“I kinda got it on a whim,” says Alexis P. Morgan, 30, about the dazzling two-piece ensemble she purchased from Boohoo. “I normally don’t get super colorful things, but I’ve been branching out. [This set] had such a fun vibe to it and everybody was like, ‘You look amazing!’ I just decided to color it […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 20
Issue of July 7, 2022
Welcome to the skate park
OnWord Skate Collective embraces skaters of all ages and abilities, prioritizing women, trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people.
by Taryn Allen
On the cover: Photo by DuWayne Padilla
Find a print copy of the Reader.
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Posted inMusic
Monobody guitarist Conor Mackey gets even wilder with the IDM project Lynyn
Conor Mackey plays guitar in postrock group Monobody, which is how you know he has unpredictable energy—any musician tasked with creating rogue jazz flourishes and postmetal freakouts while Nnamdi Ogbonnaya plays his high-wire drums is definitely operating on another level. Mackey studied music theory and composition at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and since graduating […]
Posted inMusic
The ‘new normal’ hangs over another summer of live music
It’s music festival season again, and of course we’re still in the middle of a pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 222.3 million U.S. residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19—roughly 67 percent of the population. Vaccination is a great safeguard against serious illness or death, but it’s less effective against infection […]
Sponsored
Growing for Good with Green Thumb: Growing Home Inc.
Growing Home Inc. is a USDA-Certified Organic urban farm, workforce development center and non-profit social enterprise based in Englewood. They produce more than 35,000 pounds of produce annually, while serving more than 3,500 people through their food access program and providing job training and assistance services for 100 Chicagoans. Growing Home was recently awarded a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Young people dream up a safer summer in Chicago
After Mayor Lori Lightfoot expanded the citywide curfew in response to a shooting, teenagers spoke about Chicago’s gun violence crisis and their relationship to the city.
Posted inMusic
Subversive Chicago rock outfit Famous Laughs immerse you in jams on Total Icon
For more than a decade, Chicago multi-instrumentalist and engineer Jake Acosta has been a key player in a loose federation of subversive musicians. He’s done a lot of crucial work running record labels too: beginning in 2011, he’s released a heap of cassettes via Teen River, and then in 2012 he launched Lake Paradise, which […]
Posted inStaff notes
Editor’s note: on feeling “safe”
The Chicago comedian and writer Dwayne Kennedy has a pretty raw joke about summer being “shooting season” in Chicago that I’ve heard him perform a few times on stage. Kennedy says, “I don’t know what it is about the warm weather in Chicago that just brings everyone out. ‘Hey, it’s 79 degrees!’” and then makes […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A “creative coalition” of BIPOC talent
The New Vanguard is a creative coalition that seeks to unite Black and other POC creatives who currently work as separate entities under one banner. The coalition was recently launched by Eric “Phero” Lopez, who acts as chief creative officer, and his cofounders—chief of legal counsel, Eddie Sanders; chief of strategy and operations, Pilar McQuirter; […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Venn diagram for performance
Global displacement comes to the stage with Theatre Lumina’s Song of Home, one of many acts of the 2022 Physical Theater Festival Chicago that invites a shared humanity within the immediacy of live performance. Throughout the week, organizations will present a range of pieces including theater, music, juggling, clowning, and more. Marc Frost and Alice […]
Posted inArts & Culture
It’s not just personal, it’s policy
Rates of suicide have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and mental illness is more prevalent today than ever before. However, the societal causes of mental illness are still not widely recognized, so people who suffer mental illness are often treated as though the problem is entirely their own to solve. A new novel, released […]
Posted inTheater Review
Southern gothic heat
For their inaugural production, Violet Sky Theatre company has chosen Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke from 1948. As is expected with any of Williams’s canonical works, Summer and Smoke is a portrait of the delicious agony of unrequited love. Alma Winemiller, the minister’s daughter, has been in love with John Buchanan, the boy next door, […]
Posted inTheater Review
Fields of glory
In Pearl’s Rollin’ With the Blues, Felicia P. Fields gets a showcase for her indomitable vocals. The Tony nominee (for The Color Purple) is a bona fide star in the land of musical theater, her voice an irresistible mix of low-down growling blues and clarion-clear belt. As the titular chanteuse in Writers Theatre’s world premiere […]
Posted inTheater Review
You say you want a revolution?
On one wall of the set for Terry Guest’s Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes, now in a local premiere with Story Theatre under Guest’s direction, a large sign tells us “THIS IS NOT HISTORY.” True: what Guest’s skillfully rendered sardonic political comedy offers is a funhouse view (with not always so much fun, given […]
Posted inTheater Review
Out of this world fun
Last year, Chicago Shakespeare offered We Are Out There, a digital sneak peek of Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s goofy musical adaptation of the 1953 Universal Pictures sci-fi film, It Came From Outer Space, which was itself based on an original story by Ray Bradbury. Now it’s finally onstage at Chicago Shakes’s cozy upstairs studio […]