Lead Stories Several media outlets reported in February on Paul West of Winsted, Connecticut, who’d taken recent Homeland Security alerts very seriously and wrapped his 19th-century farmhouse top to bottom in 3,500 square feet of plastic sheeting, hoping to protect his family against radiological, biological, or chemical attack. (Winsted is about 120 miles from New […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 25
Issue of Mar. 20 – 26, 2003
Posted inArts & Culture
Hearts in Orbit
The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union Collaboraction at the Chopin Theatre Everybody knows that the stars we see aren’t the stars that are. It’s one of the great cliches of modern physics that starlight may take years to reach our eyes. And so what we see […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Who’s the Bad Guy?
I was looking forward all week to seeing the letters to the editor in the Reader following the very excellent article on Scott Portman [“War: What It’s Good For,” March 7]. The letter by Chris Onser [March 14] is, in my view, typical of many of the antiwar people we’ve been hearing from as of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
John Butcher
Soprano and tenor saxophonist John Butcher once explained in an interview with the Web zine Paris Transatlantic that he finds his material “right at the border of the instrument–the reed–seizing up and breaking down.” Eschewing his horns’ familiar vocabularies, the 48-year-old Englishman manipulates an arsenal of squeaks, squawks, and finely abraded staccato multiphonics. When he […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Piece of My Heart
A Piece of My Heart, Attic Playhouse. Shirley Lauro’s 1988 stage adaptation of Keith Walker’s book about women who served in the Vietnam war is dated and offers no new insights–and unfortunately director Jean Losquadro takes no risks. Mostly made up of intertwined first-person accounts by six women based on the oral histories of female […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Free Speeches/Bank One Grabs the Lion’s Share
Northwestern student Conor O’Neil taps his love of ideas–as well as his own deep pockets–to bring an array of provocateurs to campus.
Posted inArts & Culture
Alive With Possibilities
So-Called Repetition Mad Shak Dance Company at Link’s Hall, through March 23 At the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the Johnson Wax pavilion featured an early, thrilling example of split-screen videography. Three young men in go-carts appeared to be shooting right at the audience, a perspective so astonishing and distorted it was impossible to guess […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chairs
This show has a premise so simple but packed with possibility it could pass for one of the original Spolin theater games, which provide the foundation for 95 percent of all Chicago-style improv. Here an ensemble improvises a one-act about a recently deceased fictional person, played by the loser of a quick game of musical […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Prefuse 73
Electronic-music producer Prefuse 73, born Scott Herren, was raised in Atlanta and currently lives in Barcelona; his moniker refers to one of his favorite sample sources–prefusion jazz recorded before 1973. On 2001’s Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives (Warp), he devised a mutant hip-hop in which rap vocals were merged with the other instruments in the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Diamond Fire
Los Angeles curator and videomaker Shari Frilot selected these six films and videos; I strongly recommend three of the four that I was able to see. While filmmakers have been rephotographing and reediting Hollywood fare for decades, I’ve never seen anything quite like Peter Tscherkassky’s Outer Space (1999), which he created by dismembering a horror […]
Posted inArts & Culture
M.C. Willie and the Music Factory
M.C. Willie and the Music Factory, ComedySportz. The troupe’s resident piano player–Stephanie McCullough, who’s said to have an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music–finally gets to put her money where her mouth is in this parody of the mind-expanding Technicolor romp Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Her score chews over two decades’ worth of musical […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
“Chicago’s teacher salary schedule makes the city a great place to start teaching but a much less attractive place to stay,” reports Catalyst Chicago (February). “In the six-county metropolitan region, beginning elementary teachers have few better-paying alternatives to Chicago, and the city offers fairly competitive pay for beginning high school teachers. But for seasoned veterans, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dreams From an Upside Down Man
Dreams From an Upside Down Man, at the Chicago Cultural Center. A certain wonder attends even the crudest puppetry, a magic born of the art’s literal take on the objectification inherent in performance. This unfortunately can engender shows weak on content or technique–or, as in writer-director Michael Montenegro’s Dreams From an Upside Down Man, both. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Milly’s Orchid Show’s Spring Spectacular
David Cale is relentlessly unassuming and subtle onstage, nothing like the manic, quicksilver John Leguizamo. Cale’s material is devoid of high-octane social and political rants, unlike Eric Bogosian’s. He avoids torturous explorations of his personal demons, unlike Spalding Gray. And he’s the most consistently satisfying, funny, insightful, and moving solo performer I’ve ever seen–Cale understands […]