The third–and by far the most ambitious–edition of this annual celebration of the art of improvisational comedy brings together improv artists from around the U.S. and overseas. Festival producers Frances Callier and Jonathan Pitts have ensured that Chicago troupes are well represented: local companies participating include the Second City, ImprovOlympic, ComedySportz, Schadenfreude, and many more. […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 30
Issue of Apr. 27 – May. 3, 2000
Posted inArts & Culture
Ghazal
GHAZAL Over the course of three albums as Ghazal, Indian sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan and Iranian kamancheh master Kayhan Kalhor have explored the traits their native musical traditions share thanks to travelers along the legendary Asian trade route known as the Silk Road–among them microtonality and an emphasis on thematic improvisation. Their first two records […]
Posted inArts & Culture
His Majestie’s Clerkes and the Chicago Baroque Ensemble
HIS MAJESTIE’S CLERKES AND THE CHICAGO BAROQUE ENSEMBLE Anne Heider, director of the Chicago-based a cappella choir His Majestie’s Clerkes, first learned about Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s C-major Te Deum–an elaborate arrangement of a Christian hymn of thanksgiving–more than two decades ago, in a graduate course on Baroque performance practice. Unlike the French composer’s D-major Te Deum, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mouse on Mars
MOUSE ON MARS In those rare moments when electronic music artists aren’t taking themselves too seriously, the humor they do manage to find is too often kitschy or obvious–like µ-ziq’s easy-listening yuks or Coldcut’s clever juxtapositions of spoken-word samples. With their last few albums and especially with the new Niun Niggung (Thrill Jockey), Mouse on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
InterFest 2000
Chicago theater is as racially and culturally varied as the city itself, yet to actor-director Stephan Turner–and many others–it often seems that off-Loop theater is still fragmented in terms of the work companies present and the audiences they target. “We live together, we work together, and then when we get ready to do theater we […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Flat is Beautiful
I’ve been late in catching up with Sadie Benning’s magnum opus to date (1998)–a 50-minute black-and-white video shot on both film and Pixelvision in Milwaukee, concentrating on the inner life of an androgynous 11-year-old girl–but it’s certainly everything I hoped it would be. It begins and ends with a montage of rusty urban landscapes that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Slavs!
SLAVS!, European Repertory Company, at About Face Theatre. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America was no fluke, as this play shows: he can seize a turning point and turn history inside out. Depicting disillusioned commissars and an angry proletariat in Russia first in 1985, then seven years later, he creates a relentlessly realistic 85-minute meditation on […]
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
The Troubles They’ve Seen
Stones Bailiwick Repertory By Jack Helbig John Reeger and Julie Shannon’s musical Stones uses Chicago’s 1919 race riot as a jumping-off point and actually succeeds at embracing an important issue without sacrificing theatrical appeal. Though not perfect, this is a functional, entertaining, moving work of theater, with real characters who have real lives and real […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Grand View
Grand View, Pegasus Players. In Pulitzer-winning novelist William Kennedy’s first play, set in 1944 and based on real people, New York State’s Democratic party boss Patsy McCall confronts his longtime political rival, purportedly high-minded reformer Corbett Atterby. Concise and well-paced, the play offers a sobering look at the realpolitik of love and government as Atterby […]
Posted inFilm
The Lover’s Gaze
Andy Warhol’s five-hour Sleep (1963) has long been one of the most famous of unseen films. It had relatively few screenings before being withdrawn from distribution in 1972, along with Warhol’s other early films; this Saturday’s single showing at the Film Center is likely the Chicago premiere. It’s been discussed a great deal, along with […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories A group of athletes and administrators of the traditional Turkish sport of oil wrestling protested to the government in April when they discovered that an organization of gay men was planning to attend a major tournament in July near the city of Edirne to ogle. According to a Reuters news service reporter, “Putting […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Price of Eden
Director John Hancock dropped out of Hollywood to return to La Porte, Indiana. Can he restart his career with a hometown movie?
Posted inArts & Culture
Without a Prayer
By Albert Williams “I am Aquarius–destined for greatness or madness,” proclaims Claude, the hippie hero of the “American tribal love-rock musical” Hair. With a new Age of Aquarius imminent–and, according to some astrologers, likely to bring earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, and a shake-up in the stock market–the time seems ripe for a revival of this […]