Kathy D. Hey writes creative non-fiction essays. A lifelong Chicagoan, she is enjoying life with her husband, daughter and three dogs in the wilds of Edgewater. When she isn’t at her computer, she is in her garden growing vegetables and herbs for kitchen witchery.
Burlesque combines circus, vaudeville, opera, and theater for the so-called common folk. The art is derived from classical composers and theater performers as far back as the mid-19th century. One […]
The Goodman Theatre’s 46th annual production of A Christmas Carol is the kickoff to the holiday season in Chicago. The last time I saw it was over 12 years ago […]
Chicago is an arts town and home to some of the finest dance companies in the world. Deeply Rooted Dance Theater was co-founded by Kevin Iega Jeff and Gary Abbott […]
The moment I made my way down the stairs of the St. Bonaventure Church community hall, it was 1968 in my head. Was it a coincidence that my earliest Catholic […]
Mel Brooks is one of the great comic geniuses of our time and he has said that Young Frankenstein was his favorite film. From that comic lunacy came the musical […]
A ghost story requires that one suspends belief. Having grown up Catholic, I know all about suspending belief just from memorizing the Baltimore Catechism when purgatory was a real threat. […]
October is Chicago Artist Month, and our city is so fortunate to have what I call treasures with our arts institutions. One of our finest treasures is the Chicago Philharmonic, […]
What a pleasure to spend a misty autumn night grooving to Kurt Elling with Charlie Hunter at Space in Evanston. I saw him at the Chicago Jazz Festival when he […]
I am still in awe from watching the Joffrey Ballet’s Frankenstein at the Lyric Opera House. Choreographer Liam Scarlett stayed closer to Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus than […]
Playwright Juan Ramirez’s The American Dream seems to be taken from the stories that are kept out of the headlines. It is the story of a “coyote,” Efren (Jorge Aguilar), […]
Soldier Songs is a solo operatic performance that blends the genres of classical and heavy metal. I thought that I had never heard anything like it, however, the parallels between […]
Tank and the Bangas are a genre of music unto themselves, so playing with the venerable Chicago Philharmonic was a further illumination of their poetry and music. The group is […]