To the editors: The February 1 issue of the Reader contained a review of a double bill at the Steppenwolf Theatre. My name is Leelai Demoz and I was one of the actors who appeared in Tennessee/Bite the Hand. Anthony Adler said of me, “Wildly inappropriate in his short dreadlocks and coffee skin, Demoz nevertheless […]
Tag: Vol. 20 No. 20
Issue of Feb. 28 – Mar. 6, 1991
Posted inNews & Politics
Paintball Is for Pansies
To the editors: Real soldiers shoot real bullets and really get hurt when they get hit, while suburban chickenshits play bang-bang with spitballs and call it “instinctive male aggression.” Do they jerk off in front of G.I. Joe dolls, too? Paintball and the people who play it [“War Is Swell,” February 15] are an obscene […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble
These days, it’s no surprise to find unusual groupings of instruments–sometimes so odd you’re hard pressed to call the resulting configuration a “band” at all. But even against this backdrop, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble gets points for iconoclasm. Most improvising ensembles supply at least one of the following instruments to tie together the music’s threads: […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Ted Levine is not a bad guy.
But you wouldn’t know it from the roles he’s played. From a small-time hood in Crime Story to a psychopathic murderer in The Silence of the Lambs, his acting career has been a parade of nasty characters.
Posted inArts & Culture
Hold Me
HOLD ME Badlands Theatre Company Though we usually think of the 1950s as an era of placid innocence, that image was born mostly of desperation. Coming on the heels of the squalor of the Depression and the adrenaline frenzy of World War II, the giddy euphoria of the 50s was a stubborn attempt to deny […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Music Kills a Memory/Dead Soldier Walks Home
MUSIC KILLS A MEMORY at Club Lower Links DEAD SOLDIER WALKS HOME PUS at ‘Od’s Blood Theatre I think it’s time That we all start to think about getting by Without that need to go out and find Somebody to love. –Jim Carroll In the age of New Conservatism, when any sort of excess is […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Maceo Parker
If James Brown is indeed the godfather of soul, then he couldn’t have found a better consigliere than Maceo Parker, the alto saxist best known as leader of Brown’s J.B. Horns. Maceo’s sound practically oozes from the horn, and as straw boss he has been able to translate that to J.B.’s horn sections–which have left […]
Posted inFilm
Remember Amnesia?
ARCHANGEL *** (A must-see) Directed by Guy Maddin Written by George Toles and Maddin With Kyle McCulloch, Kathy Marykuca, Ari Cohen, Sarah Neville, Michael Gottli, and Victor Cowie. Amnesia is a subject we associate with film noir of the 40s and 50s, and social commentators tend to link its use in such films–with their gloomy […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mothers and Daughters
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS Piven Theatre Workshop Every woman, I suppose, has a quarrel with her mother. It may run very deep, as Joyce Piven says of hers with her mother, or not deep at all, as her daughter Shira says of theirs. In Mothers and Daughters (subtitled “A Cross Cultural Collage”) these two women try […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
My good friend and predecessor in this space, Ted Cox, has gone south, in a hurry, perhaps for good. Before leaving he advised me to tell you about myself: I was born in Chicago, Illinois. If I had my druthers I’d live in a temperate climate–like my sister in San Diego–and play golf 300 days […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Big Blonde
“Hazel Morse was a large, fair woman of the type that incites some men when they use the word ‘blonde’ to click their tongues and wag their heads roguishly,” says the opening sentence of Dorothy Parker’s 1929 story “Big Blonde.” Parker herself was small and dark; so is performer Shirley Anderson, who has adapted Parker’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Four years after the referendum, Sidney Zwick is still fighting the Northwestern/Evanston Research Park
After the 1986 referendum, Evanston officials figured the fuss over the Northwestern University/Evanston Research Park had ended. Four years ago, Evanstonians proved so enthusiastic about the 24-acre mixed-use development that they voted by a two-to-one margin to break ground on the site without delay, not even for an environmental-impact study. Today city officials contend that […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story Colorado district judge Connie Peterson dismissed a lawsuit in December filed by Vance Hewuse over the allegedly “atrocious” and “outrageous” initiation rites of a local disabled veterans auxiliary group, the National Order of Trench Rats. According to Hewuse, he was fed “worms” (actually spaghetti) while blindfolded and then introduced to a nude woman […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jeffrey Cohan, Mary Springfels, and David Schrader
Ever since violist de gamba Mary Springfels formed the Newberry Consort a decade ago, Chicago has been a magnet for practitioners (and fans) of early music. One of the latest recruits is Jeffrey Cohan, an internationally recognized, award-winning flutist. Cohan’s virtuosity and versatility will be introduced on this collaborative occasion, titled “Italy and France: Divisions […]