DANCING WITH THE PAST, Factory Theater Company, and FACTORY MATCH GAME ’99, Factory Theater Company. The Factory Theater’s first productions since taking control of the space formerly known as Footsteps are very different–one is a serious play about three sisters coping with their mother’s death, the other a camp homage to a daytime TV show. […]
Tag: Vol. 28 No. 33
Issue of May. 20 – 26, 1999
Posted inArts & Culture
Jim O’Rourke
JIM O’ROURKE That Jim O’Rourke’s two concerts this week–which he says will be his last in Chicago this year–are going to be completely different from one another won’t surprise his fans: O’Rourke’s resistance to doing the same thing twice has become somewhat of a calling card. On Friday, opening for tropicalia pioneer Tom Ze (see […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Days of the Week
Friday 5/21 – Thursday 5/27 MAY By Cara Jepsen 21 FRIDAY Author Vikram Seth comes to Hyde Park tonight to read from his latest, An Equal Music. The plot centers on a violinist and pianist who fall in love over Beethoven: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, girl starts to go deaf. He’ll start at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Fandom Menace
THE FANDOM MENACE, Argos Agency, at ImprovOlympic. Two years ago Jason R. Chin and company produced a popular three-act version of the Star Wars trilogy that might still be running today if it hadn’t been closed for copyright infringement. Now, in the midst of the latest Lucasfilm media blitz, the Argos Agency is back with […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Corey Harris
COREY HARRIS Since arriving on the national stage in the mid-90s, guitarist Corey Harris has been a leading light in the revival of acoustic blues–but in the last few years he’s also steadily expanded his vision of what that means. The liner notes to his latest CD, Greens From the Garden (Alligator), declare the blues […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Haymarket Eight
Derek Goldman and Jessica Thebus’s recounting of a shameful chapter in Chicago history is agitprop at its best, portraying the martyrdom of five innocent workers whose crime was a belief in the eight-hour workday. Part of Steppenwolf Theatre’s Arts Exchange Program, this absorbing 90-minute depiction of labor’s fight for justice focuses on a single day–May […]
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The Passion Follies
For the next two weeks, Corn Productions’ campy revisions of the New Testament will run in repertory as the last shows in their Andersonville theater, slated for demolition and condo-bondage in June. It’s a fitting swan song for the storefront space, where so many classic stories have been transformed. In “The Passion Follies,” the Tiff […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Playground Gothic/Sun-Times Performs a Flip
By Michael Miner Playground Gothic When Shel Silverstein died last week, the Tribune carried a tribute. “What child,” the editorial page wondered, “wouldn’t like a poet who advises, ‘If you have to dry the dishes, and you drop one on the floor, maybe they won’t let you dry the dishes anymore?’” A smashed dish is […]
Posted inMusic
Metal, Machines, Music
Metal, Machines, Music Build it and they will come, or so they say, but while that might be true for condominium complexes and the occasional baseball field, it doesn’t necessarily hold for what local artist and computer whiz Robert Ray calls “electromechanical art”–a loose genre that includes elaborate, unwieldy machines-cum-art objects, art involving computer interfaces, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In March Frenchman Richard Moureau upset Brit Terry Burrows in the European Window Cleaning Championship in Paris by wetting and wiping three standard panes in 14.31 seconds. Moreau may have set a new world record, but it cannot be verified because a jurisdictional dispute between the International Window Cleaning Association and France’s National […]
Posted inMusic
Something Like the Real Thing
Daktaris Soul Explosion (Desco) Lee Fields Let’s Get a Groove On (Desco) By Douglas Wolk What’s an insatiable record collector to do when there’s nothing left to collect? When the first-rate stuff has been canonized, the stars’ lesser efforts reissued, the ephemera and one-hit wonders compiled? When even the dreggiest rip-offs have been dredged up […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: saving the house that genius built
The deal hasn’t gone down yet, but it looks like architect Paul Schweikher’s home and studio won’t be bulldozed to make way for an expanded water treatment plant after all. The village of Schaumburg is about to fork over a half million dollars to buy this little-known treasure, rescuing it from the clutches of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rachel’s Love
Rachel’s Love, Redmoon Theater, at the Athenaeum Theatre. Anyone who says that theater is a dying art has never seen a Redmoon show. This troupe’s eye-opening pastiches of styles and influences–encompassing everything from commedia dell’arte slapstick to Javanese shadow puppets to ancient Greek masks–make it an unusual commodity in Chicago. The company’s unconventional approach to […]