Meet the 3CR Staff: Nancy Bishop, Editor in Chief and Theater Critic
“When I was in high school we came here. I was in a girl gang at Steinmetz High School, and I was the only one who drove, so four or five of us would pile into my father’s car and…
Emma Terhaar
An Enemy of the People Is a Well-Dressed Meditation on Politics and Human Nature
When I described the synopsis of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People to my date, he groaned. Politics, environmental crisis, public figures and large companies taking advantage of the little guy… It’s not hard to imagine why director Robert Falls felt…
Meet the 3CR Staff: Sarah Brooks, Music Editor
This is the first post in a series of interviews of Third Coast staffers conducted by Third Coast Staffers. In this interview, Emma Terhaar talks to music section editor Sarah Brooks at her favorite spot in Chicago, the Hideout Inn.…
Goodman’s A Christmas Carol Carries On Great Chicago Tradition for 40th Year
The Christkindlmarket has opened, the first weekend of Zoolights has come and gone, the Songs of Good Cheer holiday sing-along shows start at Old Town School of Folk Music next week, and A Christmas Carol is playing at the Goodman…
An Evening at the Talkhouse Is an Unnerving and Timely Must-See at A Red Orchid Theatre
A Red Orchid Theatre’s latest show An Evening at the Talkhouse is my kind of production. It’s a darkly funny one-act play running around 100 minutes. It’s funny in a hideous, not completely obvious way. Wallace Shawn, the human gargoyle…
TCR Mixtape No. 33: Kalamazoo Weekend
This mixtape was composed in tandem by Colin Smith and Emma Terhaar. Can two people work together to make one playlist? Has the broth been spoiled? Please let us know if listening to this playlist makes you think of spoilt…
Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers Play a Crowdpleaser at the Vic
Conor Oberst was everyone’s favorite sad boy in high school. High school ended (praise Jesus!), but Conor Oberst has not stopped making music. He played a packed show at the Vic last Saturday night with the support of the Felice…
Ben Sollee and Kentucky Native Bring Bluegrass Thrills to Schubas
Cellist Ben Sollee and his band Kentucky Native performed what felt like a love letter to the state of Kentucky on Tuesday (9/12) at Schuba’s. They played songs from their self-titled debut album and a few of Sollee’s most popular…
Chicago’s Literati Harmonize in Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology
Have you ever contributed to a church or neighborhood cookbook? Have you ever bought one? Are matriarchal communities still pooling their creativity into volumes of recipes as a testament to shared life in a place? Last week Cleveland-based Belt…
Neo-Futurists Close Out Another Hilarious Season of It Came from the Neo-Futurarium
Last Saturday I had the rare treat of seeing a staged reading of the 1975 made-for-TV film “Someone I Touched” at the Neo-Futurarium in Andersonville. The original film (I say “original” but I assume it’s never been remade–Jesus why would…
Roxane Gay, Camille Paglia and Jessa Crispin at War in My Head
Several weeks ago, I went to hear Roxane Gay read from her latest book Hunger as a part of the Chicago Humanities Festival Now summer programming. The event fell on the second to last day of spring. For me, it…
Pass Over Reworks Waiting for Godot in an Exploration of Racial Oppression
Have you heard about Pass Over? It’s a play written by Antoinette Nwandu reworking Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that opened at Steppenwolf Theatre last week. Pass Over uses the structure of absurdist theater to explore racial oppression in America, but you’ll probably hear more about…
Emo-light Pet Symmetry Kicks Off Album Release Tour with Ratboys at Schuba’s
Emo music is alive in Chicago. Pet Symmetry, a pop-punk, alt rock, self described “emo” band released their second full-length album Vision at Schubas on Friday, May 27th. Kicking off their tour with fellow Chicago-based band, Ratboys, the Friday night…
Teatro Vista’s La Havana Madrid: A ’60s Chicago Salsa Club Resurrected
La Havana Madrid, a 1960s Latino nightclub on the corner of Belmont and Sheffield, has been resurrected for five weeks by Chicago’s Teatro Vista. Columbian-American actress Sandra Delgado wrote and stars in this collection of musical monologues telling the stories…
Richard Thompson Takes Old Town School of Folk with British Bravado and Old-Man-Leather Sex Appeal
Richard Thompson started playing music professionally in 1967 with Fairport Convention. He was 18. Fifty years of performing, touring, and recording 40+ albums should leave a musician spent. Rather than tired, Richard Thompson is tried. Thompson played a two hour…
Old Town School of Folk Music Hosts 60th Anniversary Party with Free Classes
Everyone’s favorite Chicago music school is turning 60 this year! The Old Town School of Folk Music opened in 1957, and now sixty years later it operates three concert venues and classroom facilities: two in Lincoln Square, one in Lincoln…
TCR Mixtape No. 22: Break-up Bands
Richard Thompson is playing three sold out shows at Old Town School of Folk Music over Sunday April 9th and Monday April 10th. If you don’t know him, Thompson is one of the fathers of British Folk Rock. His body…
The Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook Will Make Even Non-Clevelanders Homesick
I’ve loved Cleveland since I went to the Westside Market during a road trip with my parents when I was in middle school. It was the first time I’d been anywhere in the Midwest that felt as old-fashioned and quaint…
George Saunders, Pop Culture Phenom, Comes to Chicago
I’ve liked George Saunders’ since I read his short story collection Pastoralia as a freshman in college. I’d never read anything like it. There was a historical re-enactment theme park, like a zoo where humans came to see other humans.…
Frances Luke Accord Mesmerizes Schubas with Sweet Folk Sounds
“Save me your laughter and your religion…” sang Nick Gunty of Chicago-based folk duo Frances Luke Accord. Gunty and bandmate Brian Powers played their sonically meticulous, poetry-infused folk-rock to an adoring crowd at Schuba’s last week. The intonation on “religion”…
