Picture the guy behind the disembodied voice on the el.
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 28
Issue of Apr. 11 – 17, 2002
Posted inNews & Politics
License Bribes Pale in Comparison
To the editor: I took several extra copies of the Reader article on the Peotone airport boondoggle [“Runway Inflation,” March 15] to the March 20 meeting of the Intermodal Advisory Task Force of the Chicago Area Transportation Study, where a variety of interested parties explore freight transportation problems of the region and seek solutions. As […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Rescuers
The Rescuers, Lifeline Theatre. This remount of Christina Calvit and Jacquie Krupka’s musical adaptation of The Rescuers (first staged in 1989) offers young audiences a charming adventure, compressing Margery Sharp’s original story into 50 exciting minutes. At the helm of the work’s resourceful trio of mice is the refined Bianca, who proves creative and courageous […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Greg Kelley
An uninformed listener to Greg Kelley’s two-year-old solo CD Trumpet (Meniscus) is as likely to think he’s hearing hail on a tin roof, an alarm buzzer, steam escaping a tea kettle, or the snorts of an elephant with sleep apnea as he is to think of the titular instrument. Using only his horn and the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Xena Live! Episode 2: Xena Lives! The Musical
Xena Live! Episode 2: Xena Lives! The Musical, About Face Theatre. This new, wildly funny show resurrecting the warrior princess shows that Xena has a legion of loyal fans–evidenced by the audience’s shrieks and lusty exclamations–but even Xena virgins should enjoy About Face Theatre’s vibrant production, the sequel to a 1999 hit. Writer Claudia Allen […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Deep-Six Peotone
If ever there was a clear-cut measure of human folly–among contractors, politicians, planners, pressmen, and their electronic-media counterparts–the proposed airport in Peotone would well exemplify its perfect example. Your cover story by Robert Heuer [“Runway Inflation,” March 15], which might better have been titled “Flying Blind,” highlighted both the ignorance and manipulative skill of Illinois […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Get Some R.E.S.T.
Improvisers have always been the daredevils of theater, leaping onstage without a clue what they’re going to do once they get there. Always looking for the next big thrill, the higher high, the more dangerous stunt, many of them took to long-form improvisation, creating a 30- or 40-minute show based on a single suggestion. A […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Latino Film Festival
The 18th annual Chicago Latino Film Festival, presented by the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, continues Friday through Thursday, April 12 through 18. Film and video screenings will be at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln; Columbia College Hokin Center, 623 S. Wabash; Richard J. Daley College, 7500 S. Pulaski; Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton; […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Videos by Ximena Cuevas
Smart, stylish, and funny, these 20 videos by Mexican artist Ximena Cuevas use surprising shifts in imagery or perspective to critique the media and the blandness of bourgeois life. Most are from her series “Dormimundo” (“sleep world”), which she calls “a documentary about the discomfort of being Mexican” in “a country of masquerades, of moral […]
Posted inNews & Politics
What a Relief!
I am responding to the very scholarly letters from Matt Segur and Mike Trimble [March 15], who rightfully criticized the “Hot and Bothered” article of Ted Kleine regarding our supposed changing climate [March 8]. Obviously Segur and Trimble are using the same “facts” that guided several of our recent administrations–in particular Ronald the First and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reveries and Elegies
Like Yasujiro Ozu’s features with seasonal titles, Alexander Sokurov’s hallucinatory video elegies tend to be so similar, even in their running times, that they blur together in memory. Elegy of a Voyage (2001, 47 min.)–which might be more idiomatically titled Elegy for a Voyage–is a journey, a dream, a first-person narrative (visibly as well as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lesbian Arts Festival
Bailiwick Repertory and the Lesbian Theatre Initiative have teamed up to present the first edition of what they hope will be an annual multidisciplinary lesbian-centered fest showcasing drama, stage combat, poetry, comedy, and music by artists from around the country as well as Chicago. The event runs through May 4 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Emerald City Theatre Company, at the Apollo Theater. We know it must be a fairy tale when Baghdad law dictates that if a man sees a princess with her face unveiled, he’s the one punished. And we know this must be a modern adaptation when Aladdin and his royal bride […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Rubbed the Wrong Way
To the editor: Recently one of my dear friends has informed me of your change in policy regarding the acceptance of massage-service classified advertisements. According to your new policy, all massage advertisers must hold a city license to advertise in the new health-and-wellness section. My friend, who is fully certified by the Chicago School of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rope
Rope, Sense of Urgency Productions, at the Viaduct Theater. Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 potboiler is based on both the 1927 thrill killing of a Hyde Park teenager by privileged psychopaths Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and a copycat slaughter by two Oxford University students–though the play is even more obscene than its primary source: Leopold and […]