Can music be propaganda? Torture? How about a tool of manipulation, disorientation, and oppression? “Shift: Music, Meaning, Context” contemplates how music changes in form and interpretation as it moves across time, body, and place. Reflecting history and culture unlike any other medium, music has shaped the world at a micro, meso, and macro level. This […]
Tag: Reader Recommended
Posted inTheater Review
Asian American renegades
When you hear “Charlie Chan,” do you think of a Honolulu police detective with a penchant for fortune cookie proverbs in pidgin English, who was made into an American icon in six novels by Ohioan Earl Derr Biggers and portrayed in yellowface by mostly white actors, including Swedish actor Warner Oland (who also played the […]
Posted inTheater Review
Faith and memory
John Pielmeier’s 1979 drama Agnes of God—whose title is a reference to “Agnus Dei,” Latin for “Lamb of God”—is an intriguing if somewhat murky mystery that asks both “whodunit” and “whydunit.” Inspired by real events, the plot concerns a 21-year-old novice nun, Agnes (Soleil Pérez), who is suspected of killing her own newborn infant. Agnes […]
Posted inTheater Review
In the ring with Shaw and Tunney
What is it that draws great writers to boxing as a subject? Is it an identification with the sport’s pure brutal (yet calculated) physicality removed from the need for verbal acuity? A way to demonstrate street cred (a kind of reverse snobbery)? For A.J. Liebling, the “sweet science” (at least when viewed in person) was […]
Posted inTheater Review
A provocative Pippin
Pippin was a forerunner in the big swing of musical theater away from the happy-ever-after era that defined the genre’s “golden age.” The 1972 show by Stephen Schwartz (music) and Roger O. Hirson (book) ends not with a whizbang, all-hands-on-deck, colored-light spectacle of song and dance, but with a lone man standing onstage, divested of costume, […]
Posted inTheater Review
A ‘miraculous’ West Side Story
In most productions of West Side Story (and I’ve seen half a dozen or more), Tony is the weakest link: the character just isn’t as cool as Riff or as sexy as Bernardo. He’s kind of a dork, in fact. But in the Lyric’s remounting of its own 2019 revival of the show, Tony is […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Samantha Irby is midwest fancy
Samantha Irby, the midwest’s most loveable misanthrope, triumphantly returns with her fourth collection of personal essays, Quietly Hostile. Spoiler alert: just like the other three, it is both reliably and painfully funny. The prolific author has churned out four hilarious books in ten years in addition to amassing a growing number of television writing credits […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mean what you draw, draw what you mean
The room was filled with chatter as the awed crowd took in works by Esperanza Rosas, who is most known by her creative name, Runsy. “Plata o Plomo,” which translates to silver or lead, is the title of Runsy’s first solo exhibition, which took place at Franchise Gallery in Los Angeles. Now, Rosas brings a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Inside Vivaldi’s all-female orchestra
As far as I can tell, no Chicagoan has written a novel about Italy since 1890, when Henry Blake Fuller’s queer-coded satire, The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani, was misinterpreted by critics to be an earnest heterosexual romance. More than 130 years later, I doubt readers will make a similar mistake with Julia Fine’s new novel. A […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Poetic misdirection
I’m always a little in awe of people who can collaborate on any creative project, but two people working as equals on a single canvas is well near unimaginable. For the 40 years I’ve been painting, the idea to invite anyone to so much as doodle on the margins of one of my pictures has […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A healing practice
Sonja Henderson adorns herself in turquoise jewelry. When I met her at her studio recently, the color was drawn on in the inner corners of her eyes—her signature look—and turquoise fabric was laid upon chairs in her art studio. Turquoise is a color that can mean protection, hope, and tranquility. Henderson is a visual artist […]
Posted inFilm
Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
It’s hard to follow up such a success, but Across the Spider-Verse (the second of a planned trilogy) takes the action and the story to the next level and may just be a superior film.
Posted inFilm
Review: Reality
By presenting testimony without editorializing, the film becomes a searing indictment of a country that routinely punishes low-level true believers while rewarding traitors and opportunists up the food chain for their treachery.
Posted inFilm
Review: The Quiet Epidemic
The Quiet Epidemic is no cinematic masterpiece—ultimately it’s more about advocacy, with calls to action on how to support the community, than it is about any kind of aesthetic rigor. But it’s hard to deny that CLD and the controversy surrounding it evoke many existential questions about the reality of suffering that are best served by this particular medium.
Posted inFilm
Review: Past Lives
Celine Song’s debut film is, without a doubt, one of the best films of the year.