We’re finally getting a taste of the usual winter weather, but that’s no reason to stay housebound. (Unless you’re being extra COVID-cautious, for which we don’t blame you!) But if you’re up for some cultural adventures, there are some great possibilities on tap the next couple of months. Chicago Theatre Week, sponsored every year by […]
Author Archives: Deanna Isaacs
Grimm and surreal
This surrealistic production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 opera version of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale—seen twice before at Lyric—should probably be a Christmas show. But since Joffrey became Lyric’s roommate, we’re getting it now. Visually it’s nightmarish, claustrophobic, and monochromatic as a gray January day—but also striking: think fish-headed dream-scene maitre d’ overseeing a troop […]
Who’s getting tarred?
No industry has been more of a closed and creaky old white boys club than classical music. Things are grudgingly changing now that the Western canon appears to be on its deathbed, but, according to research by the League of American Orchestras, “Women conductors are still rare, especially in the high-status position of music director.” […]
No walk in the park
Update: 01/12/2023In an email today seeking to “clarify misinformation posted on the museum’s website,” Chicago Park District Director of Communications Michele Lemons said this: “The Chicago Park District did not approve construction on a 5,000 square foot facility nor did the District approve a structure of any size.” Juanita Irizarry delivered a gut punch of […]
Fusion and firearms
The best we can say about 2022? It’s been transitional. If we’re lucky, the shift will be to something better. In the meantime, the war in Ukraine drags on. Predictably, unconscionably, we’ve become inured to it. Inflation rages at a pace new to most of us. The experts pushing and pulling the levers on the […]
Hey, it’s getting warm in here!
Peter Friederici has a history in these pages. In 1987, the Chicago native—then a recent Northwestern University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and no clear path to a career—got hired as a Reader editorial assistant. He spent two years in that job, working under editors Michael Lenehan and Alison True. Now an […]
Long COVID for the arts
Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for nonprofit theater, is about to release its latest annual report on the fiscal health of the field, Theatre Facts 2021. (Yes, it’s almost 2023, but this stuff takes time to collect.) The news is not great. The report, which compares results over a five-year period, tracks the startling […]
The Don and the Count
Deeply committed Verdi fans ought to get themselves to Lyric Opera’s first ever production of Don Carlos, the four-hour, five-act, 1867 French language version of the shorter Verdi opera they already know as the Italian language Don Carlo. This love vs. duty tale of historical fiction, loosely drawn from the life of a 16th-century Spanish […]
The Chicagoans
The People Issue’s class of 2022 showcases folks from many walks of life. As subjects, their common thread is an incessant need to create welcoming spaces for other individuals like them, enact change, further their craft, do good, and in one instance, amplify the representation of stoner lesbians in graphic novels. Read profiles of 21 people by and as told to 15 Chicago Reader writers.
You will die. Then what?
Is death life’s greatest mystery? Or would we just like it to be? (Therefore, ghosts, devils, heaven, hell, organized religion, and Halloween candy.) Those are not among the five major questions that serve as an organizing mechanism for the Field Museum’s expansive new exhibit, “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery,” however much they hang in the air. […]
From domestic terrorism to the voting booth
When Michael Fanone, the former Trump supporter and D.C. cop who nearly died at the hands of the January 6 mob at the U.S. Capitol, comes to the Chicago Humanities Festival next week to join We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism author Andy Campbell […]
Anti-abortion activists float a new argument: ageism
Move over, Grandpa. You think ageism is your cause? Last week, Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies came to town, making stops at the city’s largest college campuses. At Northwestern, they set up shop on Sheridan Road, displaying enlarged images of dismembered fetal parts and passing out leaflets announcing that “Abortion […]
Tradition with a twist
Lyric Opera introduced Chicago audiences to director Barrie Kosky last year, when it brought his production of The Magic Flute—created for Komische Oper Berlin, where he’s been music director for a decade—to the Opera House on Wacker. Kosky staged the Mozart favorite as a silent film. So the announcement that Kosky’s production of Fiddler on […]
Some best bets for the fall harvest of performance
It’s impossible to summarize everything that’s happening onstage this season. (It’s also hard to tell you exactly what COVID-19 precautions are required at venues now; we suggest checking ahead and being prepared to show proof of vax, and wearing a mask as a courtesy to other patrons.) But here are ten offerings that promise to […]
The U.S. and the Holocaust
Starting Sunday, for three consecutive nights, WTTW will air a new six-hour Ken Burns documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Burns and his filmmaking partners, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, based the series on a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit curated by Chicago-area native and current Newberry Library president, Daniel Greene. From 2014 […]