It happened while I was painting this “mural” that says “subway scholar” in huge 16-foot-by-as-high-as-I-can-reach letters. It spans an eighth-mile city block across the backs of four factory buildings, two and a half stories up, along one of the major veins of the el before it plunges into the subway downtown. So if you’re on […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 32
Issue of May. 19 – 25, 1994
Posted inArts & Culture
Caricature Assassination
LIBRA Steppenwolf Theatre Company THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE Shattered Globe Theatre Happiness is not based on oneself, it does not consist of a small home, of taking and getting. Happiness is taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal world, and the world in general. –Lee Harvey Oswald, in a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
A coyote took up residence in Chicago’s Norwood Park neighborhood this spring. It’s hard to say how long it was there before anyone noticed it, but once someone did all hell broke loose. In mid-April Chicago television cameras and newspaper reporters descended, and the coyote graciously cooperated, posing with alert ears and bright eyes in […]
Posted inFilm
Death Becomes Him
** BACKBEAT (Worth seeing) Directed by Iain Softley Written by Softley, Stephen Ward, and Michael Thomas With Stephen Dorff, Sheryl Lee, Ian Hart, Gary Bakewell, Chris O’Neill, and Scot Williams. Those somehow unacquainted with the vast canon of biographical material on the Beatles should note that in 1960 there were five of them. Stuart Sutcliffe, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lies, Damn Lies, and Bad Cigars; Anais Nin: To Be a Woman
LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND BAD CIGARS at Dancetech The two are worlds apart: Samuel Clemens, 19th-century American humorist; Anais Nin, 20th-century French writer of erotica. But they do have one thing in common: each intends to discover the truth. What’s amazing is that their quests should take them down such different paths. In his homespun, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fugees
Made up of Wyclef Jean and Prakazrel Michel, a pair of Haitian refugees–hence the moniker–and New Jerseyite Lauryn Hill, this hip-hop trio has been saddled with the stupid label “alternative rap” merely because it doesn’t espouse casual violence, sexism, or misogyny. The Fugees’ syllable-cramming, dancehall-inflected rap style ain’t that far off the genre’s well-beaten path, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cool and Collected: singular artworks from Indonesia
Chet Witek bought his first piece of Indonesian art before he had even been to Indonesia. The wonderfully bizarre mask from Bali has huge fierce eyes painted in concentric circles, with long tufts of hair attached to strings hanging below. “It was a wonderful discovery–something new to my eyes,” he says. Soon Witek, a sculptor, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mikis Theodorakis
Best known in America for his movie scores (Zorba the Greek, Z), Mikis Theodorakis’s rep back home rests as much on his political activities as on his music. Tortured and imprisoned (1967), then exiled (1970) for resistance to the 1967-’74 military junta, he later served in parliament and as a cabinet minister in the Greek […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gender Confusion
In my review of Hamlet! (May 13) I referred to actress Alexandra Billings as a “drag queen.” Billings has informed me that she is a transsexual and not a drag queen. My sincere apologies. Adam Langer
Posted inArts & Culture
Little Voice Little Appreciated/The View From New York/Blackman’s Victory
Producer Leonard Soloway and his partners closed the New York production of Steppenwolf’s The Rise and Fall of Little Voice after one short week.
Posted inNews & Politics
Medical self help: building a clinic from the ground up
It’s a typical day for Carmen Velasquez, executive director of the Alivio Medical Center. Her phone rings madly as she searches through a neatly stacked pile of papers on her desk, looking for a document explaining how much it will cost to expand the center at 2355 S. Western. She’s talking to this reporter after […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Heart of a Dog
The shtick of the New Crime troupe–roiling emotions broadcast by a primary palette of pained expressions, virtuoso choreography married to Jef Bek’s crashy, bashy percussion and cartoony keyboards, an oxygen-sucking pace–has never been so overwhelmingly packed together as in its current offering, Heart of a Dog. The show’s been playing for a while, but it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama
Who is the 14th Dalai Lama? Spiritual leader of all Tibetans? International statesman who speaks out against political oppressors? Fund-raiser for the refugee Tibetan communities in northern India and elsewhere? Guru to the stars? All these facets of his personality and more are touched on in this slickly produced hour-long 1993 documentary by Mickey Lemle. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Requiem for a Teenage Cross-Dresser
Living was never simple for Quona Clark. Dying was easier than you’d think.
Posted inArts & Culture
Look Back in Anger
LOOK BACK IN ANGER Bailiwick Repertory For England 1956 was not a happy year. Wartime privation lingered on–rationing of certain foods, for example, continued up until 1952–and factory employment dwindled just as hordes of young men, many of them traumatized, returned home in search of the domestic dream that had sustained them. Amid this national […]