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Posted inMusic

Greg Puciato embarks on his first-ever solo tour, and anything could happen

There’s busy, and then there’s Greg Puciato busy. In the thick of his 16-year tenure fronting metalcore act the Dillinger Escape Plan, he got involved in several other endeavors, including wide-ranging postmetal project Spylacopa, alt-metal supergroup Killer Be Killed, and synthwave act the Black Queen. Since the band’s dissolution in 2017 he’s continued to carry […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Backyard bacchanal

Station Eleven, the impactful TV show based on Emily St. John Mandel’s novel of the same title, follows a motley crew of survivors around the Great Lakes region following a pandemic that killed all but .1 percent of the world’s population. As they renegotiate the human condition sans societal infrastructure, the nomadic band of protagonists […]

Posted inArts & Culture

A new life for Carol Day

This is the tale of an unlikely trio who came together to save the legacy of a brilliant artist nearly lost to history, British illustrator David Wright. It’s also the origin story of Lance Hallam—an oversize, exquisitely bound book of glorious artwork destined to be displayed.  Listening to them talk about it, you would think […]

Posted inStaff notes

Little treat season

In my household, we’re currently celebrating “little treat” season. It occurs every year just as Chicago is shaking off the winter weather; on days when it’s extra sunny or unseasonably warm, my partner and I allow ourselves to go out and get a little treat. Now, “little treat” can mean anything from a shared iced […]

Posted inTheater Review

Mothers of the revolution

India Nicole Burton’s Panther Women: An Army for the Liberation has already played at Cleveland Public Theatre and Indianapolis’s Phoenix Theatre as part of the National New Play Network’s rolling world premiere program. But it’s hard to imagine a more apt setting for Burton’s choreopoem in celebration of the women in the Black Panther Party […]

Posted inTheater Review

At a loss for words

Romantic comedies depend on miscommunication. It’s why we love them. It’s comforting to see that everyone stumbles over their words. Our greatest tool for self-expression often mutates into its most frustrating obstruction. AstonRep Theatre Company’s The Language Archive, a comic-drama written by Julia Cho and directed by Dana Anderson, plays on this ironic tension through […]

Posted inTheater Review

Showfolk follies

I’m generally not a huge fan of material wherein creative folk in any discipline—theater, film, publishing, music—turn to their own profession for inspiration. If a movie is about filmmaking, or a novel is about a tortured novelist, or a singer crows about how hard life is on the road, I check out pretty quickly. So […]

Posted inTheater Review

Timely Twain

The dramaturgy displays alone for Mercury Theater Chicago’s Big River, based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taught me more about Mark Twain’s 1830s-set, biting antislavery novel than I learned from studying the book in junior high, high school, undergrad, and grad school combined. First off, the musical (music and lyrics by Roger Miller, book by […]

Posted inTheater Review

Big-box problems

If verisimilitude and timeliness were all it took to create a great play, Ken Green’s world premiere comedy-drama about working in big-box retail would be a home run. Its dialogue captures every cliche and bit of doublespeak in the corporate human resources dictionary, not to mention every grouse and plaint ever uttered in a workplace—and […]