Posted inNews & Politics

A Fresh Start in Alaska

To the editors: Tom Riccio, former artistic director of the Organic Theater, moved to Fairbanks, Alaska a month ago to take over the theater department of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He told Reader columnist, Michael Miner [September 9], Fairbanks is made up of two kinds of people: “Fundamentalist Christians and liberal granola crunchers, which […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Chicago Latino Film Festival 88

The fourth annual edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival will show 50 films, virtually all of them subtitled, from 19 Latin American countries, Spain, and the U.S. (including several independent works from Chicago). All screenings will be held at the Three Penny Cinema, 2424 N. Lincoln, from Friday, September 23, through Sunday, October 2. […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Chicago Pro Musica

The Grammy Award-winning Chicago Pro Musica offers Chicago-area premieres of two important works by local composers that were given their enthusiastically received world premieres last weekend at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The extraordinarily high quality of the pieces and their performances at Krannert make this […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Talking to Myself

TALKING TO MYSELF Northlight Theatre Talking to Myself, Northlight Theatre’s staged “story theater” version of Studs Terkel’s memoir, has–like the book–a sweet poignancy. A boy discovers the world around him, and that discovery helps mold the man. It’s an old story, a classic, maybe even an archetype. But when a story is so well known, […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Welcome to Chicago

“Nobody hustles me. I don’t get hustled. I’m a New Yorker.” My friend was grasping a tattered white envelope and waving it in my face. We were having a beer in a local bar that smelled like the inside of an old tin can. Mike’s raspy voice was full of excitement. He was about to […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Art Slashing

To the editors. The silliest thing I ever read in the Reader was about Nan Goldin being “violated” (her word) because somebody made a few paintings inspired by her photographs [Hot Type, August 19]. She was so “violated” that she wants these paintings destroyed! It doesn’t seem like there was much problem over the economic […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Pere Ubu/John Cale

While “art rock” is usually neither, Pere Ubu and John Cale are both. Sure, the first time you hear Pere Ubu’s plump, stately David Thomas crooning like an aroused mountain goat in hot pursuit of Allen Ravensteine’s spooky synthesizer fills, these newly revitalized Ohio veterans might seem like long shots to get your mojo working. […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Art Crime

To the editors: Though being an artist myself (a writer) and can empathize with Nan Goldin’s outrage [Hot Type, August 19], I would think that even she is going to an extreme in requesting that Jacek Siudzinski’s copycat paintings of her photographs be destroyed. One, even though they rip her off, I would think that […]

Posted inMusic

The world’s most advanced rock star

Who could have predicted that black stars would so dominate the 80s pop firmament? Any accounting of the decade’s most important acts would have to include at least three black acts in the top, oh, four or so, by my reckoning–Prince edging out Bruce for number one, the two of them followed closely by Run-D.M.C. […]