Prop Thtr Archives - Chicago Reader

Shalaka Kulkarni, wearing an orange skirt and gold sleeveless top, is pictured kneeling on the stage floor. Her chin is resting on her right hand and her left hand is laying across her lap.

Nyra’s Dreams uses Indian dance to explore contemporary women’s experiences

by JT Newman October 24, 2023October 24, 2023

Traditional Indian dance is a form that is rooted in storytelling, folk literature, and sacred texts. Its forms are myriad and complex and are divided into three main categories: classical, folk/tribal, and Bollywood. Classical forms are highly stylized with prescribed movements that accompany sacred and traditional texts in the mode of dance and theater. Folk/tribal […]

Three Black women stand in a row with their fists upraised. We see photos of Black Panther women on the wall next to them.

Theater Review

Mothers of the revolution

by Kerry Reid May 4, 2023May 4, 2023

India Nicole Burton’s Panther Women: An Army for the Liberation has already played at Cleveland Public Theatre and Indianapolis’s Phoenix Theatre as part of the National New Play Network’s rolling world premiere program. But it’s hard to imagine a more apt setting for Burton’s choreopoem in celebration of the women in the Black Panther Party […]

Ghost Light

Olivia Lilley prepares to move on from Prop

by Kerry Reid January 20, 2023January 23, 2023

When Olivia Lilley took on the job of artistic director at Prop Thtr (one of the oldest off-Loop theaters in the city) in 2018, her DIY/punk aesthetic seemed like a good fit for taking the company into the next era. Even before assuming the AD role, Lilley had made a mark with site-specific, immersive productions […]

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 […]

Audrey Francis, a white woman in blue jeans and a black jacket, is standing left, and Glenn Davis, a Black man in dark trousers and shirt, is standing right in front of the empty new theater at Steppenwolf.

Performing Arts Feature

Plays in a pandemic

by Kerry Reid December 22, 2021January 6, 2022

By the time this year ends (it is gonna end, right?), Reader critics will, by my count, have reviewed 69 live theater and dance performances. That’s far less than in most years, but a veritable cornucopia after the onstage famine that began in March 2020. But just when we think it’s safe to go back […]

Ghost Light

Prop Thtr finds new places and plans

by Kerry Reid December 17, 2021December 18, 2021

In July of 2020, Prop Thtr, one of the oldest off-Loop companies in the city, announced that they were giving up their longtime two-venue home on Elston in the Avondale neighborhood. At the time, current Prop artistic director Olivia Lilley told the Reader, “I am very sad. I am mourning. Absolutely. But I’m also excited […]