Polaroid Stories, Flush Puppy Productions, at Prop Thtr. Naomi Iizuka’s nihilistic postmodern interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses revolves around the shattered lives of runaways–speed freaks and gutter punks. In her middle-American nightmare, the short, sharp fragments of these disparate tales–based on interviews Iizuka conducted with homeless teens in the mid-90s–are harrowing and hopeless. Because her subjects […]
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 46
Issue of Aug. 15 – 21, 2002
Posted inArts & Culture
Drinking With Harry on Rush
Drinking With Harry on Rush, Aardvark Theatre Company, at the Cubby Bear Lounge. It’s 1989, the year Harry Carey was finally elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame, and disaffected Wrigleyville barkeep Rush is grappling with a ne’er-do-well brother, eviction from an apartment gone condo, and the transformation of his hole-in-the-wall into a sports bar. Into […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Osvaldo Golijov
As Ravinia’s first composer in residence, Osvaldo Golijov is getting the royal treatment. Over the next two weeks the festival will present three of his works–a trio of art songs written for soprano Dawn Upshaw, the string quartet Yiddishbbuk, and the monumental mass La pasion segun San Marcos (“The Passion According to Saint Mark”)–at three […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Erase Errata
This San Francisco quartet makes beautiful sense out of chaos, its collision of sounds creating a weird, hyperactive dance music. On the 2001 release Other Animals (Troubleman) drummer Bianca Sparta and bassist Ellie Erickson lay down a numb postdisco throb as guitarist Sara Jaffe dispenses slate gray chords and fractured licks; on top of it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
20
20, Bailiwick Repertory. Director Stephen Rader wanted to explore the diversity–and similarity–of gay men in Chicago, so he polled them about their experiences. The result is 20 (a title taken from the game 20 Questions), a sometimes entertaining and funny, sometimes frustrating and shallow documentary-style show that uses the respondents’ own words to illuminate absolutely […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Lots of Lifesavers, All in One Package/Trib’s Partisan Logic/News Bites
Lots of Lifesavers, All in One Package The first thing author Robert Fulghum learned in kindergarten was to “share everything.” The ultimate lesson he learned when he was five was: “When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.” But as we get older we forget. A new […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fillet of Solo Festival
Live Bait Theater’s showcase of one-person performances features old and new work by a slew of fringe artists, among them Stephanie Shaw, Lotti Pharriss, David Kodeski, Mark Gagne, Judith Harding, Karin McKie, and Kristin Garrison. The festival climaxes with a salute to the late James Grigsby, whose solo show Terminal Madness was Live Bait’s first […]
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Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Sins XIV
The 2002 edition of the Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company’s annual marathon showcase of emerging talent features a slew of local fringe theater and performance companies and solo artists. The Abbie fest was founded in 1989 to honor the late anarchist author of Woodstock Nation and to commemorate the anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock music festival. “Abbie […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Built for Speed
Like many of his fellow Kenyan runners, tiny Joseph Kahugu makes his training base in the land of the “beeg people.”
Posted inArts & Culture
Possession
Two literary scholars (Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow) doing research in England on separate Victorian poets jointly discover that these poets–one of them married (Jeremy Northam), the other a lesbian (Jennifer Ehle) with a live-in lover–may have had a secret affair. While chasing after clues, the scholars develop a possible relationship of their own. Oscillating […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, etc. concerts AC ROCK Fri 8/23, 7:30 PM, Unity in Chicago, 1925 W. Thome. 773-973-0007. AMBER, AUBREY, FIORI, GEORGIE PORGIE, IAN VAN DAHL, LASOO, LUCRE PARTA, SHERRIE LEA perform at Energy Blast 2002. Sat 8/24, 8 PM, Odeum, 1033 N. Villa, Villa Park. 630-941-9292 or 312-559-1212. TONY BENNETT Fri 8/16, 8 PM, Pavilion, […]
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Abstraction’s Other Voice
This exhibit, the first in a series focusing on “women painters dealing with abstraction,” includes three paintings by Chicago-area native Caroline Peters–two of them airy, almost lyrical combinations of inspired lines and translucent paint smears. Double Brink centers on a wheellike shape, with charcoal lines for the spokes and washes of acrylic around the rim. […]
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Dance Moves: butoh’s slow-motion rush
For last year’s performance of City/Escape, the members of Marianne Kim’s butoh-inspired dance workshop alternately crept and sprinted east down Randolph Street from the Chicago Cultural Center to Daley Bicentennial Plaza. Wearing red thrift-store costumes and white body paint and twisting themselves into contorted shapes, the dancers were accompanied by Kim, who carried a boom […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Detroit Grand Pubahs
The Detroit Grand Pubahs are big fans of the good old-fashioned booty hump–it’s mentioned in almost every song on their most recent CD, Funk All Y’all (Jive Electro). “Sandwiches,” the single that electro DJs played nearly incessantly last year, is the same sort of infectious, sleazy, astoundingly simple techno-funk as Cajmere’s “Coffee Pot (It’s Time […]