Posted inNews & Politics

Yellow Ribbons

“Look,” she says, “There’s another one of those yellow ribbons.” They’re in the supermarket parking lot, man and wife, a cold and blustery Chicago day. Sixty years of this kind of weather toughens a man, makes him a little less tolerant. He turns, hands in coat pockets, and takes in a faded Ford Escort with […]

Posted inArts & Culture

MacArthur Foundation Readies Arts Report: Will Daley Be Embarrassed?/More Gallery Space at the Cultural Center/Art of Africa: Is International Expo Prejudiced?/Lobo a Go-Go: Dough From Ohio/Buffalo’s Box-Office Stampede

Why can’t Shona sculpture like this get into the International Art Expo? It’s “airport art,” says a member of the selection committee, but gallery owner Nicole Smith disagrees: “The only thing I can think of is prejudice.”

Posted inArts & Culture

The Poetic Theatre Project

THE POETIC THEATRE PROJECT Saratoga Company at the Space on Foster Chicago’s theatrical conundrum used to be how to marry performance art and theater, a concern imported from New York. But in recent years we’ve developed our own little homegrown hybrid form: performance art has been dropped in favor of performance poetry. The Poetic Theatre […]

Posted inArts & Culture

The Work of Art

TOM FRIEDMAN at the Rezac Gallery It must have taken Tom Friedman thousands of chews to meld individual pieces of Bazooka gum into the marble-smooth softball-sized sphere on display in a corner of the Rezac Gallery. This untitled piece paradoxically combines refinement and irreverence, surprising us with its use of a pop-culture substance to create […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Much Ado About Nothing

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Shakespeare Repertory I always find myself laughing harder at the few comic bits Shakespeare uses to lighten up his serious plays than I do at any of the Bard’s comedies. Part of the reason, I’m sure, is that bits like Polonius’s foolish blatherings in Hamlet or the Fool’s bubble-bursting quips in […]

Posted inArts & Culture

American Ballet Theatre

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE at the Civic Center for Performing Arts February 12-14 Beautiful dancing is seductive. Watching American Ballet Theatre perform Jiri Kylian’s Sinfonietta is a pleasure: the dancers’ lightness and ease in Sinfonietta’s lightning-fast leaps and changes of direction inspire a sense of wonder. Joop Caboort’s warm lighting and Walter Nobbe’s idyllic costumes and […]

Posted inArts & Culture

All About Bodies

UNIDENTIFIED HUMAN REMAINS AND THE TRUE NATURE OF LOVE Halsted Theatre Centre I know I’m expected to take the long view on Brad Fraser’s Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love: to look past the shocking bits to the sober message about How We Live Today. But the fact is, the shocking bits […]

Posted inNews & Politics

The Straight Dope

Everywhere I go these days I see yellow ribbons tied around oak trees, light poles, small animals, etc. These supposedly are to show concern for our troops in the Middle East. However, as I recall, in the song (you know, “Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree, blah blah blah”) the guy in […]

Posted inNews & Politics

The City File

Hey, Bossy, did you see this week’s Straight Dope? The state Department of Energy and Natural Resources has given the downstate city of Princeton $31,500 to start turning old newspapers into animal bedding for local dairy farmers at the rate of 110 tons a year. “The so-called ‘property tax revolt’… is in fact a tame […]