BRUNDIBAR Czech composer Hans Krasa wrote the children’s opera Brundibar in 1938 for a Jewish orphanage in Prague, but it didn’t have its premiere until 1943, in an attic theater at Theresienstadt–a concentration camp north of the city where inmates were encouraged to pursue the arts, and which the Nazis used as a showcase to […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 28
Issue of Apr. 13 – 19, 2000
Posted inNews & Politics
Old and in the Way
I just read Jack Helbig’s review of that play Pond 7 [Section Two, March 17]. I saw the play last night and it was really good. Guy Jackson was so good in it and had such beautiful writing. I could listen to Guy read the phone book and be in love. But Jack Helbig’s a […]
Posted inFilm
City Without Tears
The River Rating **** Masterpiece Directed by Tsai Ming-liang Written by Tsai, Yang Bi-ying, and Tsai Yi-chun With Lee Kang-sheng, Miao Tien, Lu Hsiao-ling, Chen Shiang-chyi, Chen Chao-yung, and Ann Hui. By Jonathan Rosenbaum It’s difficult to know how to approach a film as strange and shocking as The River–Tsai Ming-liang’s third feature, playing this […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music listings
Music listings are compiled by LAURA KOPEN and RENALDO MIGALDI (classical, fairs and festivals) from information available Tuesday. We advise calling ahead for confirmation. Please send listings information, in-cluding a phone number for use by the public, to Reader Music Listings, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611, or send a fax to 312-828-9926, or send E-mail […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Citizen Langlois
Citizen Langlois Edgardo Cozarinsky’s 68-minute documentary about Henri Langlois, the idiosyncratic cofounder of the French Cinematheque and spiritual father of the French New Wave, was awarded the 1995 Forum prize at the Berlin gathering of the International Federation of Film Critics; the jury (of which I was a member) cited it as “a brilliant essay […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Ghost Bus
To the editors: I’d like to add a suggestion to Dan Johnson-Weinberger’s April 7 letter about improvements that the CTA ought to make. The transit agency should correct an error that has existed in its bus-schedule database at least since the beginning of this year. The #146 bus begins at Berwyn and Broadway and travels […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Material Girls
Local chapters of the American Sewing Guild strutt their stuff.
Posted inArts & Culture
Neo! A Matrix Musical
Neo! A Matrix Musical, Bulldog 17 Productions, at Live Bait Theater. There’s a lesson here for fledgling theater companies searching for a late-night hit: you don’t need a lot of resources to put butts in seats. You don’t even need a good script or a competent director or a talented cast; all it takes is […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Has Anyone Seen Clyde Angel?
The mystery surrounding an outsider artist raises troubling questions about a market where eccentricity can be money in the bank.
Posted inNews & Politics
A ‘Baum for the Spirit
I avoided seeing Boys Don’t Cry for months, got the feeling it was “Movie of the Week” propaganda or something like that. I remember reading about the story in the press when it actually happened and thought a movie about the subject silly. When I actually saw the film I was taken aback by the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tri-Factor
TRI-FACTOR Though Chicagoans have come to expect provocative, even bizarre overhauls of jazz instrumentation from AACM groups, this setup–Billy Bang plays the violin, Hamiet Bluiett the baritone sax, and Kahil El’Zabar percussion–will still probably raise a few eyebrows. I haven’t heard the rarely convened group’s only recording, last year’s The Power (on the German label […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories Another radical idea from Canada: In March, British Columbia supreme court judge Glen Parrett overturned Mike Frazier’s November 20 victory in the mayoral election for the village of McBride, ruling in a 28-page decision that Frazier did not deserve the office because he had knowingly passed out false campaign literature attacking opponent Maurice […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Compagnie Marie Chouinard
Compagnie Marie Chouinard Perhaps most dancers and choreographers fetishize the body, but Canadian Marie Chouinard’s approach is radically fetishistic, whether she’s painting breasts blue or attaching nails to the body of the half-human creature in L’apres-midi d’un faune (seen here in 1995, the last time her company was in Chicago). The 11 dances in “Les […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Gun in Every Pocket
Dear editor: It should not surprise us that, as Mike Sula points out, at the very moment the state of Illinois is seeking to disarm potential victims via the misnamed Safe Neighborhoods Act, there are “Pistol Packin’ Pols” (April 7) in Chicago who carry concealed weapons to protect themselves. Even Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, whom […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Voyages
Voyages Emmanuel Finkiel’s meticulous and quietly affecting 1999 debut feature follows three elderly Jewish women, all survivors of World War II, as they drift through the modern world. The film unfolds as a trilogy of disconcerting emotional journeys: during a bus ride to Auschwitz the elegant Rivka (Shulamit Adar) suddenly reveals to her husband that […]