AMAZONIA: FIVE YEARS AT THE EPICENTER OF THE DOT.COM JUGGERNAUT James Marcus New Press James Marcus’s amusing memoir tells how it was to be in the right place (Seattle) at the right time (the 90s). Personally interviewed by Jeff Bezos, Marcus was the 55th hire at then ramshackle Amazon.com. Tired of starving as a freelance […]
Author Archives: Heidi Broadhead
Theater People: Mefisto theater company puts down roots
Actor-director Weil Richmond quit New York’s prestigious Circle in the Square Theatre School after one semester, walking out in the middle of a speech class after getting in a fight with the teacher. As Richmond gathered his things and headed for the front door, the teacher, who’d followed him into the hall, yelled “You’ll never […]
In Brief
BAD NEWS OF THE HEART Douglas Glover Dalkey Archive Canadian author Douglas Glover’s collection of gloomy, offbeat short stories is well suited to an anxious time typified by belligerent U.S. foreign policy, SARS, and a shaky economy that’s forced thousands out of work. Tom, the delusional protagonist of “A Man in a Box,” seeks refuge […]
Art people: Telophase inhabits the space between
Five months ago, novelist and installation artist Matthew Jewell spent the first edition of Telophase–a periodic exhibition mounted by a loose collective of artists and writers–in bed in the far corner of an uninhabited apartment above the Inner Town Pub in Ukrainian Village. Smoking and reading aloud, he enacted scenes from Scale, his novel in […]
Active Cultures: poets’ crossover dreams
Last month at 3030, a former Pentecostal church in Humboldt Park, a rapt audience of 50 sat in the pews of the red-walled chapel and listened intently as vocalist Jenny Walshe launched into her interpretation of Kurt Schwitters’s dadaist poem Ursonate. “Fumms,” she said. “Bo wo tŠŠ zŠŠ Uu, pog•ff, kwii Ee.” Walshe was one […]
Art People: Revolution Studios sharpens its needles
Artists Cherie Basak and Omar Gutierrez opened Revolution Studios this June because they were tired of working for other people. Gutierrez, who’s also been a tattooist for about eight years, and Basak, an art store manager, envisioned the west Bucktown storefront as a combination gallery and tattoo shop. But so far, though they’ve mounted shows […]
On Stage: Idris Goodwin and the power of words
In the first scene of Idris Goodwin’s new play, Idle Threats, Zodiac, an experimental filmmaker, is interviewed by Crit, a film critic who admires her work. When Zodiac dismisses the interview as a waste of her time, however, the critic turns on her and writes a bad review of her most recent film, which he […]
Theater People: Hate at first sight results in interesting Offspring
The story behind husband-and-wife playwright Carlos Murillo and director Lisa Portes’s Offspring of the Cold War.