Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.
Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed (“Good Moving”) has a distinct outside vantage point to dissect the fraught American electoral system. Their limited run of Fight Night at Chicago Shakespeare is required viewing for […]
Critics Kimzyn Campbell and Karin McKie jointly review BigMouth, running at Chicago Shakespeare Theater through September 22. Ticket discounts are available when two or more “Big in Belgium” shows are […]
Local shelters have been in the news lately as they are in desperate need of animal fosters, due to overcrowding, economic uncertainty and because kitten season runs a long stretch […]
City Winery celebrated an auspicious hip-hop-iversary, the release of The Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty album 20 years ago. The officiants were the kick-ass B-Boys tribune band She’s Crafty, formed after co-founder […]
Ubiquitous big-budget bad guy Michael Shannon returns to his roots, his theater company, his kind of town in the remount of A Red Orchid’s Victims of Duty. He reunites with […]
Seeming eons ago, before the heyday of the selfie, photos captured moments in squares, often outside of and pointed away from the creator. Chicago-trained and -based photographer Kenneth Josephson and […]
Steve Kikoen was producing and performing in the Steely Dan tribute band Deacon Blues when he was approached to cover Talking Heads music. He assembled BIG SUIT: A Tribute to […]
J.R.R. Tolkien often railed against the supernatural in Shakespeare despite appropriating many of the tropes in his own work (the Lord of the Rings’ Ents were a counterpunch referencing Birnam […]
I don’t like musicals. I’m an atheist. I love Jesus Christ Superstar. I was a budding theater nerd when my cool uncle Tommy turned me on to The Who’s Tommy […]
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, […]
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 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 […]