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.
Sanctuary City, Steppenwolf’s new production by playwright Martyna Majok, is an earnest play with a bit of heart. It tries to demonstrate what the lives of young immigrants are like […]
Timeline Theatre’s new production of The Lehman Trilogy tells the story of the rise and fall of an iconic American business—starting as an Alabama dry goods merchant and becoming one […]
Two old friends, their bonds apparently fractured by despair at a collapsing world or something else entirely, meet again. One is artistic and the other is a practical man, a […]
Birthday Candles is a new play now on stage at Northlight Theatre. It’s a poignant comedy/drama that will cure your emotional ills for an evening with its story of love, life […]
Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge is a mid-century American story, a tale that’s rimmed with classic notions of honor and respect, as old as Greek tragedy and Sicilian immigrant lore. […]
CHIRP Radio is launching its first film festival this week. But it won’t feature the latest action flick or hot indie rom-coms. As you might expect, CHIRP’s festival will feature […]
Dijo el cuervo, “nunca más.” That famous line of 19th century American poetry, “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore,” is a thread that runs through North & Sur, the new play being staged by […]
Chicago author Kathleen Rooney writes in many genres—fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry—even Poems While You Wait. She has written several historical fiction novels in her own distinctive style. Heavily researched, novelized, written in […]
Fremont is a quiet movie. Subtle direction by Babak Jalali (Land, Radio Dreams) uses music interludes, long silences and intervals between dialogue to dramatic effect. The film, shot in black and […]
The Writer, Steep Theatre’s new play by English playwright Ella Hickson, is an assault on theater and on the patriarchy. It’s a much-deserved feminist assault. Whether it’s good theater or […]
Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land is meticulously staged and performed by an excellent cast. Director Les Waters’ four actors do a masterful job with Pinter’s puzzling 1974 script. […]
Forty-five years ago, Jeffrey Sweet wrote a book—the story of Second City, which was then only about a decade old. But Chicago’s preeminent comedy theater had a much longer history, […]