Essay: I Shed a Tear as I Watched My Beetle Drive Away
When parents reach a certain age, their adult children often decide they’re too old to drive a car—and the battle over the car keys begins. I’m that age but my […]
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 Bluesky at @nancyb.bsky.social. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Review: Tin Drum Theatre Makes Magic on a Small Stage With Incognito
Two chairs, a piano and a big bird. That simple scenic design—combined with a creatively structured script and superb performances by four actors playing 20 roles—creates magic on a small […]
Bulletin: Third Coast Review to Launch The Art of Survival to Explore How Arts Organizations Are Managing in Today’s Crises
Third Coast Review is launching The Art of Survival, a research and reporting series that will look at how small and medium size arts organizations in Chicago are surviving and […]
Review: In Familiar Touch, Supportive Care Workers Ease an Aging Woman’s Move to a New Life
Ruth is a retired cook. As the film opens, she’s in her cozy kitchen preparing lunch for a guest, setting the table, and then getting dressed up. The guest is […]
Feature: Fish from Sea to Page—The Shedd Aquarium and Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
Two nights ago I finished reading the marvelous and peculiar 2001 novel—Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish—by Australian author Richard Flanagan. In his pages of colorful prose, […]
Review: Red Orchid’s Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin Is Drama, History and a Love Letter to Theater
Last week, the Russian government erected a new statue of Joseph Stalin in Moscow. Apparently Vladimir Putin is resurrecting the image of the brutal dictator. And this week, a Chicago […]
Preview: Physical Theater Festival to Feature Local Talent Plus Global Companies June 2-8 at Theater Wit
Next week Physical Theater Festival Chicago presents its annual weeklong exploration of physical theater from around the world. This year there’s a local twist. The festival, which runs June 2-8 […]
Review: Nora Wendl Explores the Relationship That Resulted in That Famous House in Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth
“The house is a house, but it is also a metaphor; it has been described as a quantity of air trapped between floor and roof, … as a glass cage, […]
Review: The Antiquities at Goodman Theatre Reminds Us That Humans, As Creative as We Are, May Have an Expiration Date
The Antiquities at Goodman Theatre is a panorama of human invention and storytelling beginning in the 19th century and continuing into the 23rd century, when humans may be .extinct. These scenes […]
Review: Robots Rule in Century-Old Play, R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots, at City Lit Theater
Will robots or humanoids some day rule the world? A play written 105 years ago predicts the rise of the robot over its human creators. You can see the clever, […]
Review: Eclectic Theatre Stages Relatively Speaking, a Slim Comedy of Relationships
Mistaken identities. Lovers or fathers? Girlfriends or daughters? It’s not something out of Shakespeare, the master at such mixups, but a renowned 1968 play by Alan Ayckbourn, an English master […]
Review: Remy Bumppo Theatre Brings Art to Life and Life to Art with Yazmina Reza’s Comic Drama
Serge buys a painting. Marc hates it. Yvan is verklempt over his friends’ feud and his coming wedding. That’s the plotline of Yazmina Reza’s comic drama Art, now being staged by […]