouring of tributes on social media. I learned the news from Chicago actor Gary Houston; I sometimes met Goldring and his wife, actor Diane Dorsey, over the years at parties […]

Ben Wasserman, a white man, stands leaning at left, wearing a black suit and tie and white shirt along with a clown nose. He has long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and beard and mustache. Black curtains frame the image, and Wasserman is pulling back one side of the curtains, revealing a green parklike setting behind him. On the right, pulling back the other curtain, is a figure of the Grim reaper in a black cloak and hood that hides its face, holding a scythe and with bony skeletal hands.

Arts & Culture

Stand-up tragedy

by Kerry Reid December 6, 2022December 6, 2022

On Inauguration Day 2017, New York-based comedian Ben Wassermanʼs father died—the first in what would turn out to be a series of deaths in his life over the next three years, including his grandfather, his uncle, and four friends. Wasserman, whose past comedic work included a segment for MTV where he painted with his butt, […]

Two women in white lingerie stand onstage. They are holding up a large arch of white feathers, which encircles their heads and bodies. Arms of other people holding the arch are visible behind them.

Arts & Culture

Buttcracker burlesque cracks traditional ballet wide open

by Matt Simonette December 1, 2022December 2, 2022

Jaq Seifert admits that the title of the holiday show they created, The Buttcracker, came to them while sitting around a campfire in 2015. “I was hanging out with some burlesque dancers,” they recall. “I had been working at a burlesque theater for a little bit as a sort of company manager. We were just […]

Arts & Culture

Exploring memory and loss with circus and clowning in Memorabilia

by Kimzyn Campbell November 17, 2022November 17, 2022

Like many of us, Salvador the inventor has a lot of gadgets. Instead of accessing TikTok with his smartphone, he has an admittedly more retro and cartoonlike system, featuring giant levers and light-bulb colander hats to go with his tape deck and phonographs. His aesthetic is steampunk hoarder melded with cottagecore quaintness, but the end […]