Nancy Bishop is a Chicago native, who writes about things she loves, like theater, film, books, music, art and design. Nancy is 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. Nancy is editor and publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review.
We don’t have to look far for a definition of a neighborhood. Jane Jacobs, the famous architecture writer who faced down Robert Moses’ efforts to demolish part of Greenwich Village to build […]
Madelines. Military service. Marriages and family. Swann’s Way to Time Regained. An older man decides he will read Marcel Proust’s iconic novel. As he reads all six volumes over the course of a year, he […]
“How did you discover Brecht?” That was the first question asked of the four theater directors by the moderator at this engrossing session on “Brecht in Chicago/Brecht and Chicago.” It was part […]
African American designers’ contributions to Chicago’s design history are on display through March 3 at the Chicago Cultural Center. The exhibition is particularly interesting because it explores the confluence of design, capitalism […]
The Neo-Futurists are staging their sad and fantastical romp based on the true story of Chicago’s 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire, in which 600 audience members were killed. This short run production, done […]
Pink crosses spread across the front of the stage. Many of them are marked “Desconocida” (unknown). Unmarked graves of young women who wanted to better their lives by working in the new […]
Knock Knock Who’s there? HAIRY — Hairy Who!!! That silly kid joke is the text on a cocktail napkin used at a Hyde Park Art Center exhibition in 1966-67. And it’s emblematic […]
In case you think brooding suggests gloom and doom, think otherwise. Trap Door Theatre’s The Old Woman Broods is chaotic, cacophonous and more than a little cuckoo. The 1969 play by Polish playwright Tadeusz […]
Familiar at Steppenwolf Theatre rings true as a familiar story in one way or another for most of us. An immigrant family struggles with education and culture in its new country, and tries […]
“This is Major Tom to Ground Control I’m stepping through the door And I’m floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today For here am I sitting […]
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, a 1957 play by William Inge, is set in a small town in 1920s Oklahoma. The play tells the story of the Flood family—Cora […]
The Revolutionists is feminist history laced with an argument for the value of art in revolution. Playwright Lauren Gunderson describes it as a “comedic quartet about four women at the height of the […]
