Author Archives: Lewis Lazare

Lewis Lazare takes his act elsewhere.

The creators of the ultracool Blackbird have a warmer restaurant in mind.

Michael Cullen is going Cajun, and he’s taking Sheila Henaghan and a new Platt with him.

North Pond Cafe’s Richard Mott scores another prime park location.

Was Ed Burgess’s art really too hot for Bailiwich patrons to handle? Or was teh dispute over lobby art just a symptom of deeper problems as the theater?

Paul Williams’s “Butterfly” crashes to earth.

Will the Joffrey Ballet’s withdrawal from the Music and Dance Theater Chicago bring the troubled project to its knees?

Growing Pains Founded in 1974, Victory Gardens Theater has earned an international reputation for its long-standing commitment to new plays, many of them written by the company’s resident playwrights. But the risky business of producing untested work has cost the company the kind of large-scale growth that turned Steppenwolf and the Goodman into local institutions. […]

Their show’s a critical flop, but producer Philip Faversham, director Joanna Settle, and playwright Hurt McDermott hope to pull a rabbit out of their hat.

She came, she danced, she made a name for herself: Jan Erkert disbands her company and goes solo.

Independent producer Rodney Lewis has another gospel show ready to hit the road–but will he make it to the promised land?

Buff Bods Do Boffo Biz For David Dillon the party never ends. In 1992 the director accepted an invitation to stage a late-night show for Bailiwick Repertory. He wanted to do an uplifting play about gay men, but over the next two weeks he read 40 scripts without finding one. “Everything I looked at seemed […]

After a devastating run-in with the city, Stage Left bounces back with the installation of Jessi Hill at the helm.

Incoming Hubbard Street artistic director Jim Vincent is expected to kick the dance company into high gear.

Sound Adaptation For the past four years Karen Bauman has been a contract administrator in the legal department at Harpo Productions, Inc., securing the rights to materials used on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Working for the city’s most prominent entertainer has given her considerable experience behind the scenes, but now Bauman has produced a show […]