Bailiwick Rep can’t afford to have another Party, so playwright David Dillon is looking for new backers.
Tag: Vol. 22 No. 40
Issue of Jul. 15 – 21, 1993
Salvation Intermission Damnation
SALVATION INTERMISSION DAMNATION Tangent Theatre at Puszh Studios In his first works for the stage, filmmaker William Haugse offers two one-acts that consider the secular aspects of salvation and damnation–potentially intriguing meditations on age-old questions. Unfortunately, the plays ramble in too many different directions to offer much of the insight that they are so obviously […]
Dead Alive
New highs (or lows) in free-flowing gore and nonstop, torrential splatter are reached in this modest-budget comic horror extravaganza from New Zealand by Peter Jackson, originally and more appropriately known as Braindead. The standard-issue plot, with all the usual steals from Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, emanates from the poisonous bite of a […]
University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra
In a college town an outstanding, largely amateur ensemble like the University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra can be a source of civic pride. But in Chicago it’s the professional orchestras that command the lion’s share of attention. Yet on any given day the U. of C.’s resident orchestra–or, for that matter, its counterpart at Northwestern–is […]
Valley of the Dolls/Act of Translation
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS Id/Ego Productions at Avenue Theater ACT OF TRANSLATION StreetSigns at Edgewater Theatre Center While I wouldn’t want all theater to be verbatim spoofs of old movies or television programs, there’s no denying that done right–and Id/Ego Productions’ Valley of the Dolls is–such parodies can be hilarious strolls down memory lane, making […]
Delivered Vacant
This is the first documentary feature about gentrification I’m aware of, and it’s an uncommonly good one–made by School of the Art Institute graduate Nora Jacobson over eight years in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the neighborhood where she still lives. Alert and lucid without a trace of sentimentality, she focuses on a number of related […]
Peter Gabriel’s performance art rock
Peter Gabriel is an artist obsessed with duality. In his concerts at the Rosemont Horizon last weekend he moved from isolation to community and union, and traveled between contrasting realms–earth and water, male and female, circles and squares, African and European culture. Of equal importance, however, was a duality Gabriel probably never intended to be […]
The Straight Dope
The other day we were thinking about sex. Not much new there, you may think. But this time we got to wondering how this charming custom got started. How did a little sexless critter split into two new critters, one with an archeolingam, the other a protoyoni? [Primeval reproductive apparatus, for you rustics. –C.A.] Wonderful […]
His 20th Century
HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Jean-Luc Godard With Jean-Luc Godard. With Gerard Philipe, Lilli Palmer, Anouk Aimee, Gerard Sety, Lila Kedrova, Lea Padovani, Denise Vernac, and Lino Ventura. MONTPARNASSE 19 ** (Worth seeing) Directed and written by Jacques Becker If you want to be “up to the minute” about cinema, there’s […]
The City File
“Meteor watchers this year are in for a bonus” the night of August 11-12, writes William A. Becker in the Chicago Astronomical Society’s Cosmic Quarterly (July, August, and September). “The parent comet believed to have spawned the debris trail that crosses our planet’s orbit in space has revisited the inner Solar System again after more […]
Light as a Feather
EILEEN WALTER-GREENE: A WING AND A PRAYER at Artemisia, through July 31 After seeing Eileen Walter-Greene’s show at Artemisia I went to the library to learn more about the Cooper’s hawk; Walter-Greene had been given a wing by friends, and has made it the subject of her recent paintings and drawings. In a book on […]
Hitting the Music-Video Big Time
Blackball Films/Founder Bitsy Biron and producer David Agosto
God’s Trombones
GOD’S TROMBONES ETA Creative Arts Foundation It was appropriate that James Weldon Johnson looked to the sermons preached in Southern Baptist churches for a poetical form to reflect the collective character of his race. The powerful and euphonious words of God’s Trombones, first published in 1927, evoke a church that truly was a sanctuary in […]
Tall Tales/Rage of Innocents/Stylistic Changes
Tall Tales When we were no more than four years old, angels used to fly through our bedroom window some nights, snatch us up, and hurtle us about the room. Then they dropped us awed and dizzy back into bed. Our memory of these visits is so exact we have absolutely no reason not to […]