Siah Berlatsky just graduated this month from ChiArts, but though she’s taking a gap year before college, the 18-year-old playwright-director-actor isn’t letting the grass grow under her feet. In August, she’ll be part of Artistic Home’s outdoor developmental series, “Summer on the Patio,” with her Elizabethan-style gender-bending rom-com, Malapert Love, which she also directs. (“Malapert,” […]
Category: Performing Arts Feature
Posted inArts & Culture
Taking the drama and dance outdoors
I spent most of the 90s in the Bay Area, where outdoor theater in the summer is a given, and the weather generally cooperates (if you’re not facing the threat of forest fires, that is). But in Chicago, extreme heat and thunderstorms go with the territory. Despite Mother Nature and other logistical challenges, outdoor theater […]
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Irregular Girl is leading the fight for trans utopia
If it’s the first Friday of the month, you’re going to see a line snaking out of Berlin that extends past the entrance to the Belmont CTA station and sometimes around the block. It’s populated by people in leather miniskirts and mesh crop tops, disco bambis and alien centaurs, club mystics with lashes so long […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
Hot weather, hot shows
Summer is officially here, in case the sweat and lightning bugs weren’t enough of a clue. In addition to the shows and artists we profiled in our summer arts preview issue this week, we’ve got just a few suggestions for other offerings in theater, dance, and opera that look promising—whether you’re looking for a nice […]
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The dark visions of David Hauptschein
Writer and artist David Hauptschein has been working in Chicago since the 80s, curating live performances, writing plays, and working in visual arts, but his work has been produced more often—and to more notice—outside of the U.S. This is thanks, in large part, to Hauptschein’s collaboration with UK-based director Julio Maria Martino. Martino first ran […]
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‘Huge, very loud, and with a lot of glitter’
For the first time since a pandemic hiatus, The Fly Honey Show is live for three days only of sparkle, sweat, and shimmy. Begun in 2010 with about 30 performers in the living room of the DIY venue The Inconvenience, The Fly Honey Show has since manifested through the bodies of hundreds of dancers, musicians, […]
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Asian drag performers slay the way forward
Despite its experimental environment, Chicago’s drag world entered the pandemic with a lack of labor protections. COVID-19 exacerbated economic hardships, especially for queer performers of color who have dealt with the discriminatory practices of club culture. With Asian drag performers often left out of conversations about representation, forming a labor union may improve the city’s […]
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Bringing the Pride party to the people
For LGBTQ+ audiences and their allies who may not want to spend all of their Pride weekend on the north side, the arts collective TRQPITECA offers an alternative. TRQPITECA, formed in 2015, consists of Chicago DJs and producers Natalie Murillo, aka La Spacer, and Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero, aka CQQCHIFRUIT. Murillo and Guerrero curate nightlife and […]
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All in the Gayme
This June, queer youth are challenging audiences on what it means to be active in environmental justice and to participate in mutual aid activism. About Face Youth Theatre, founded in 1999, offers annual workshop sessions where LGBTQ+ youth and their allies ages 13 to 24 can participate in activist theater that supports learning in safe […]
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Musical makeover
If you spend any time breathing, you may have noticed polarities everywhere these days, most emanating from a belief gulf that is exponentially widening between conservatives and liberals with every Twitter post. One polarity being heightened not just in social media, but also in government chambers and around dinner tables, is the divide between LGBTQ+ […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
Ventriloquism and Oobleck
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 […]
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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 […]