Screen Test Number Two The camera never moves as it frames the face of a man playing a woman auditioning for the part of Esmeralda in a movie an offscreen speaker describes as a remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The speaker, who’s directing what’s both a screen test and a parody of a […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 50
Issue of Sep. 17 – 23, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
Music Notes: Gershwin’s ghost
“I blame my parents,” says 39-year-old pianist Kevin Cole about his fixation on George Gershwin. “I was seven years old, growing up in Bay City, Michigan, and they gave me permission to stay up late and watch TV.” Though Rhapsody in Blue–the composer’s film biography–played fast and loose with the facts, the music hooked him: […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rhinoceros Theater Festival
Rhinoceros Theater Festival This annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music takes its name from surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s use of the term “rhinocerontic” (it means real big). Traditionally dedicated to presenting new, sometimes innovative work by Chicago performing-arts groups, the fest this year also features artists from Germany’s Freiwild Festival. The Rhinoceros Theater […]
Posted inMusic
Carol Sloane
CAROL SLOANE When Carol Sloane sings, she connects inspiration and respiration: it’s as if she were exhaling music. As effortlessly as she draws breath, Sloane imbues a tune with a lifetime of nuance, relying on flawless intonation to sell both the original melody and her gentle but welcome departures from it. Her voice has not […]
Posted inNews & Politics
To Catch a Thief
On the trail of the embezzling business manager at In These Times
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: I’m writing in response to your column about “gerbiling.” You stated that you don’t have to be a gay man to do it, and it’s impossible anyway. Your first point, that you don’t have to be gay, is absolutely correct: anybody with a butthole can theoretically do it, not just gay men. You […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sucker
Sucker, at Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. Constructed as a series of overlapping vignettes, Pat McKenna’s giddy, absurd one-man comedy Sucker intertwines the lives of a dozen characters passing their last days on earth, threatened by a gigantic black hole. But rather than feeding our premillennial anxieties with ghastly visions of havoc-wreaking asteroids, volcanoes, and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jackie & Jenn’s Whirlwind Crimestopping Spree
JACKIE & JENN’S WHIRLWIND CRIMESTOPPING SPREE, at Live Bait Theater. Jackie Volk and Jennifer Biddle, two writer-performers, have paired up to perform six monologues about criminal activity and moral sneakiness, addressing such subjects as child molestation, arson, street violence, and family quarrels. Director Jay Paul Skelton does a workmanlike job of blending their strikingly different […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Police Scanner
Monday, August 31, 10:40 PM 822: You can 19-Paul this whole episode. Thanks to all the 30-sector cars, 20-sector cars, the supervising car– Unidentified caller number one: Thank the academy and my producer and– unidentified caller number two: Anheuser-Busch! Dispatcher: Thanks for all the help over there for 822, ten-four. Friday, September 4, 2:50 PM […]