Clearing Hedges, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company. The lifelong goal of Babe Didrikson Zaharias was simple: she aimed to be the greatest athlete ever. She played professional basketball and baseball, won Olympic gold medals in track and field in 1932, then turned to golf. Along the way she found love with professional wrestler George Zaharias and companionship […]
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 9
Issue of Nov. 29 – Dec. 5, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Female Fragments and Forms
While still in his 20s, influential Czech modernist Karel Teige (1900-1951) turned from painting to book design, theoretical writing, and the editing of avant-garde journals. Influenced by cubism, expressionism, constructivism, and surrealism, he was a Marxist who believed everyone could be an artist–who wanted to end the idea of “art with a capital A.” But […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I thought maybe an outsider could give me some insight into my heartache. I dated this guy–call him Ron–for seven months. We were deeply in love but broke up. Almost a year later we tried to be friends. We hung out a couple of times, but he kissed me and there was a lot of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Reporter’s Future/Out to Get the Guild?/News Bites
The Reporter’s Future The first issue of the Chicago Reporter carried a statement of purpose. Founding editors John McDermott and Lillian Calhoun explained in 1972 that the Reporter’s goal would be “racial justice,” its technique “investigative,” and its focus “the terrain where black and white intersect.” They intersect in the life of the woman about […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Touch
Touch, Phoenix Theatre, at Victory Gardens Theater. The story–shy, sweet Kyle meets Zoe, the love of his life, then loses her to random tragedy–is genuinely heartbreaking. Playwright Toni Press-Coffman is sensitive, empathetic, sometimes lyrically insightful. And this kind of drama is meant to be arduous, at least emotionally. But a host of structural difficulties makes […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
DOUBLE ZERO RECORDS SHOWCASE 11/30, METRO The Double Zero label was founded to release Smoking Popes rarities and lost treasures, and three years later still specializes in milking the band’s legacy (a Smoking Popes tribute album is due in 2002). Headlining this bill is the label’s probable ace in the hole, Duvall, featuring label owner […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kirov Orchestra
The Kirov Orchestra has traditionally performed as a pit orchestra for the Kirov Opera and the Kirov Ballet at Saint Petersburg’s imposing Mariinsky Theatre, a cultural center in that most cosmopolitan of Russian cities since it opened in 1860. But over the past decade the orchestra has been establishing an identity of its own, delving […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Films by Yoko Ono, program five
So awful it’s worth recommending as a case study in bad filmmaking, the 73-minute Imagine (1971), codirected by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, is at once narcissistically self-indulgent and fatuously obnoxious. Here they carry to an extreme the mistake of the very worst student filmmakers–assuming that their subject (their love for each other) will interest […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Out of the Vault
Several months ago, when Chicagoan Jim Finn discovered that the Chicago Public Library was closing its 16-millimeter film collection–not surprising given declining use and the cost of upkeep–he started doing everything he could to rally public interest in preserving this material, doing something comparable to what writer Nicholson Baker has recently done for newspapers. Screening […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Last Call
Age: 40 Occupation: Contractor Apartment: 4 rooms, enclosed porch, $775 a month Location: Bucktown Not pictured: A dented mailbox containing a crumpled letter from his former landlord informing him that after 12 years their rental agreement has been terminated, because the building has been sold. Anything else from the old place? “I stole the kitchen […]
Posted inArts & Culture
DJ Krush
Ever since seeing the 1982 rap documentary Wild Style as a Tokyo teen, DJ Krush has been in love with hip-hop. But he was also an early exponent of acid jazz, and on Ki-Oku (Apollo), a late-90s collaboration with great Japanese trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, he even dabbles in some past-prime-Miles-style fusion. In some ways his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Zoo Story and Transmission
The Zoo Story and Transmission, Fade to Black Theatre Troupe, at Stage Left Theatre. In the last two years I’ve seen five productions of Edward Albee’s absurdist classic, and frankly it’s hard to imagine anyone bringing anything new to the Zoo. Still, every few months another company like the recently formed Fade to Black Theatre […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Women’s Performance Art Festival
The Stockyards Theatre Project, which calls itself “the only theatre company in Chicago dedicated exclusively to feminist/femaleist theatre and performance art,” presents its second annual showcase of woman-centered drama, storytelling, dance, improv, stand-up comedy, and other performance genres. Topics addressed range from rape, pregnancy, and madness to lesbianism, the beauty industry, and multiple orgasms. Running […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dave Moore
Dave Moore’s sinewy, yearning vocals make him sound like a prairie Springsteen, but his music draws together both rootsy, romantic hard country and the noirish “alternative” variety–along with dashes of blues, rockabilly, and boisterous conjunto. (He studied accordion with some of the most respected squeezebox masters in Texas, including Santiago Jimenez Sr., father of the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Who’s in Control?
I find it astonishing the organized tantrum thrown by Michael Siegel and the Jewish organizations [Hot Type, November 16] are missing the most important fact: that the Tribune’s commentaries are true! None of the comments dispute the fact that Israel occupies Palestinian lands, that these lands are stolen from private individuals and that Israel has […]