J. Nicole Brooks’s adaptation of 1919, Eve L. Ewing’s collection of poems published a century after the “Red Summer” race riot in Chicago sparked by the murder of Eugene Williams, is the first live show since the pandemic for Steppenwolf for Young Adults. There are only a handful of public performances, but it should not […]
Tag: Vol. 52 No. 1
Issue of October 13, 2022
NOW PLAYING!
Chicago’s history in movie ads
One Chicagoan’s pandemic lockdown project turned into a time capsule of the city’s moviegoing past.
By Yolanda Perdomo
Central Illinois police training for mental health cases questioned: Significant issues remain around police use of involuntary commitments. By Kelsey Turner and the Invisible Institute
Tough calls: When the police bring too many risks with them, where can you turn in a crisis? By Katie Prout
On the cover: Photo by Yijun Pan. For more of Pan’s work, go to yijunpan.com.
Find a print copy of the Reader.
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Posted inTheater Review
Rich family fare
As someone whose older sisters are over a dozen years her senior, Sancocho (presented by Visión Latino Theatre Company as part of the fifth Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival) spoke directly to mi alma. Named for a type of beef stew, this show highlights the significance of familia for the best or otherwise. Peppered […]
Posted inTheater Review
Survivor stories
Theatre Above the Law returns to the fairy tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, as adapted again by Michael Dalberg. (Dalberg’s adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is also currently onstage with Idle Muse through October 23.) I saw last year’s outing, and this time the connective tissue in […]
Posted inTheater Review
As teardrops fall
If you’re a fan of The Notebook—either the romantically waterlogged, sugary-sentimental 2004 movie or the Nicholas Sparks novel that prompted it—you’ll probably be swept away by the musical, directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams and getting a pre-Broadway run at Chicago Shakespeare. The love story between rich girl Allie and working-class Noah spans decades, […]
Posted inTheater Review
Too many Marys
Playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury had too many things in mind when she wrote this play about Mary Seacole, a real-life Jamaican-born healer who improbably served in the 19th-century Crimean War. Drury wanted to tell the story of this indomitable woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer, even from the equally implacable Florence Nightingale. She […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Scottish play, abridged
Director Dusty Brown, who makes their Chicago directing debut with Three Crows Theatre’s storefront staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, has trimmed the tragedy down to a fast-paced, intermissionless 105 minutes of blood-drenched storytelling. (“Macbeth has sword/dagger violence, onstage murder, and discussions of murder. Recommended for children 12+ due to all the murder happening onstage,” reads a […]
Posted inMusic
Will lightning strike Podlasie Club twice?
By all accounts, the debut of Podlasie Club’s namesake party, Podlasie Pleasure Club, was insane. It was a muggy night in July 2021, and organizers were expecting a turnout of maybe 50. Podlasie hadn’t hosted an event in almost a decade, and it was only zoned to accommodate 104. So when the club got so […]
Posted inFilm
A love letter to ‘snakies’
Why did it have to be snakes? I don’t have especially strong feelings about them, and yet in the last few years I’ve accidentally become an expert on the deranged world of snakesploitation horror cinema.
Posted inStaff notes
The road ahead
“Good things come to those who wait,” the adage goes. Back in the summer of 2009, I found myself in Chicago as an alternative journalism fellow at Medill, and I quickly fell in love with the city, its people, culture, and greasy spoons (if I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can still […]
Posted inFilm
Now Playing: Chicago’s history in movie ads
Adam Carston created Windy City Ballyhoo on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It’s a repository of Chicago movie ads, photographs, and film reviews from the last century.
Posted inTheater Review
Pecking themselves to death
Albert Chen (Christopher Thomas Pow) is sitting on a park bench eating what appears to be a burrito or a hot pocket when a hunched old man, dressed in an intersection of athleisure and preppie that signals respectability, comfort, and a baseline certainty of invisibility, shuffles in. “Hey! You Chinese?” he hollers. Albert, though he […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Why would a survivor of sexual trauma want D/s kink?
Some who have submissive desires and traumatic sexual histories find BDSM therapeutic.
Posted inOn Culture
From domestic terrorism to the voting booth
When Michael Fanone, the former Trump supporter and D.C. cop who nearly died at the hands of the January 6 mob at the U.S. Capitol, comes to the Chicago Humanities Festival next week to join We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism author Andy Campbell […]
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The Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure (TFTC) is an Illinois Lottery specialty ticket where 100% of profits go towards breast cancer research, awareness, and education in Illinois. Launched in 2006, the ticket was renamed in 2011 in honor of former Illinois Lottery superintendent Carolyn Adams, who helped write the legislation for TFTC before losing […]