Thalia Hall Archives - Chicago Reader

Bruce McCulloch stands center stage, wearing black trousers, a white T-shirt, and a long-sleeved unbuttoned plaid shirt. Behind him is a green tape reading "Sleep is remembrance."

Don’t ask why it’s funny

by Dan Jakes March 9, 2023March 9, 2023

A lot of funny people would call Bruce McCulloch a comedy legend—just none of them named “Bruce McCulloch.” For more than 30 years, the writer, director, actor, musician, and founding member of The Kids in the Hall has been an influential voice across comedy mediums. A punk aficionado with a love of the inexplicable, McCulloch […]

Agenda

St. Lucia, go-go dancing, and Long Hair Don’t Care

by Taryn Allen, Micco Caporale and Salem Collo-Julin December 11, 2022December 12, 2022

Editor’s note Mon 12/12/22: the St. Lucia events previously posted below are scheduled for Tuesday 12/13/22. The Reader regrets our error. Join Andersonville residents and celebrate the holidays the Swedish way, with St. Lucia and the Lucia Procession. Lucia girls, in white robes and candle crowns, will be crowned at noon at the temporary Nordic […]

Agenda

Jane, Yola, Field, Frunchroom

by Micco Caporale and Salem Collo-Julin September 13, 2022September 13, 2022

Today and tomorrow are two of a slate of Free Admission Days offered by the Field Museum (1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.) through November. Illinois residents with proof of residency (valid photo identification plus a copy of your lease, library card, utility bill, or a check stub from work) receive free basic admission, which […]

Agenda

La Esquina, Creepshow, Miss Continental, and Miss Holmes

by Kerry Reid, Micco Caporale and Salem Collo-Julin September 2, 2022September 2, 2022

At the corners of Cullerton and Carpenter sits La Esquina, a community center that opened this spring to provide free art classes and provide safer space for neighborhood youth to explore their creativity. Tonight, La Esquina hosts their first annual expo and fundraiser at Thalia Hall (1807 S. Allport). From 5-9 PM, this event is […]

Anna-Michael Paul rests her arms on a table, her face partly occluded by an ornate candelabra-style lamp

Music

Anna-Michal Paul, chalk artist extraordinaire

by Leor Galil August 31, 2022August 31, 2022

If you’ve ever been to a show at Thalia Hall, you’ve walked right past Anna-Michal Paul’s work. She creates the hand-drawn chalk art that greets concertgoers as they ascend the stairs to the second-floor venue. Her detailed, textured portraits and stylized lettering, which she catalogs on Instagram at latenightchalkshow, are as much a part of […]

Drummer Makaya McCraven can be seen in the background on a brightly lit stage, leading a seven-piece band; in the foreground is a sea of audience members, their backs to the camera, all lit in purple; in the very far background, the Willis Tower is visible

Music

From the husk of the old Morton Salt factory, a new music venue rises

by Hannah Edgar August 5, 2022August 5, 2022

For as long as Bruce Finkelman can remember, the Morton Salt factory has set his heart racing. It’s not that he gets salt cravings any worse than the next guy. Rather, he remembers that when he was 12 years old, in the car with his parents on the Kennedy, the sight of the umbrella-toting girl […]

A group of dancers in lingerie perform onstage. A Black woman stands center. The stage is lit with purple lights.

Arts & Culture

‘Huge, very loud, and with a lot of glitter’

by Irene Hsiao June 10, 2022June 16, 2022

For the first time since a pandemic hiatus, The Fly Honey Show is live for three days only of sparkle, sweat, and shimmy. Begun in 2010 with about 30 performers in the living room of the DIY venue The Inconvenience, The Fly Honey Show has since manifested through the bodies of hundreds of dancers, musicians, […]

Maggie Kubley out and about in the purple fairy makeup she wore for parts of the "Come Over" video

Music

Maggie Kubley of Celine Neon drops a video about a private kind of self-care

by J.R. Nelson and Leor Galil December 21, 2021December 22, 2021

By the time Emily Nejad and Maggie Kubley of Celine Neon amicably retired their electro-pop duo in 2018, Kubley had already released several appealing solo tracks and videos online. In 2019, she compiled several of them on an EP, Come Over, and that spring she staged a musical storytelling event based on the songs at […]

Music

Jessica Risker’s in-person version of Music Therapy welcomes Izzy True

by J.R. Nelson and Leor Galil October 6, 2021October 6, 2021

Folk-pop artist and licensed therapist Jessica Risker launched the long-form interview podcast Music Therapy in spring 2020, and Gossip Wolf has been an avid follower since day one. Earlier this summer, Risker and former Hideout talent buyer Sullivan Davis began producing an in-person version at Cafe Mustache called Music Therapy: Group Session, which augments the […]

Music

Lala Lala questions identity and isolation with I Want the Door to Open

by Shannon Nico Shreibak September 30, 2021September 29, 2021

Lala Lala’s ebullient new fourth album, I Want the Door to Open, feels like a musical antithesis of the isolation and insularity of the past 18 months. The project of Chicago songwriter Lillie West, Lala Lala rose to prominence with 2018’s The Lamb (Hardly Art), which was recorded live with a three-piece band. IWTDTO, by […]