The very first Ghost Light column I wrote back in summer of 2020, I interviewed Markie Gray, the incoming managing director for Raven Theatre. Gray was hired to work alongside artistic director Cody Estle, who assumed the job in November 2017 from founders (and married couple) Michael Menendian and JoAnn Montemurro. (The board’s decision to […]
Tag: Ann Filmer
Posted inGhost Light
Brett Neveu’s Eric LaRue will hit the big screen with some help from a friend
Twenty years later, I still get chills when I think about the final line in Brett Neveu’s Eric LaRue, his drama about the aftermath of a school shooting, in which the mother of a teenage boy who killed three of his classmates tries to come to grips with the monstrous deed. Apparently I’m not the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A tsunami of news and a new path for Actors’ Equity membership
Changes in faces, places, and union rules might carry harbingers of a shifting landscape in Chicago theater.
Posted inArts & Culture
Celebrating Chicago Theatre Week—a year into the pandemic
This year’s lineup offers a smorgasbord of online options; plus honoring Felicia P. Fields and remembering Edward S. Weil Jr. and Sally Banes
Posted inArts & Culture
Alabaster brings two women together in the aftermath of loss
Audrey Cefaly’s story of a photographer and an agoraphobe goes far beyond Madison County.
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Fall awakening?
Complaints from the production team of His Shadow have opened a painful discussion for Berwyn’s 16th Street Theater and head Ann Filmer.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Hero’s Wife proves that the violence doesn’t end when the fighting stops
Aline Lathrop’s drama explores different sides of a timeless story.
Posted inArts & Culture
Akeelah and the Bee, Die Walküre, and 14 more new stage shows to see
An inspirational kids’ show and a not-be-missed Lyric Opera production are among this week’s best bets.
Posted inArts & Culture
16th Street Theater brings Into the Beautiful North beautifully to life
Karen Zacarías’s stage adaptation of the beloved novel by Chicago writer Luis Alberto Urrea is sly and sharp—and faithful in its fashion.
Posted inArts & Culture
From Scrooge to the Snow Queen: eight stage shows for the holidays
The Goodman’s A Christmas Carol leads the seasonal onslaught.
Posted inArts & Culture
Parachute Men, You on the Moors Now, and eight more new theater reviews
This week’s stage highlights include three losers who (hopefully) make good and four 19th-century fictional heroines battling their would-be betrotheds.
Posted inArts & Culture
Dreamgirls, Dead Man Walking, The Few, and ten more new theater reviews
Porchlight’s Dreamgirls, Piven Theatre’s Dead Man Walking, and Steep Theatre’s The Few are among this week’s theater highlights.
Posted inArts & Culture
Mothers and Sons, The Last Defender, and eight more theatrical shows
A moving drama about the AIDS epidemic and an immersive puzzle/play inspired by retro video games are among this week’s best bets.
Posted inArts & Culture
There’s a disconnect in Disconnect
Victory Gardens Theater stages Anupama Chandrasekhar’s Disconnect, set in a Chennai, India, call center.
Posted inArts & Culture
Dead Aim
Justin Hayford reviews Brett Neveu’s 2002 drama Eric LaRue at A Red Orchid Theatre.