Fabulous Freddie Ninja Unlike you and me, Fabulous Freddie Ninja (aka Freddie Leroy) irons his white jeans before an all-styles dance battle. And unlike anyone else, he fearlessly integrates breaking […]
Category: Arts & Culture 2015 Critics’ Picks
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best second-run house
Gene Siskel Film Center This probably sounds like a backhanded compliment, given that Film Center presents some of the most substantial and adventurous first-run programming in town. Yet over the […]
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Best new comedy festival
The Comedy Exposition When Just for Laughs stopped staging its huge annual festival in Chicago last year, it seemed there would be nothing in its place to bring big national […]
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Best creative rivalry
Algren and Nelson Algren: The End Is Nothing, the Road Is All ​ The past year brought not one but two documentary portraits of Nelson Algren, the bard of Division Street: […]
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Best comedy club located in a pizzeria
The Comedy Bar Some of Chicago’s best comedy clubs aren’t actually comedy clubs. Many of the city’s most noteworthy stand-ups carry on in places without doormen, two-drink minimums, or even […]
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Best theatrical couple
Kate Fry and Mark L. Montgomery No, they aren’t married. Not to each other, anyway. But they’ve been paired enough that I’m beginning to think of them as the Lunt […]
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Best storytelling series for potty humor
I Shit You Not Pooping is one of the things that unite us as humans. Hell, there are entire books on the subject (remember Everyone Poops, anyone?). And because everybody […]
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Best test of the structural soundness of audience members’ backsides
All Our Tragic The day before I saw the Hypocrites’ loose adaptation of all 32 surviving Greek tragedies, I flew back to Chicago from a vacation in Austria. The flight […]
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Best living Vivian Maier
Art Shay Maybe you’ve heard of Vivian Maier? The “North Shore nanny” who exploded into posthumous fame after thousands of her photos were uncovered virtually by accident? Human empathy shines […]
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Best theatrical mob action
Everybody vs. Chris Jones and Hedy Weiss In February, Steppenwolf Theatre’s young adults program presented This Is Modern Art (Based on True Events), a new play by Chicago-based writers Idris […]
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Best citizen-thinker
Eula Bliss It was Jeff Shotts, Eula Biss’s editor at Graywolf Press, who came up with the term “citizen-thinker” to describe her, and it’s remarkably apt. Biss isn’t afraid of […]
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Best advice from an artistic director
Chay Yew to Marcus Gardley It was December 2014, and playwright Marcus Gardley was trying to complete the latest draft of his new play A Wonder in My Soul in […]
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Best rehab of a public housing project into artists’ housing
Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative When I interviewed artist Theaster Gates for a Reader profile in 2011, the Dante Harper Chicago Public Housing project two blocks from his home was […]
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Best new off-Loop combo for dinner and a show, fringe division
Parachute and Prop Thtr Chicagoans like their off-Loop theater a little scruffy—not their fine dining. That’s the beauty of Avondale-based Prop Thtr’s new neighbor, Parachute, a top-flight Korean-American joint run […]
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Best exhibit for bashing a Jeff Koons balloon dog
“No Longer Art,” the Salvage Art Institute When art conservation first entered the jurisdiction of insurance companies, “totaled” works were routinely destroyed. Adjusters haven’t grown less depraved of heart, but […]