Bailiwick Repertorys Directors Festival 1992, produced by Cecilie Keenan, offers productions ranging from plays and musicals to performance art and monologues; some are well-established classic and contemporary selections, while others are brand-new pieces. They’re mounted by a slew of directors, most of them little known, who are looking for an avenue to showcase their work […]
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 28
Issue of Apr. 23 – 29, 1992
Posted inNews & Politics
Farmland Folly
To the editors: Robert Heuer’s March 27 article on agricultural land conversion offers convincing evidence that many of our region’s most fertile crop lands are at risk for future use in agriculture. Notwithstanding the generous incomes obtainable through trading agricultural commodities, the crops that provide much of our food and most of Illinois’ exports can […]
Posted inArts & Culture
An Uncommon Woman
SHIRLEY GIRL! Cheryl Trykv at Live Bait Theater Most obvious about Cheryl Trykv’s Shirley Girl!, playing late nights at Live Bait Theater, is its hipness. Trykv is cool, clever, and cute. But Shirley Girl! does more than strut: it reveals Trykv as a writer of uncommon talent. And as a performer willing to take the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story Charges were filed against Mineola, New York, plumber Joseph Conretta, 31, in February for an idea he executed in a women’s rest room at Nassau Community College. Conretta had prepared a low-rise wooden box and placed it on the floor so that women using the sinks and mirrors would have to stand on […]
Posted inMusic
Ajaramu’s Sound in Rhythm
The name of the ensemble is Sound in Rhythm, empashizes Ajaramu; the interplay of percussion has been the heart of his concerts of recent years, with horn players added just to flavor the stew. Ajaramu is a tireless champion of the power of the drums. A veteran of the bop era, he was house drummer […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Breast Cancer: Why Blame Men?
To the editors: It is understandable that a woman diagnosed with breast cancer would feel scared, upset, and angry [“The Woman Killer,” April 3]. I’ve just completed seven months of breast cancer treatment–surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation–so I know very well how it feels. It is inexcusably infantile, however, to thrash about (as some of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Show Host/Birth of a Frenchman
THE SHOW HOST Teatro Vista and Victory Gardens Theater Victory Gardens Studio Theater Television has no country. It’s easily translated from one language into another–the philosophies that go into and pour out of the set are so instantly recognizable and widely accepted that TV has become a culture unto itself. Take Teatro Vista and Victory […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Baal/Dirty Dreams of a Clean-Cut Kid
BAAL Sliced Bread Productions at Club Lower Links In rethinking Bertolt Brecht’s Baal for a contemporary audience, playwright-director William Bullion states that he sees “the main character as a 1919 Jim Morrison.” The rock poet who gave us “Riders on the Storm” seems a singularly appropriate model for an updated version of Brecht’s first play: […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Our Methodical Critics
To the editors: Excuse me, but doesn’t the Reader have any editors to monitor when their writers aren’t doing their jobs? Why is Bill Wyman, who supposedly is your rock writer, ending his reviews with digs at the Sun-Times and Jae-Ha Kim [“Vying for the Pantheon,” March 13]? Who cares what he thinks about the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Joy of Pain
SPUNK: THREE TALES BY ZORA NEALE HURSTON Goodman Studio Theatre Whenever I sit in an audience to review a show I take copious notes, and intellectual-sounding terms like “juxtaposition,” “intentional artificiality,” and “representational/presentational” always seem to creep into my notebook. I have a master’s degree, after all. Watching “Spunk” in the Goodman Studio Theatre, I […]
Posted inMusic
Rory Block, hot and cold
“Acoustic blues,” said the gent at the door of Buddy Guy’s Legends a few Wednesdays ago when a prospective customer asked him what Rory Block’s show was going to be like. “It’s just a girl singing.” That was hardly fair. Vocalist-guitarist Rory Block grew up in the folk-drenched Greenwich Village of the early 60s. She […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Debility of Rights
To the editors: Thank you for the article on Jeanne Bishop [April 10]. It was a sensitive, informative probe into our prejudiced, self-serving government. It exposed our Bill of Rights for what it truly is: conditional, debilitated and fleeting. I hope this article will spur readers on to become involved. Exercise your rights or like […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Miracle Stain Remover
An Inquiry Into the Process by Which Saddle Soap Gets the Uck Out
Posted inArts & Culture
The Capitol Steps
Remember Chuck Percy? The former Republican senator from Illinois may have been ejected from office by the voters, but he left at least one enduring legacy: the Capitol Steps musical comedy group, cofounded by Percy aide Elaina Newport to entertain at a 1981 Christmas party in the senator’s office. “We had thought of putting on […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reverse Sexism
To the editors: Carol Moseley Braun [March 6] suffers from a deficiency noted in many politicians: she has a complete lack of class. In late January of ’92 she flashed her 1,000-watt smile and stuck the knife in Bill Clinton, saying to Channel Two’s Mike Flannery that women would remember the Flowers affair. C’mon girl, […]