Posted inArts & Culture

Mary Zimmerman hits the decks with the pirate classic Treasure Island

“Sea voyages are in almost every thing I’ve ever done,” Mary Zimmerman acknowledged in an e-mail exchange. The auteur, known for stage realizations of The Odyssey, The Argonauticka, and other watery epics, supposes that the ocean holds a “great romance” for her because she grew up in landlocked Nebraska. Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Inland” (“What […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Hairy Who members Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, and Karl Wirsum look back 50 years after the collective’s first exhibition

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the Hairy Who’s first exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center. As a precursor to the semicentennial celebration, three members of the group—Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, and Karl Wirsum—will converse with international curator and codirector of London’s Serpentine Galleries Hans Ulrich Obrist about the collective’s history and influence […]

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Dick Wolf’s Chicago Med offers a dose of ER-esque hospital drama

Sometimes television has an elegant way of coming full circle. In 1994 we slid headfirst on a gurney through the doors of Chicago’s fictional County General Hospital, where we’d spend more than a decade soaking up all the drama (and George Clooney) ER could supply. Presumably the popularity of workplace dramas—particularly those where Chicagoans’ lives […]

Posted inArts & Culture

A transgender housemother schools her Boystown proteges in Northlight’s Charm at Steppenwolf Garage

Back in 2011 the Reader ran a feature titled “Grit & Glitter,” about Chicago’s underground ballroom scene: a gay, black subculture populated by “male-identified men, drag queens, transgender folks, and born women (whom ballroom participants call ‘allies’).” Though its social life revolves around late-night vogueing competitions, the scene’s real foundation is a network of “houses” […]

Posted inMusic

AACM reedist and composer Roscoe Mitchell presents four trios at the MCA

The current Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition “The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now,” in part explores the history and legacy of Chicago’s massively influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Reedist and composer Roscoe Mitchell was a founding member of the organization and became internationally recognized for his membership […]

Posted inFilm

Legendary artist Agnès Varda schools Chicago on filmmaking and photography

Agnès Varda’s directorial debut, La Pointe Courte (1954), anticipated the French New Wave with its documentary feel, associative editing, and bold, tableaulike imagery. Her later films Le Bonheur (1964) and One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) are considered touchstones of feminist cinema. And with such innovative documentaries as Uncle Yanco (1967) and The Gleaners & […]

Posted inArts & Culture

New exhibit ‘The Annual’ gives up-and-coming Chicago artists exposure during Expo Art Week

There’s no shortage of visual art events to attend this fall, particularly during Expo Art Week, which culminates in Expo Chicago: gallery openings, art walks, lectures, art talks, galas, tours, parties, et cetera. So why add another fairlike event to the mix? Because not everyone, particularly new or would-be collectors, can afford to buy work […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Barbara Kasten gets a long-overdue career survey with ‘Stages’ at the Graham Foundation

Over the course of her five-decade career, Chicago-based artist Barbara Kasten has experimented with some pretty complex processes. To create her photographic series from the late 1970s and ’80s, she carefully positioned props—often large geometric objects made from wood or plaster—among fiberglass screens, wires, mesh, mirrors, et cetera, then shot these abstract installations with a […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Richard Sandoval’s Latin Eataly, Latinicity, is opening in Block 37

Piggybacking on the success of Italian-food wonderland Eataly, celeb chef and restaurateur Richard Sandoval plans to open Latinicity, a 22,000-square-foot monument to our collective love of Latin food, inside Block 37 in the Loop. So far we know that it’ll have a grocery section, a dozen food stands slinging things like ceviche and grilled meats, […]

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Post-PJ Paparelli, ATC goes bold with Fulfillment, provocateur playwright Thomas Bradshaw’s latest

American Theater Company suffered a major loss in May, when artistic director PJ Paparelli died at age 40 after a car accident in Scotland, just weeks after the opening of The Project(s), his acclaimed documentary-theater piece about public housing in Chicago. ATC is dedicating its 2015—’16 season to the writer-director’s legacy, but don’t expect a […]