When I think of ventriloquism in film, my thoughts flash to the commercials for 1978’s Magic that creeped me out as a kid. I wasn’t alone; according to the IMDb trivia page, the original trailer for this psychological horror film was pulled from broadcast after parents complained. (“Fats,” the murderous dummy who seemingly possesses Anthony […]
Category: Performing Arts Feature
Posted inArts & Culture
The drama of addiction
There are currently two plays running in Chicago that talk about self-medicating, addiction, and how one’s actions impact those around them. One involves working-class people, a snapshot of reality for many across the country, and the other a figure in popular culture, a wealthy man whose lived experience is far from the reality for most. […]
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A Den of comedy
The last few months have been busy ones with theaters announcing new venues: if all goes well, American Blues, Steep, Northlight, and TimeLine will all be producing in their new homes sometime in the next couple of years. But the long COVID shutdown of 2020-21 also took away some venues that had provided rentals to […]
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Springing ahead with live performance
While the BA.2 variant of COVID-19 looms as a possible impediment to attending live performances (even as some of us now qualify for a second booster), shows are booming. We’ve got a baker’s dozen of events to consider if you feel up to getting out and about in the next couple of months. We also suggest […]
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‘Creating accessibility programming benefits everyone’
Everything is different as the performing arts world feels its way back into being together and breathing the same air, but in a way that won’t infect and kill each other. As everyone hopes to be headed toward a post-pandemic world, the question of accessibility, of finding a way to bring everyone—and not just select […]
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Homecoming queen
An all-new cast of queens begins its reign in Chicago with the return of Six, the musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss that transforms the famous wives of King Henry VIII into pop stars. The hit show from the UK had its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2019, opened on Broadway […]
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Ana Silva’s ready to cast a big shadow
Ana Silva is the type to celebrate Groundhog Day. On a January morning, over Zoom, Silva recounts how she “asked off work” for the woodchuck festivities. She and her boyfriend, actor Andrew Jessop, are driving to Woodstock, where the 1993 classic Groundhog Day was filmed. Next on the list is a groundhog-themed pub crawl followed […]
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The Rhino in spring
In January 2020, I checked in with Jenny Magnus about Rhinoceros Theater Festival (better known as Rhino Fest), the city’s longest running fringe theater festival. “The world is really hard right now,” Magnus said at the time. “All we have is each other and the intention to do something good. Aid and comfort. We just […]
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Collective healing
Queer bars are more than just bars that happen to be queer. They can be a refuge, a meeting place, and, quite literally, a safe space. They’re also places where our history has been written: from the Stonewall riots to the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Sam Mueller’s latest production unpacks what happens when the safety and […]
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Ginger Minj is who she is
For six years, Ginger Minj has been turning down offers to star in La Cage aux Folles. “Ever since the Trailblazer Awards I’ve been getting inquiries,” the three-time Drag Race contestant says of the 2016 event where she brought La Cage book writer Harvey Fierstein to tears and the house to its feet with her galvanic […]
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How the hell did Lesley Nicol get to Chicago?
Most Americans know British actor Lesley Nicol as Mrs. Patmore, the plainspoken cook who presided over the kitchen at Downton Abbey through six seasons and two films. (The newest film in the series, Downton Abbey: A New Era, opens in May.) But before finding international success as the downstairs doyenne in Julian Fellowes’s portrait of […]
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‘We need to be imagining other possibilities for ourselves’
The United States incarcerates more people and incarcerates them at a higher rate than any other country in the world, with 2.3 million people presently in custody—over half a million more than the country with the next highest population of imprisoned people. A report released in 2021 by the Sentencing Project found that Black people […]
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A time that was wonderful
I didn’t meet the revered Chicago Tribune theater critic, Richard Christiansen, until 2016 when I started interviewing him for my book Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater. He was 84 years old and living at The Selfhelp Home, an assisted living facility for older Jewish adults where a caregiver he particularly liked would sit […]
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Eiko Otake invites herself (and others) to the dance
In performance, Eiko Otake frequently manifests as a ghost: wailing and yelping, biting at the leaves of plants and knocking fences to the ground, staggering and distressed by the contours of what detail, dust, or detritus she encounters, an insolent energy that demands attention, even as she is able to recede into weightless relation with […]
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Exploring the intersections of Blackness and queerness onstage
In a recent New Yorker essay on Charles J. Shields’s new biography Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind ‘A Raisin in the Sun’, Blair McClendon notes that the editors of The Ladder, the first national lesbian publication, tried to persuade the playwright to publicly come out after the success of her Broadway play. “Hansberry said that, […]