Cruising on the Debris Control I
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 26
Issue of Apr. 4 – 10, 1996
Posted inNews & Politics
Child’s Ploy
Tinkering with preschool programs may hurt the kids it’s supposed to help
Posted inNews & Politics
Believe the Children
To the editors: A letter from Believe the Children executive director Beth Vargo appeared in the Reader March 29, accusing me of misrepresenting her organization in my article “The Mouths of Babes” (March 15). Several points deserve further clarification. (1) There is nothing unethical about quoting from the public record, as Vargo absurdly suggested. She […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Female Deviations: Autobiographies of Desire
At a time when drag–once a radical affront to a heterosexist culture–has been appropriated by the mainstream and used to sell everything from movie tickets to basketball shoes, you have to cherish a performer like Neo-Futurist storyteller Anita Loomis. By crossing the other way and clothing herself in “male” attire–white shirt, tie, slacks, matching jacket–then […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story Former prostitute Jessi Winchester, 53, announced in February that she’d soon file papers declaring her candidacy for Congress from Nevada’s Second District. (According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, the highest-ranking elected ex-prostitute was mayor Sally Stanford, the mayor of Sausalito, California, in 1972.) And Mistress Madison, 32, a San Diego dominatrix who operates the […]
Posted inFilm
A Family Thing
Robert Duvall plays an Arkansas cracker in his 60s who discovers that his biological mother was black and drives to Chicago to meet his half-brother–a policeman played by James Earl Jones–and other newly discovered relatives. Directed by Richard Pearce from an original script by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton (who also collaborated on One […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Play’s the Thing
The Play’s the Thing, Court Theatre. A Broadway smash 70 years ago, P.G. Wodehouse’s adaptation of Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnar’s A Play in the Castle remains hugely satisfying light comedy: witty, unpretentious, cleverly constructed, and packed with delicious dialogue. Directed by Molnar’s countryman Laszlo Marton and featuring some of Chicago’s best classical actors, this tasty […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: Sunny Chapman’s strong medicine
In late 1994 Sunny Chapman’s boyfriend learned that the skin cancer he’d had years before had now spread to his brain, lungs, and bones. Though he had a bevy of symptoms, the extent of his illness went undiagnosed for months because he had no health insurance. As she searched for competent and cheap doctors to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Deeply Rooted Productions
Strong colors, unmistakable emotions, passionate political views, finely etched but whiplike movement: these are the ingredients of Kevin Iega Jeff’s choreography. Hired about a year and a half ago as the artistic director of Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre, he lost his job last fall when the 20-year-old company was disbanded. But the Brooklyn artist […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ned Rothenberg
NED ROTHENBERG The versatility of the jazz musician is something you don’t hear about all that much. Many jazzers find their niche–Dixieland, postbop, free improv–and settle in for the long haul. Reedist Ned Rothenberg vigorously cuts across specializations yet excels in any context. And there are lots of contexts. He’s a member of the evocative […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Three Sopranos
THREE SOPRANOS A distaff version of that commercial monstrosity called “The Three Tenors” was inevitable I suppose. Fortunately, in assembling “The Three Sopranos” local impresario and Russophile C. Geraldine Freund hasn’t deferred to star power. Instead she’s recruited prima donnas from estimable Russian ballet and operatic troupes who are relatively unknown in the West. (Freund […]