Brandon Rivera Archives - Chicago Reader

A young woman stands left, looking at a young man standing right. Another young man is in the background between them. There is a sofa and a small dining table with chairs.

Sanctuary City explores the plight of DREAMers

by Kerry Reid September 29, 2023September 29, 2023

Before Martyna Majok won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her drama Cost of Living (which was planned for this season at Victory Gardens before the board decided to close up shop at the Tony Award-winning theater), her plays got airings with small companies around Chicago. (She graduated from University of Chicago in 2007.) Red […]

The setting is a nursery school classroom. A white woman in jeans and a long cardigan kneels left, cleaning furniture from a dollhouse. Crouched on the right is a white man with a beard in a flannel shirt. They both wear green rubber gloves.

Theater Review

Adulting and its discontents

by Kerry Reid October 28, 2022October 28, 2022

Though it’s called The Cleanup, Hallie Palladino’s new play, now in a world premiere with Prop Thtr under Jen Poulin’s direction, is all about messiness in the aftermath of the COVID-19 shutdown. Set at a nursery school co-op established by dedicated community mom Julie (Lynnette Li), the play traces the fallout when two of the […]

Nine actors of various ages and races stand on a series of platforms onstage. Above their heads we see suspended curling pieces of sheet music. Chairs and lamps are scattered onstage.

Theater Review

Dimming of the day

by Irene Hsiao July 13, 2022July 13, 2022

“When people die, they move from the first person to the third person. They also move from the present tense to the past tense.” These words are spoken by Christine (Kendra Thulin), who opens Simon Stephens’s Light Falls, directed by Robin Witt, by narrating her own death—sudden, solitary, and mundane in a liquor store in […]