When Chicago poet, sculptor, and musician Marvin Tate was in elementary school, he had a terrible stutter. To help him, his older sister gave him a poem to practice reading […]
Category: Theater Preview
Posted inArts & Culture
A Black perspective on the French Revolution
Sometimes to understand the present, we must look at the past. In 2017, playwright Terry Guest grappled with how America could elect someone so outwardly racist as Donald Trump. It […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Porchlight puts Passing Strange in the spotlight
For Chicago-based director Donterrio, the late-00s musical Passing Strange represents a road map for how an artist—no matter the medium in which they create—can live their life. The show’s story […]
Posted inArts & Culture
‘Afong Moy was a real person’
The year was 1834. Indigenous communities were being displaced from their ancestral homelands on the forced march known as the Trail of Tears. Over two million people of African descent […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A provocative ad stirs debate about abortion in Natalie Moore’s new play
In The Billboard, Moore explores the nuances of abortion through intraracial lens in the face of threats from a political gadfly.
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
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 […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
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 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Decisions, demons, and doom
While many of us (perhaps too optimistically) planned to complete any number of creative projects over the course of pandemic isolation parts one, two, or—dare I say it—three, 300 Chicago-area […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The lost girl
J.M. Barrie’s most famous creation has become shorthand for all puckish men-children who refuse to grow up, entranced by a world of adventure and derring-do, where good and evil exist […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The real stories of a queer SWANA family
Tucked into the corner of an expansive artist studio that he rents in Edgewater with 13 other creative friends, Martin Yousif Zebari spent the latter half of 2020 sewing and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Remembering Jan Karski
In this fraught time of political divisions and worldwide calamities, in the face of seemingly impossible odds, how can we find the courage and conviction to stand up for what […]
Posted inTheater Preview
Ghost trusters
It doesn’t matter where you are in Chicago. There are dead people somewhere in the ground below you. The millions of Indigenous peoples that flourished for millennia. The countless millions […]
Posted inTheater Preview
October ushers in bride of Frankenstein story at First Folio
Playwright Joseph Zettelmaier is a maker of monsters, a horror artist who retells classic tales with an emphasis on what makes these constructs human. First Folio Theatre, which has produced […]
Posted inTheater Preview
Moving through the violence in Othello
A year and a half after the stage went dark, Court Theatre presents its first live performance since the world was plagued with pandemic and the country with civil unrest. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Destinos showcases local and international theater companies
By definition, futurology is the study of current trends, the findings of which can be used to forecast future developments. It’s also a schema that applies perfectly to this current, […]