Cabaret has always been about pushing boundaries. But it also has a rich and complicated past. This month Porchlight Music Theatre at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts offered not only something special but also something historic. As part of their…
Dave Hoekstra has loved newspapers since his boyhood in west suburban Naperville. He understands the important role newspapers play in the life of a community, and how a newspaper—the best of them anyway—can create a sense of place. But, as…
Last Call Chicago is not a narrative book. Rather it is an extensive listing with brief descriptions of 1,001 LGBTQ and LGBTQ-friendly bars and such. But it is also a labor of love. The introduction reminds readers that prior to…
It happened in Ferris Bueller’s hometown In the Mayberry of the Midwest I first heard about it while listening to WXRT When Terri Hemmert played “All You Need Is Love” Then, moments later, an email from friends in Scotland It…
Bob Dylan is having a bit of a late-career cultural moment. His most recent album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, was released in June 2019, and the featured single, “Murder Most Foul,” shot to the top of the Billboard charts—surprisingly, for…
June Sawyers wrote this poem—as a way to record her experience— after listening to a musician named Andrew perform in Printers Row. It came out of nowhereAt first we barely noticedAnd then, a pauseWaitWho is that?We just had to stop…
It’s the same reaction most every time I tell someone I am an indexer. Blank stare. “You know, the thing at the end of a book,” I offer helpfully.Then, a light goes off. “Oh, I thought a computer did that.”…
There is a street in the South Loop—Dearborn from Polk to Harrison is only one block long—that is one of the most charming blocks in the city. I say the South Loop but I am referring in particular to Printer’s…
When most people hear the word “cabaret” they likely think of Berlin and the Weimar republic and, of course, the theatrical musical and film Cabaret. But Chicago also has a rich cabaret history that dates back 100 years. In honor…
One Sunday afternoon a number of years ago I found a finger puppet lying outside Maclean House, the former dormitory (now apartments) named in honor of the late Norman Maclean, who was a popular English professor at the University of…
For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son’s Search for Norwegian Happiness Eric Dregni University of Minnesota Press Eric Dregni is only partly Norwegian but that hasn’t stopped him from writing several books on the Nordic countries, including his…
It begins with the familiar refrain, arguably the three most famous words in American literature. “Call me Ishmael.” But the voice of this Ishmael is different. The voice is unmistakably female as actress Elizabeth McCoy begins the haunting tale of Captain…
Towards the end of the plague year we learned that someone somehow transported a ten-foot high silvery metal object to a remote canyon in the Utah desert drilling through layers and layers of red rock there it stands,…
The Chicago company Theatre in the Dark is offering a new adaptation of H. G. Wells’ classic 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds, as a live 90-minute virtual audio drama and just in time for Halloween. Each performance is…
She was the queen of Brooklyn although she wore no gold crown except in the public’s imagination and on t-shirts. Instead her apparel of choice was a white frilly lace collar that framed her black judicial robe. Her dissenting collar…
Rodham: A Novel By Curtis Sittenfield Random House We think we should all know her by now. After decades in the limelight, Hillary Rodham Clinton remains, for many, an enigma. Now author Curtis Sittenfeld attempts to lift the elusive veil…
Food and politics go hand in hand in TimeLine Theatre’s online revival of To Master the Art, written by William Brown and Doug Frew, and directed by Brown. To Master the Art had its premiere at TimeLine in 2010 and was…
You know it’s grim out there when you wake up every morning looking forward to hearing the latest Internet sensation, Pluto the talking schnauzer, whose sole purpose is to console the “two-leggeds” of the world, juxtaposing the silly with the…
A Saturday morning in March All is quiet Except for a few cars on the street And the occasional person Head held low against a blustery wind Just the eerie sound of a dog barking In the distance The new normal In…
A full house at the Symphony Center on Friday night gave a warm welcome, and standing ovation, to the Chieftains, who were not only celebrating their 58th year together but also, alas, bidding farewell to the concert stage. Since the…
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