Bridging Continents: Connecting African and Latin American Art at Aldo Castillo Gallery, through April 30 It’s long been known that Picasso’s key breakthrough toward cubism–1907’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon–owes at least as much to his study of African sculpture as to the late works of Cezanne. Yet most African-influenced works seem much weaker than the real […]
Tag: Vol. 24 No. 25
Issue of Mar. 30 – Apr. 5, 1995
Posted inArts & Culture
Stories on Stage
David Sedaris has a wicked wit. Best known for his hilarious holiday story about working as one of Santa’s elves at Macy’s (which NPR now plays annually), this former Chicagoan has a gift for finding the dark cloud behind every silver lining. His stories are narrated by bitter, unreliable characters who reveal more than they […]
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Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
When critic Arlene Croce published a review in the New Yorker of Bill T. Jones’s Still/Here without seeing the dance, a scandal ignited. Jones, who is HIV-positive, led workshops in ten cities for people living with terminal illnesses, and their words and video images are part of the piece. Croce wrote that Jones’s pity mongering […]
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Cyrus Chestnut
Like current media darling Jacky Terrasson, pianist Cyrus Chestnut has spent time in singer Betty Carter’s group, his distinctive trio relies on interaction with a standout drummer–Clarence Penn to Terrasson’s Leon Parker–and he enjoys reworking classic material. But over the course of two superb albums the 33-year-old Chestnut has proven that he has no need […]
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Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
An amiable, partially contrived documentary by Mika Kaurismaki (1994) in which Jim Jarmusch joins Sam Fuller as Fuller returns to a Brazilian rain forest where 40 years earlier he scouted locations and shot 16-millimeter footage for a Hollywood adventure story that was never made. What keeps this fun and watchable are Fuller and Jarmusch holding […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Signs from God: drawing the line between church and state
Wayne Polak had no idea his depiction of the stations of the cross would raise such a ruckus. His work consists of 14 street signs, arranged along the sidewalk outside a Gold Coast church, in which Christ, as Sun-Times reporter Andrew Herrmann wrote, is depicted as a “dot-headed, fingerless, footless universal man” making his “final […]
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Luc Houtkamp
A dazzling exponent of extended technique, Dutch improviser Luc Houtkamp provides an exhilarating exploration of sounds and how to make them. The Songlines, a definitive 1991 solo saxophone recording, highlights many of his favored tacks, including adventurous, often breathtaking overblowing and circular breathing. The album’s title piece dissects a lengthy upper-register squeal with sour decay, […]
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Music Notes: Gene Coleman’s melting pot
“I want to make it easier for people to discover that there are things happening in music and the arts outside of what’s covered by radio and the other media,” says composer and musician Gene Coleman. He’s developed a reputation in recent years for arranging performances of new and avant-garde music in such unconventional venues […]
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A Normal Part
The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me Bailiwick Repertory A Chocolate Sandwich Footsteps Theatre Company If contemporary gay playwrights are to be believed, every gay man’s coming-out story is the same: innocently gender-confused childhood, heart-stopping stolen kiss in high school, parental reprimand and disapproval, escape to a liberal urban mecca, indulgence in residual self-loathing acted out […]
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The Straight Dope
What happened to the astronauts after the Challenger explosion? Everyone assumes they were blown to pieces, but about six months after the accident I saw an article saying the emergency oxygen systems for the astronauts had been manually activated, meaning some or all of them had survived the explosion. I also remember the tanks had […]
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River North Gallery Goes South/Power Play Behind the Scenes at Steppenwolf
Gallery owner Ken Saunders gives in to the hostile climate.
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North Star
North Star, Victory Gardens Theater. A hostile remark from a cabdriver triggers memories for Aurelia Taylor–memories of the long-ago summer of 1960, when her small southern hometown joined in the civil rights demonstrations proliferating in larger cities. Of her father and mother, desperately trying to protect the children from immediate danger as well as from […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Hey, Governor Jim, didja hear the one about the Czech politician? “I think a lot of Republicans look at me as an eccentric, an aberration–the king’s fool,” says west suburban Republican, Czech American, and new state treasurer Judy Baar Topinka to Jennifer Halperin in Illinois Issues (March). “What people forget is that the king’s fool […]
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Dave & Chuck’s Contract With America
Dave & Chuck’s Contract With America, at the Body Politic Theatre. “Truth in Comedy” is the name of the improv handbook Kim “Howard” Johnson wrote with ImprovOlympians Charna Halpern and Del Close. But even though Johnson nominally directed Dave & Chuck’s Contract With America, truth is one of the qualities missing from Dave Neiman and […]