ANY PLACE BUT HERE Latino Chicago Theater Company Somewhere in New Jersey Chucky sits, beer in hand, before a barely functional television, staring at it without really seeing anything. His wife, Lydia, dozes next to him–working double shifts at the factory leaves her little off-duty time for anything but sleep. Tonight, however, she thinks that […]
Tag: Vol. 22 No. 18
Issue of Feb. 11 – 17, 1993
Posted inNews & Politics
Bring Your Asses to the Masses
To the editors: Gee whiz! An old-fashioned newspaper crusade. Let’s once again wallow in pathos and self-incrimination. I think Mr. Miner has been overintoxicated with Clintonmania. The two Sun-Times features he praised in his Hot Type column for January 22 are examples of the excesses of gooey, liberal journalism. Why pick Dantrell Davis? The answer […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Curlew
Under the clearheaded leadership of composer-saxophonist George Cartwright, Curlew is a tight, exciting jazz-rock ensemble with ideas bursting out of every corner. The typical number consists of a fairly catchy melody that periodically explodes into a burst of improvisation and demonstrates that putting serious ideas on top of a beat doesn’t mean having to sacrifice […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Legend of Buster Smith
In the inner cities of the U.S. and in the capitals of Europe, where pool checkers is taken as seriously as chess, the quiet bachelor postal clerk from Chicago was known as the best American who ever played the game.
Posted inNews & Politics
Further Discussion of the Shining Path
To the editors: On reading “Defender of the Shining Path” in your January 22 issue, I was confronted with the thought that the Reader may print news but not always news fit to print. Of all the people who are professors, or who could or should be professors, how was Bill Martin picked for a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reel Life: in the hut of a Mayan shaman
Filmmaker Peter Thompson and anthropologist William Hanks met each other swimming in Lakeview’s Gill Park pool in 1986. Four years and thousands of laps later, they ended up in side-by-side hammocks on the edge of the jungle in Mexico’s Yucatan. Their quarters, an eight-by-ten-foot mud hut shared with a Maya family of ten, required some […]
Posted inNews & Politics
When Good Art Happens in Bad Places
To the editors: Regarding “Specimens From the New World,” January 29. Was it art or was it natural history? Visitors coming to the Field Museum on January 16 or 17 who had not read about Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco’s installation performance ahead of time, or who missed the museum’s handout, or who did not […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hellcab
Originally entitled Hellcab Does Christmas and marketed as a hip antiholiday holiday show, Will Kern’s incredibly black comedy about a day in the life of a poor beleaguered cab driver was never, strictly speaking, a holiday show. Even though Kern’s slice-of-life play is set on Christmas Eve, the when of his story doesn’t matter nearly […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Creation of the World and Other Business
THE CREATION OF THE WORLD AND OTHER BUSINESS Avenue Theatre It’s a drag: most of the great playwrights of our time have written only a few great plays. That’s especially bad news for theater companies that would like to put on a Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller play but realize that all the classics have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mens
Stephanie Shaw reviews Chicago Theatre Company’s Mens, by Sarah V. Finney.
Posted inArts & Culture
Jayhawks
There’s been some controversy over the production of the Jayhawks’ third album, Hollywood Town Hall. George Drakoulias, who created the crisp retro of the two Block Crowes records, is said to have neutered the Jayhawks’ country-rock sound in an attempt to turn them into similarly platinum stars. But here’s a distinction: The Crowes transparently retread […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Midsize Theater Search Narrows to Two Sites/Worry Less, Sleep More: Harriet Ross Takes Leave From Joseph Holmes/Too Cool for Camels
Harriet Ross, the stalwart associate artistic director of the Joseph Holmes Dance Theatre, is tired of the struggle. “It’s no longer about how well you do your craft, but how well you do the grants game.”
Posted inNews & Politics
Can we get some rape counseling on the west side, please?
On October 1 a 13-year-old girl walking along a residential street in the far-west-side neighborhood of Austin was abducted at gunpoint, dragged into an abandoned building, and raped. Over the next two months news of that crime was followed by reports of seven other rapes in the same neighborhood. A serial rapist was on the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Painting Churches
PAINTING CHURCHES Theatre du Jour at Heartland Cafe Studio Theatre One of the hardest things for a writer is to present an honest picture of his or her own family: there’s a natural tendency to skew facts in order to show oneself in the best possible light. Too often audiences are forced to sit through […]