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Karin McKie

ARTICLES: 147
Comedy, Stages, Theater

Review: Lenny Bruce Lives Again in I’m Not a Comedian… I’m Lenny Bruce at the Biograph Theater

Cancel culture started with Lenny Bruce. His mother, standup comic and entertainer Sally Marr, encouraged him to emcee his first show in 1947 where he found his calling. Bruce practically […]

Karin McKie /
Review, Stages, Theater

Review: Bottled Spiders and Blood Splatter in Chicago Shakespeare’s Richard III 

Now is the unseasonably warm winter of our discontent, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s new artistic director Edward Hall helms his first production on Navy Pier. Tony Award-nominated track and field […]

Karin McKie /
Art & Museums, Feature, Museum, Painting & sculpture

Dialogs: Chicago Humanities Festival Explores Colonial Looting, Museums and Restitution

“Colonial Looting, Museums and Restitution, a dialogue about the return of cultural objects” Purported looting by ordinary people made headlines during recent protests against institutional racism, but who are the […]

Karin McKie /
Stages, Theater

Review: Ride the Whale Road with the Sweet Scottish Folk Musical Islander

As part of its WorldStage series, Chicago Shakespeare Theater brings the lyrical tale Islander, a folk-inspired musical soundscape from Scotland, to the Windy City after an acclaimed off-Broadway run and […]

Karin McKie /
Dialogs, Essays, Events, Interviews, Lit, Live Lit, Stages, Talk show

Dialogs: The Fire This Time with Roxane Gay at the Chicago Humanities Festival

The Chicago Humanities Festival hosted writer Roxane Gay, in conversation with writer Lindsay Hunter, at the University of Chicago’s Lab School. Like recent CHF speaker and fellow Black female author […]

Karin McKie /
Stages, Talk show

Dialogs: Airports, Origin Stories and RuPaul Unite David Sedaris and Henry Rollins

Quirky, prolific memoirist David Sedaris lived for a time in Chicago, and frequently comes back to the Windy City to read his writing to appreciative audiences. He’s famous for spending […]

Karin McKie /
Dialogs, Events, Interviews, Lit, Live lit events, Nonfiction, Stages, Talk show

Dialogs: Considering Contagion with Maddow and Schama at Chicago Humanities Festival Events

This autumn’s Chicago Humanities Festival is chock-a-block with notable writers. That focus is normal for one of the Windy City’s most diverse and comprehensive cultural institutions, but especially true this […]

Karin McKie /
Dialogs, Events, Fiction, Lit, Live lit events

Dialogs: Zadie Smith’s New Historical Fiction The Fraud Plumbed at Chicago Humanities Festival Event

Fiction is a “medium that must always allow itself…the possibility of expressing intimate and inconvenient truths,” acclaimed London-born author Zadie Smith once said. She recently stopped by Lincoln Park’s Francis […]

Karin McKie /
Comedy, Music, Stages, Theater

Review: Tech Glow-Up for Chicago’s Long-Running Blue Man Group

Blue Man Group started as outsider art, railing against the machine of corporate commodification and end-stage capitalism. Now it’s become a perfect performance entrée for kids and their families, which […]

Karin McKie /
Art & Museums, Design, Fashion, Feature, Film & TV

Feature: CHF’s Ruth E. Carter Interview Celebrates Black History Via Costumes

Costume designer Ruth E. Carter spoke at the Music Box Theatre in June during the Chicago Humanities Festival about her rich film career and her historic Academy Award wins for […]

Karin McKie /
Music, Opera, Stages, Theater

Review: See, Feel, Hear and Touch The Who’s Tommy at Goodman Theatre

Poet Maya Angelou suffered violence and didn’t speak for years. Tommy Walker witnessed murder and similarly shut down his senses to deal with that trauma. His fictional narrative was created […]

Karin McKie /
Architecture, Art & Museums, Beyond, Museum, Travel feature

Feature: Afrofuturism and Black Excellence at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture

Chicago offers a variety of events to commemorate Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when America “officially freed” enslaved people. For an even deeper dive into the vast nation-building contributions of […]

Karin McKie /