To the editors: In the account of the Sotomayor cartooning affair, Michael Miner referred to Gay Chicago magazine as “a featherweight entertainment guide” [Hot Type, February 16]. Ralph Paul Gernhardt did develop a very complete calendar of entertainment and other events every week for the past 12 years or so, but the magazine has always […]
Tag: Vol. 19 No. 24
Issue of Mar. 29 – Apr. 4, 1990
Posted inNews & Politics
Camp Classic
To the editors: Did Jonathan Rosenbaum [February 2] see the same Roger and Me that I did? The one I saw was the left-wing counterpart of those embarrassing “I-was-a-Communist” movies excreted by Hollywood during the McCarthy era: an hysterically smug and self-righteous mishmash of half-truths, outright lies and political propaganda masquerading as fact. I am […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
The beginning of a breeding-bird survey is like the beginning of a love affair. You just know that this time it’s really going to work. Other springs may have yielded the banalities of robins and redwings, but this is certain to be the year of Cooper’s hawk nests and hummingbird fledglings. This year, Somme Woods […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Opera of the Phantoms
THE LIGHTHOUSE Chicago Opera Theater March 21, 24, 25, and 30 and April 1, 4, and 7 Twenty-two years ago Peter Maxwell Davies first came to international prominence with his legendary Fires of London ensemble, created primarily to perform his own unusual vocal and chamber music. Those early pieces incorporated older musical forms–from late medieval […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Shame on Us
To the editors: While I’m not sure if the “void” you are referring to is me (Hot Type, March 16, “Neal and Void”), the mangling of my name was certainly clear. It’s H-E-R-R-M-A-N-N. At the very least, a critique of Chicago journalism ought to adhere to one of the first rules taught in J-School: spell […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Longo vs. Craftsmanship
ROBERT LONGO at the Museum of Contemporary Art On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art through April 15 is a retrospective of the still-young artist, Robert Longo; it includes drawing, sculpture, painting, and some video, almost 40 pieces in all. The work is dramatic and arresting, its images sometimes violent. Inspired by movies and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
1990 Off Off Loop Theater Festival
Returning, after two years’ hiatus, under the auspices of producer Doug Bragan’s Douglas Theater Corp., this third not-so-annual event features 16 non-Equity companies in as many one-act plays, organized in programs of four. The selections range from experimental drama to camp melodrama to medieval farce to musical comedy to good ol’ American naturalism. “One might […]
Posted inArts & Culture
An Old-Fashioned Musical
CHARLIE’S OASIS MUSEUM & BAR New Tuners Theatre The traditional American musical disappeared so quietly and gradually we didn’t even notice it was gone. You remember–a play in which characters broke into song whenever they had something on their minds, and strangers danced together in perfect time. A play with just enough plot and dialogue […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Merchants vs. mall: a Mexican standoff in Little Village
The huge Spanish colonial arch at Kedzie that greets visitors driving west along 26th Street should provide a clue. This is not the stereotypical depressed, abandoned shopping strip many people associate with minority neighborhoods in Chicago. Instead, the 26th Street strip from Kedzie to Kostner, which forms the heart of the neighborhood known as Little […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
It seems like a marriage was made in heaven between Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest Films and Jim Henson’s Muppetry. The delightful offspring is a live-action romp based on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s comic book characters, scripted by Todd W. Langen and Bobby Herbeck with the sort of goofy wit that suggests that Thomas Pynchon […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Body Politic in Bad Shape/Chicago Show: The Mess Gets Messier/Sowerby’s Third to Be Heard/A Think Tank for the Arts/Grapes in NY: The Reviews Are In…/Man and His Masks/Joe Brooks’s Metropolis
The “I”s have had it, says arts administrator Carlos Tortolero. Invited minority artists are pulling out of the Chicago Show.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Off Off Lopp Theater Festival
THE OFF OFF LOOP THEATER FESTIVAL Saturday, March 24, performances at the Theatre Building After a two-year absence, the Off Off Loop Theater Festival has returned, and none too soon. A town with as busy a fringe theater scene as Chicago’s ought to have a yearly, or at least a biennial, showcase for our smaller, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story A company in California has started to market camouflage toilet paper for use in the woods and plans to run testimonials from hunters who claim they have been shot at while using ordinary toilet paper, by hunters who mistook them for white-tailed deer. Police Blotter According to a December story in the Wichita […]
Posted inArts & Culture
De Donde?
DE DONDE? Stage Left Theatre After a decade in which the arts in general and theater in particular have become increasingly apolitical, it’s refreshing to see a play that’s not afraid to make a strong political statement. Mary Gallagher’s De Donde? is named for the first question–“Where are you from?”–that Immigration and Naturalization Service agents […]