As part of this year’s Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, Visión Latino Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? Written by Puerto Rican playwright Nelson Diaz-Marcano and directed by Xavier M. Custodio, Y Tu Abuela is not the writer’s first collaboration with VLTC, a company of Latinx artists […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 1
Issue of October 14, 2021
Reader 50
A deep dive into how this city’s alt-weekly made it through five decades
Find a print copy of the Reader.
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Posted inArts & Culture
You’re not allowed to just be old and embrace it
Writers Heather Corinna and Kimberly Dark got together to discuss recent writing, menopause, body image, and more this summer while west coast resident Kimberly was in Chicago visiting her son and his family. The pandemic made it difficult for them to host a public event, so they decided to share their conversation with Reader readers. […]
Posted inMusic
Austin doom outfit Monte Luna takes their dazed and heavy doom on the road
In 2016, Austin doom unit Monte Luna dropped their debut demo—a self-titled release with just one self-titled track more than 20 minutes long—and just a few months later followed it with their powerful first EP, The Hound. These served as appetizers for their self-titled 2017 full-length debut, which exuded confidence and showcased a trippy heaviness […]
Posted inMusic
Jessie Montgomery, CSO Mead Composer-in-Residence
In April, violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery was named the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery will split her time between New York and Chicago throughout her residency, which started July 1 and runs through June 30, 2024. She gave this interview while in town to prepare for the first concert of the CSO’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Reader at 50
A deep dive into how this city’s alt-weekly made it through five decades
Posted inTheater Review
This Wide Night offers a searing look at solitary confinement after prison
The walls of the grim and grimy London bedsit show faint outlines of the pictures that once hung upon them—a gallery of absence. It’s a simple but gut-punching reminder that the two women in Chloë Moss’s This Wide Night are defined mostly by what they don’t have. Namely, as recently paroled convicts, second chances—followed closely […]
Posted inOn Culture
No assignments, no deadlines, no promises, no job
It’s 1980, and I am unemployed. After giving up a staff writer job at the esteemed St. Petersburg Times to return to Chicago, I have found myself, as the saying goes, shit out of luck. Chicago has gone from four daily newspapers to two, and is awash in unemployed journalists, all more experienced than me. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A revolutionary act
BIPOC growers on what it’s like to urban farm on the south and west sides
Posted inOpinion
A deadly drone program lifted by lies
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the for-profit arm of the Reader. On August 29, in the final days of our 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, the United States launched a drone strike, firing a 20-pound Hellfire missile at an aid worker named Zemari Ahmadi as he parked his car […]
Posted inOn Politics
The long haul
I’ve been writing for the Reader for so long that lots of you may think I’ve always been writing for the Reader. Like, you know, I hopped out of my mother’s womb with a pencil in my hand and a question or two for the doctor about TIFs. Not true—I didn’t have a pencil in […]
Posted inMusic
Andrew Goes to Hell channels emotional extremes into mighty underground pop
When the pandemic hit, the 23-year-old Chicago songwriter, producer, and vocalist who calls himself Andrew Goes to Hell returned to an old love to cope with the mounting stress: he played video games. He’d grown up with all the Tony Hawk games, whose soundtracks consist mainly of popular and bygone punk, hip-hop, and metal, and […]
Posted inMusic
Wind player and polymath Douglas R. Ewart convenes a trio to honor AACM elders
In September, Experimental Sound Studio opened a retrospective exhibit by Chicago woodwind player and multidisciplinary artist Douglas R. Ewart in its Audible Gallery at 5925 N. Ravenswood. His paintings, collages, sculptures, masks, musical instruments, and more will be on view via small-group appointment until Sunday, December 12. On Saturday, October 16, at 7 PM, Ewart’s trio […]
Posted inMusic
LOWERLIPDRIP’s brief catalog packs a lot of experimental hip-hop power
Experimental Chicago hip-hop duo LOWERLIPDRIP released four digital singles between 2019 and May 2020, each consisting of two tracks that overflow with freewheeling glee and unpredictable stylistic shifts. Those singles not only helped establish LLD as a local force to watch but also caught the attention of b4, a recently established imprint of venerable UK […]
Posted inMusic
Mia Joy dives diary-deep on her debut album, Spirit Tamer
Update: This concert has been postponed to a yet-to-be-determined date. If ever an artist were predestined to create deep-seated dream-folk songs, it might be Mia Rocha, who performs as Mia Joy. Her parents, a poet and a musician, encouraged her to use music as a channel of expression and self-discovery, and each of her songs […]