BETTER LIVING, Open Eye Productions, at A Red Orchid Theatre. Tucked deep in George F. Walker’s black comedy are a few moments of recognizable human behavior. But in keeping with so much contemporary playwriting, the rest of the work is so overwrought, portentous, and quirky that it may as well be set on another planet. […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 44
Issue of Aug. 3 – 9, 2000
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I recently read a commentary that most recycling programs are a waste. Among the points noted were: no shortage of landfill space (another thousand years of garbage would only fill an area 35 miles square by 100 yards deep), double energy consumption and pollution (just preparing the recyclables can use as much energy and create […]
Posted inNews & Politics
West Side Story
In June of ’43, I went down to Florida, and Vincent and I spent three weeks together. I came down on the train and changed at Jacksonville to get the train for Orlando. I was carrying three cases. There were no redcaps, and I’m struggling. They say, “The train is on the other track–you have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sound Adaptation/Lost in Translation/Potbelly Expanding
Sound Adaptation For the past four years Karen Bauman has been a contract administrator in the legal department at Harpo Productions, Inc., securing the rights to materials used on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Working for the city’s most prominent entertainer has given her considerable experience behind the scenes, but now Bauman has produced a show […]
Posted inArts & Culture
My Heart, My President
In his solo show, New York-based writer, director, and performer Kestutis Nakas re-creates the crazy liberty of being home sick. Loosely based on Nakas’s memories of recovering from rheumatic fever, My Heart, My President centers around a single fateful day: November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated. Nakas recounts in loving detail everything that passed […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 8/4 – Thursday 8/10 AUGUST By Cara Jepsen 4 FRIDAY The folks at the annual Oz Festival have gone all out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of L. Frank Baum’s penning of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Chicago. Events this year include an Oz character look-alike contest, a performance of The Wizard of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bringing Up Babies
Cyber:womb Firstborn Productions at Chicago Dramatists Don’t Promise Stockyards Theatre Project at Breadline Theatre By Kelly Kleiman The choice whether or not to have children seems to be much on the public mind just now, most recently in the form of a New York Times Magazine cover story on the divide between child haves and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bad Sports
The kids are all right–it’s the parents who are giving umpires a headache.
Posted inArts & Culture
Black Harvest International Festival of Film and Video
This festival of films and videos by black artists from around the world runs Friday, August 4, through Thursday, August 17, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson. Tickets are $7, $3 for film center members; a festival pass, good for all programs, is $50. For further information, call 312-443-3737. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Nature Containers
Ecologies at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, through August 27 Tobias Rehberger: The Sun From Above at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through first frost Olafur Eliasson at the Art Institute, through August 13 By Fred Camper In mainstream usage, environmentalism most often means preserving nature for our use, a view in […]
Posted inMusic
Here Comes the Bride
Azita Youssefi has a reputation as an exhibitionist. A couple years ago she posed at O’Hare for the Lumpen spin-off Easy Listener wearing nothing but a pair of angel wings, and as bassist and front woman for the theatrical no-wave band the Scissor Girls, she performed in everything from a Catholic school uniform to a […]
Posted inMusic
Time Bandits
Early Modulations: Vintage Volts (Caipirinha Music) By Jim Dorling Early Modulations: Vintage Volts is the second in a series of three CDs assembled by Caipirinha Productions in connection with Modulations, Iara Lee’s 1998 documentary about electronic dance music. The first disc, the official sound track to the film, loosely traces the evolution of electronica from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
From Grassroots to Glory–The Anthology of Gospel II
FROM GRASSROOTS TO GLORY–THE ANTHOLOGY OF GOSPEL II, New Age Theater, at the Ivanhoe Theater. Rodney Lewis’s 1998 A Piece of My Soul went from low-budget studio production to international hit in only a year. Part two of his gospel-music documentary series looks to follow in its footsteps. This time the chronicle begins in 1927 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Romeo and Juliet Are Alive and Well and Living in Maple Bend
No, you’re not cinder-hearted if you hate children’s theater. You probably just don’t enjoy being condescended to by perky 24-year-olds. But if you’re still open to the remote possibility that children’s theater might speak to you, or if you’d like to expose your children to live performance that doesn’t insult and belittle them, check out […]