Stages Monthly: What to See in Chicago Theaters in September
September is a hectic month for theater in Chicago. Although summer is no longer the slow season it used to be, September sees a lot of season openers and just […]
Nancy S. Bishop is publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review. She’s a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com, and follow her on Twitter @nsbishop. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Strawdog Theatre’s Barbecue Roasts Our Attitudes About Race, Class and Celebrity
Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue is not a treatise on meat-grilling. It’s a satire that roasts our attitudes about race, class and money. It’s a funny, biting family story with a twisty, […]
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity: The American Dream in All Its Slamming, Kicking Glory
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity is about pro wrestling in all its pounding, banging, slamming, kicking performance art glory. It’s loud and obnoxious. And much of the play that […]
CAF’s No Small Plans Explores Urban Planning and Civic Involvement in a Graphic Novel
No Small Plans, a new graphic novel, tells the stories of three sets of teenagers and how they live in and try to understand their changing city in the past, […]
Expressionist Machinal Tells Powerful Feminist Story at the Greenhouse Theater Center
The play opens with a symphony of switchboard operators, those 1920s-era office workers who kept people talking by plugging phones into jacks, greeting and connecting the world outside with the […]
Poetry Foundation Calls for Signs of Resistance for Fall Exhibit
The Poetry Foundation has issued an open call for posters, signs, banners and other visual materials that were used on the streets of Chicago during recent resistance protests and marches. […]
Did Jefferson and Poe Collaborate in 1826? Monticello Tells Their Story
What if Edgar Allen Poe, a new student and earnest young writer at the University of Virginia, went to Monticello in July 1826 to help Thomas Jefferson with an important […]
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical Speaks to New and Old Generations
It’s been almost 50 years since I saw Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical at the old Shubert Theatre in Chicago. But I sat in the Mercury Theater Friday night […]
An Octoroon at Definition Theatre Meditates on Race and Identity in 19th and 21st Centuries
Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins gives us something to think about in the opening moments of his play, An Octoroon, by Definition Theatre Company, directed by Chuck Smith. An actor (Breon Arzell) appears […]
About Face Youth Ensemble Explores Riot Grrrls Movement in Brave Like Them
The About Face Youth Theatre is staging an energetic and thoughtful world premiere, titled Brave Like Them, which revisits the riot grrrls punk movement of the 1990s. The movement countered […]
The Nance Teaches Us Some History in the Midst of Burlesque Routines
The play opens with a bubbly Sylvie (Melissa Young) singing and dancing to “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” on the stage of an old New York […]
Eclipse Theatre’s Megastasis Takes a Tense Dive Into Lives of Young Black Men
Two black men on a street corner, drinking beer. One is a college student, the other a dad talking about how he loves to buy books for his daughter. Two […]