“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 […]
Tag: Fall Preview 2015
Posted inMusic
Peaches’s new teaches land the raunchy star at the Metro
I’m ambivalent about describing Berlin-based pop artist Peaches as “sexually explicit.” The term feels loaded, and really, more people should take notes from Peaches, whose sex-positive, gender-blending jams hinge on the joys of sex even as they exude an air of darkness. Her 2000 breakthrough, “Fuck the Pain Away,” pulsates with a minimal groaning drum […]
Posted inMusic
Land and Sea Dept. gets a Prime Time spot at the MCA
With the opening of Cherry Circle Room and Game Room inside downtown’s stately but hip Chicago Athletic Club Hotel, it’s been a big year for Land and Sea Dept. Hell, it’s been a big half decade. The group responsible for Longman & Eagle, Parson’s Chicken & Fish, Lost Lake, and other spots has proven capable […]
Posted inFilm
Suspense, romance, comedy, and at least one bona fide masterpiece at Asian Pop-Up Cinema
Screening at the Wilmette Theatre and AMC River East, this eight-film series showcases recent movies from east Asia, with an emphasis on popular genres. South Korea is represented by Cold Eyes, a suspense story about a surveillance team assigned to catch a group of bank robbers; one of the country’s biggest hits of 2013, it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rick Bayless’s Cruz Blanca and more brewpubs opening this fall in Chicago
New options for spots to drink beer this fall include Corridor Brewing & Provisions, Like Minds Brewery, Band of Bohemia, and Bixi.
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 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
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
Dave Attell’s stand-up gets better—and dirtier—with age
Dave Attell, patron saint of after hours, has some thoughts on women who mix hard alcohol with diet sodas: “You’re drinking whiskey, the wildest drink known to man. Are you really counting calories when you’re drinking whiskey? . . . ‘I don’t want to look puffy as I’m screaming the N-word at an eclipse. ‘” […]
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, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
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 […]