Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.
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 […]
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 […]