Cooking With Lard, Lifeline Theatre. In the tradition of Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes, playwrights Cindy Hanson and Cheryl Norris offer an affectionate portrait of a town where generations have grown up knowing everything about one another, resulting in unyielding collective strength and a steady stream of vicious gossip. In keeping with the genre, […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 39
Issue of Jun. 28 – Jul. 4, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Near-Fatal Complications
Judging from its new Quasar, Kinetic Dance Theater works in the most popular of Chicago’s traditions, that of accessible, joyous, jazz-inflected dancing. Much of this hour-long piece shows the influence of Bob Fosse on founder-choreographers Joanna and Ryan Greer. There are worse influences to have, and it’s a witty idea to build an evening around […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories “Pain is the sensation of weakness leaving the body,” Steve Haworth told a Phoenix New Times reporter in May. The local artist was arranging scenes for his Church of Body Modification, whose members endure horizontal full-body suspension (hanging for five minutes from rings in one’s body piercings), tug-of-war (full-force pulling contests using rope […]
Posted inArts & Culture
11th Annual Chicago Country Music Festival
Saturday, June 30 TASTE STAGE 12:30 PM AMERICAN PRIDE CLOGGERS This Northern Illinois dance troupe–whose members range in age “from pre-teens to pre-medicare”–dances to country and bluegrass in the percussive Anglo-American folk style known as clogging, which is descended from Irish and English line dancing and was a precursor to tap. 1:45 PM SPECIAL CONSENSUS […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rakugo
Originally a form of street performance, Rakugo offers a minimalist style of storytelling developed during the Edo period in Japan nearly 400 years ago. Dressed in a kimono and armed only with a fan and small towel, the Rakugo performer never rises from a sitting position. But he transforms the fan and towel into any […]
Posted inArts & Culture
There Goes One Over the Mural!/False Alarm/Nobody Wins
Former graffiti artist Casper goes legal with a massive mural in the outfield at Comiskey
Posted inArts & Culture
The Rape of Nova
THE RAPE OF NOVA, Billy Goat Experiment Theatre Company, at the Broadway Armory. This awkward, clunky ensemble-created play about a team of superheroes torn between saving the world from destruction and sending one of their traumatized colleagues through rape counseling seems to have capsized somewhere between initial concept and final execution. Plunked down on a […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Your advice to MSL, the gay guy who wanted to suck off his straight roommate, was logical, but I must, as a heterosexual male, object. If MSL wants to freak his roommate out, then by all means he should follow your advice and “jokingly” offer to suck him off. But you forgot to take the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dralion
Any company that has two extravaganzas playing simultaneously in Las Vegas has definitely entered the rarefied world of the juggernaut. But the wonderful thing about Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil, now appearing at the United Center in its first performances here in three years, is that it defies knee-jerk cynicism. In Dralion the company explores the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Fashion: DIY designer makes it look easy
“I can’t stop making things,” says 24-year-old Selina Van Den Brink. “I dream about constructing shirts and dresses. I’m obsessed.” A tiny room in her apartment is flooded with scraps of fabric, spools of thread, Polaroids, and racks of her simple, cheerful handmade clothes. Some of them are recycled thrift store items–bright polyester kimonos fashioned […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Critic’s Choice
BILLY JOE SHAVER The fatal drug overdose of Eddy Shaver this past New Year’s Eve colors the words his dad sings on The Earth Rolls On (New West)–even though the pair made the album before his death. Most of the life-after-death tunes, including the gripping blues-rock title track, are actually about the passing of Billy […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: venturing into Ethiopia’s violent past
Before Mussolini invaded in 1935, Ethiopia had been the only African nation to stave off the feeding frenzy of European colonization. Black outrage over the attack extended all the way to Laurel, Mississippi, where Imani Kali-Nyah’s grandfather insisted his 13-year-old son quit his job at an Italian-American-owned furniture store and join a boycott of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Strangers & Romance
Strangers & Romance, Jupiter Theatre, at the Athenaeum Theatre. In its inaugural production, Jupiter Theatre has captured the essence of two Barbara Lhota one-acts, entertaining explorations of raw neediness that also offer sparkling comedy. Strangers is the story of a traumatized couple who attempt to recapture their romance by meeting as “strangers” at a train […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
AIR 6/30, THE VIC These French guys were doing well enough with their trippy, campy Moon Safari before their sound track for The Virgin Suicides made them de rigueur at every lava lamp-lit lounge and chain store point-of-purchase display in the country. The kick is that they deserve it: on their new 10,000 Hz Legend […]