At the age of 24, Ron Trent has been exposed to just about everything the dance club scene has to offer. Having a dad who ran a record-pooling company for DJs during the disco 70s, Trent began to spin at parties in his early teens, eventually becoming a DJ at the Reactor nightclub during house […]
Author Archives: Derrick Mathis
Posted inArts & Culture
Conference Calls:acting out
Despite consistently getting work in Chicago’s mainstream theaters, actor Byron Stewart often dreaded going to auditions. “I really hated not letting people know that I was gay,” he says. “As a black man you have to come off as a strong macho man–you’re auditioning to be cast in that role.” So last October Stewart founded […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Film Notes: H is for homosexual
In Debra Chasnoff’s feature-length documentary It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School, one teacher starts a discussion about homosexuality by introducing the students to some famous gays and lesbians. After going through historical figures like Michelangelo, he plays a song and asks the children if they recognize it. “That’s from The Lion King!” several […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jewish gender bending
In the 1936 Yiddish comedy Yidl mitn fidl (“Yidl With His Fiddle”) actress Molly Picon played a girl who dresses in boy’s clothing so that she can find work as a musician. Many of the film’s laughs come from the contrast between the macho Froim, the object of Yidl’s affection, and the feminine, cross-dressed Yidl. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Pride and Prejudice
Prejudice By Derrick Mathis Taking the el to the south side, I kept thinking of my mother back in LA. I was going to march in the Bud Billiken Parade and knew that King Drive would be lined with hundreds of women just like her. I imagined I’d be marching in front of my family–aunts, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: Dr. Teplica’s painful shots
Dr. David Teplica has a black-and-white photograph on his studio wall of what looks like a humanoid creature struggling to escape a cloth web. “This is a straight young man who’s just entering the dating world and kind of scared. I took him to Hugh Hefner’s bedroom, which I consider the birthplace of the modern […]
Posted inMusic
Nostalgia Unlimited
Barry White Arie Crown Theatre, June 7 Back in the early 70s my mother monopolized our living-room stereo every Sunday afternoon, playing the likes of Marvin Gaye, Al Green, the Isley Brothers, and Barry White. My brothers and sisters deserted the house until dinner was announced because they couldn’t stand these world-weary crooners forever wailing […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Artist For a Day
By Derrick Mathis “The fucking chocolate bars keep falling off!” I blubber to no one in particular. Scrambling on my hands and knees I rifle through the toolbox that one of the gallery owners has loaned me. I’ve been at it for 20 minutes. It’s 3:45 and the opening begins at 5. I still have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Film Notes: remembering the real movie queens
When he was a kid Richard Dyer spent a lot of time at the movies. But unlike his peers who readily identified with the hard-boiled superdicks played by Humphrey Bogart and William Powell, Dyer found it easier to relate to the villains and supporting characters like Clifton Webb’s prissy Waldo in Laura and Peter Lorre’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Crossover Hit
By Derrick Mathis Alan Louis sits cross-legged in a cramped storage room wearing black fishnet panty hose and nothing else, peering into a mirror and studiously applying the last layer of Candy Apple No. 2 to his mouth. It used to take him an hour to get ready, he says. Now he can do it […]
Posted inMusic
Endless Summer
Donna Summer Ravinia, August 9 In the summer of 1979, Steve Dahl hosted the notorious “Disco Demolition,” in which thousands of white rockers converged on the outfield of Comiskey Park and blew up a huge box of vinyl dance records. Despite efforts by riot police to remove the crowd, drunken revelers remained on the field, […]