Tag: Vol. 33 No. 6

The beauty of Heather Woodbury’s performances is the way she summons up many different characters just by changing the tone of her voice, adding a few accessories, and modifying her body language. In her impressive multinight piece, What Ever (An American Odyssey in 8 Acts), she’s able to flip between the ten main characters and […]

Jean Cocteau’s 1948 French feature, adapted from a play produced a decade earlier, is both a lesson in mise en scene and an illustration of the paradox that accentuating the theatrical aspects of theater on-screen can make them quintessentially cinematic. (To my knowledge the only other film that does this to the same degree is […]

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from vocalist Karen Carroll, either in person or on record: she’s been living in Germany since 1997, the same year her most recent recording, Talk to the Hand (Delmark), came out. Carroll was born in Chicago in 1958; her mother, Jeanne Carroll, is a respected jazz and blues […]

There’s a journalistic truism: only once you’ve mastered the rules of reporting and storytelling are you allowed to break them. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning guru of nonfiction narrative, breaks the cardinal rule of objectivity, weaving the story of his own quiet enlightenment into his account of the life and work of […]

“You’re trying to listen to each other,” artistic director Eduardo Vilaro tells his dancer and a pianist during a rehearsal. “Don’t. When we first started, the piece was really jagged. I liked that.” Vilaro’s comments are unusual but perhaps not surprising given that his new solo–Mujer Llorando (“Weeping Woman”)–was inspired by Picasso’s cubist painting of […]

In her first Chicago engagement in two years, New York cabaret artist Baby Jane Dexter ranges from rock songs to standards, relying more on familiar fare than she has in the past. Her new show, Another Spring (Then and Now), includes the Blood, Sweat & Tears hit “Spinning Wheel,” the Beatles’ “Got to Get You […]