A neighborhood school the power of presentation.
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 1
Issue of Oct. 2 – 8, 2003
Posted inNews & Politics
Garbage man
It’s one thing to review every movie from a pretentious, academic approach as the Reader normally does, but this time J.R. Jones didn’t even review the movie [The Rundown, Section Two] other than calling it “garbage.” Since “garbage” is a pretty subjective term and you pay this person to write reviews, shouldn’t we see a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Symphony of Sex
Symphony of Sex, Shakura Ensemble Ritual Theatre, at Theatre Building Chicago. At the end of her New Age performance piece, Shakura founder Blanche Blacke gives a monologue/lecture. “Sex as sin or sex as divine is a choice,” she says. Women must own their sexuality as divine, she maintains, because “a woman’s energy uplifts a man’s.” […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Can the Polka Be Saved?
Keith Stras is fighting the good fight, broadcasting from his dining room with his eight-year-old daughter by his side.
Posted inArts & Culture
Anna in the Tropics
Anna in the Tropics, Victory Gardens Theater. Like the Tolstoy character cited in its title, Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer-winning play aches with sensual yearning and an inchoate sense of foreboding. But instead of inhabiting the slate gray world of Anna Karenina’s Saint Petersburg, Cruz’s characters are wistful Cuban emigres in a humid Florida cigar factory in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Available Jelly
You can still hear the scrappy street band in the Amsterdam jazz sextet Available Jelly, an offshoot of a Utah performance troupe that went to Europe in the 70s to play open-air festivals and stuck around. Working out a new composition or arrangement, each member typically devises his own lead or supporting part in the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Trevor Watts & the Celebration Band
British saxophonist Trevor Watts was a cofounder of the revolutionary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the 60s, a charter member of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra in the 70s, and guiding light of the bands Moire Music and Moire Music Drum Orchestra in the 80s. Like Moire (which played the World Music Festival here three years […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rhinoceros Theater Festival
The Curious Theatre Branch’s ambitious yearly showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe began as part of the Bucktown Arts Fest. Over the years it’s mushroomed from a neighborhood happening to an event of citywide significance–especially now that it’s been taken under the wing of the Department of Cultural Affairs as part […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jeff Carter
Jeff Carter’s graceful Scaffold/Landscape is intended to evoke Indonesian rice fields. But the six particle-board terraces–edged in green carpet and supported by lengths of bamboo–are saved from being either campy or didactic by their size and placement. Rising from floor to ceiling in the corner of a room just off the main gallery at Vedanta, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jonathan Lethem
Childhood, often romanticized as a state of carefree and innocent play, is in truth lived according to an intricate set of rules: this stoop’s third base; those sneakers are the best; don’t ride your bike down that street or you’ll lose it to a bully. In his new novel, The Fortress of Solitude (Doubleday), Jonathan […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Whirled News Tonight Presents Newspeak
Whirled News Tonight Presents Newspeak, Argos Agency, at ImprovOlympic. The current incarnation of director Jason R. Chin’s Argos Agency is smart. On the night I attended this show, based on audience contributions of news stories, a sketch involving Bipedal Locomotion Enterprises would have taken a prize for vocabulary alone. The ten-member ensemble also makes casual […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre
A few years ago Jason Ohlberg, founding artistic director of this six-year-old troupe, left town, putting Anna Simone Levin in charge. Now she’s taking a yearlong sabbatical to study choreography in Amsterdam, and the group is being headed by Jeffery Hancock (former artistic associate), Joanna Rosenthal, and Katherine Saifuku. Sometimes artistic turnovers aren’t good, but […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Taxman Cometh/Miscellany
After more than 40 years of providing cheap studio space for artists, John and Lynn Kearney get some very bad news.
Posted inArts & Culture
Psych Drama
Let There Be Light…! WNEP Theater Stage adaptations of movies often degrade the original, trivializing the work in the name of satire or camp or flattening nuances to make room for songs, special effects, monstrous scenery, or the adapters’ egos. Rare are the projects that actually transform a film into a work of drama that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Wide Right
Chrissie Hynde fairly glowered at the strip malls and interstates of Akron in “My City Was Gone,” but Leah Archibald looks back on her own dying rust-belt burg, Buffalo, with far more conflicted feelings. On Wide Right (Poptop), the debut full-length from her band of the same name, Archibald cruises one more time past the […]