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Home » Archives for Deanna Isaacs » Page 2

Author Archives: Deanna Isaacs

Michelle Bradley as Tosca stands behind a table with wine glasses on it. She is staring at a knife in her hand.
Posted inOn Culture

A resonant Tosca

by Deanna Isaacs March 16, 2022March 28, 2022

There’s a war raging in Europe. A brutal clash that includes an entrenched repressive autocracy and ordinary civilians determined to fight for their freedom. Tyrannical power is vested in one […]

Posted inOn Culture

‘Are we calling this an invasion? It’s really a war.’

by Deanna Isaacs March 2, 2022March 2, 2022

There were two crowds in front of Saints Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukrainian Village on a frigid afternoon last week. One was the medieval crowd that’s always […]

Posted inOn Culture

Offense intended

by Deanna Isaacs February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

A couple of couches and a video player have been set up in the little balcony lobby outside the fourth floor exhibition hall at the Chicago Cultural Center. If you […]

A dark room with a table and chairs and a screen showing a black-and-white film
Posted inOn Culture

A survivor’s tour of Auschwitz

by Deanna Isaacs January 19, 2022January 19, 2022

She didn’t want to talk about it. Fritzie Fritzshall survived Auschwitz, came to Chicago, and built what most of us are lucky enough to think of as a normal life, […]

Erin Harkey, a Black woman in a shiny purple top, stands in the lobby of the Chicago Cultural Center
Posted inOn Culture

Arts folk: what would you do with $20 million?

by Deanna Isaacs January 4, 2022January 4, 2022

How bad is COVID-19 damage to the arts sector? Arts Alliance Illinois says it’s been researching that question and will be releasing the results any day now. I didn’t have […]

Interior of James R. Thompson Center atrium looking up; drawing of the proposed new atrium
Posted inOn Culture

Thompson Center survival is glad tidings

by Deanna Isaacs December 22, 2021December 22, 2021

Everybody knows, especially at this season of the year, it’s a bad idea to look a gift horse in the mouth. But what if he opens it? What if he […]

Empty interior of the James R. Thompson Center
Posted inOn Culture

The verdict on Chicago’s endangered Thompson Center is imminent

by Deanna Isaacs December 8, 2021December 8, 2021

Trudging east on Randolph toward the Siskel Center on a gloomy, COVID-depopulated early evening last week, I heard something that stopped me in my tracks: “Mom, mom, what’s that building?”   […]

Hand in a blue glove holding a needle and a vial labeled "Vaccine COVID-19"
Posted inOn Culture

‘Misinformation in listicle format’

by Deanna Isaacs November 24, 2021November 23, 2021

I was spending a day in bed with a laptop when I got an e-mail from a reader linking to an article titled “20 Essential Studies that Raise Grave Doubts […]

Photos of LaRob Rafael on left (backlit) and Steve Wallace on right (wearing a gray cap and vest, white shirt, and red tie)
Posted inOn Culture

‘Undying Love’: the Opera

by Deanna Isaacs November 10, 2021November 12, 2021

Composer and tenor Steve Wallace says the first time he heard the Nas song “Undying Love,” the final track on the rapper’s 1999 album I Am . . ., “I […]

A woman on the left in black dress with white trim and a man in brown suit and hat, both wearing vaudeville-style makeup, surrounded by projections of yellow and blue flowers
Posted inArts & Culture

What a concept!

by Deanna Isaacs November 5, 2021November 5, 2021

Barrie Kosky’s magic take on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has been circling the globe for nearly a decade and seen by 700,000 people, landed on the Lyric Opera Stage […]

Alison True sitting at desk surrounded by books and paper
Posted inOn Culture

‘The narrative was the key’

by Deanna Isaacs October 27, 2021November 10, 2021

Reader cofounder and original editor Bob Roth had some radical ideas about editors. He didn’t want them to prescribe what went into the paper, or to solicit it. He wanted […]

Cartoon image of Patrick Clinton with balloon reading "Are you leaving already?"
Posted inOn Culture

No assignments, no deadlines, no promises, no job

by Deanna Isaacs October 13, 2021October 15, 2021

It’s 1980, and I am unemployed. After giving up a staff writer job at the esteemed St. Petersburg Times to return to Chicago, I have found myself, as the saying […]

Posted inOn Culture

A more local Chicago Architecture Biennial

by Deanna Isaacs September 29, 2021September 29, 2021

The Chicago Architecture Biennial focuses on a “deeper engagement with the local community” in “The Available City.”

Posted inPerforming Arts Review

Good medicine

by Deanna Isaacs September 27, 2021September 27, 2021

This take on Gaetano Donizetti’s 1832 comic opera, L’elisir d’amore, is a two-act antidote for our COVID-plagued reality. Cleverly directed by Daniel Slater and beautifully designed by Robert Innes Hopkins, […]

Posted inPerforming Arts Review

Risking all for opera

by Deanna Isaacs September 20, 2021September 20, 2021

A Verdi classic, a twist on Bizet, and a doubleheader of new work kick off the opera season in Chicago.

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