Ferguson, Missouri, Matters in Solo Show Until the Flood
In 2014, unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown was shot at least six times by a white police officer. His body remained on the street for four hours in Ferguson, Missouri, […]
Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.
Review: I Spy with My Big Eye the Raucous Residents
In this cult of personality era, The Residents, part of the Bay Area’s Cryptic Corporation, played a refreshingly product, not person, focused set at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk […]
Oprah and Oppression in MCA’s Poor People’s TV Room
Oprah is a leitmotif in the multimedia movement narrative Poor People’s TV Room, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art from April 12-15. United States Artist Fellow Okwui Okpokwasili and director-designer Peter […]
Get It On, Bang Some Gongs with Mind Over Mirror’s Bellowing Sun
Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art co-commissioned Bellowing Sun, the sixth album from Jaime Fennelly’s Mind Over Mirrors, once a solo project and now a quartet including Jim Becker, violinist from […]
Energy Efficient Architecture in Chicago and the World Shared in Peter Land Retrospective
British-born architect Peter Land has taught at Harvard and here in Chicago for over four decades at the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which recently hosted […]
The B-52’s Reimagined in Cindy Wilson’s Change
On Valentine’s Day, 1976, Cindy Wilson met her future husband Keith Bennett, and performed in her first B-52’s show. Her band mates were fellow Athens, GA, denizens Kate Pierson (vocals, […]
Memes Become Scenes in Theater Wit’s Delicious Women Laughing Alone with Salad
Playwright Sheila Callaghan (writer/producer of Showtime’s Shameless) morphs memes into scenes in the delicious Chicago premiere of Women Laughing Alone with Salad. Guy (Japhet Balaban) is EveryGuy, a dope-smoking dilettante […]
The Importance of Not Being Earnest Absent in Walkabout’s The Brink
Writing teachers ask their fledgling essayists to answer the question: “So what? Why write this? What’s the point?” Theater artists also should have a similar rubric for plays. Walkabout’s music, […]
Review: (Wo)Mano a (Wo)Mano in Chicago Shakespeare’s Mary Stuart
Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Mary Stuart aligns with the zeitgeist of today’s #TimesUp moment, where women seize the front and center, onstage and off, trying to harness and wield what power […]
Bobbing and Weaving in Red Tape’s Catastrophic I Saw Myself
Red Tape Theatre inaugurates its new “The Ready” space with Howard Barker’s scenery-chewing angst-fest I Saw Myself. The 13th century widow Sleev (Carolyn Hoerdemann), vulnerable in a black slip, is weaving […]
Second City’s She the People Zips by the Nuances
Just in time for the Second Annual Women’s March, the Second City remounts the sketch show She the People: Girlfriends’ Guide to Sisters Doing It For Themselves at the UP […]
TimeLine’s Boy Tells Story of Generation X’s Adam
TimeLine Theatre’s Chicago premiere of Anna Ziegler’s Boy (where the play was also workshopped in 2014) is inspired by the true story of a Canadian male child born physically male […]