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.
Sometimes you see a familiar play, one that you’ve seen many times, and it gains new power because of the casting and staging or the mood created by the director. I felt […]
You have to love a pasta dish that’s quick and delicious. I recently discovered Lemon Butter Angel Hair Pasta on Food52.com and I’ve made it several times. In fact, I recently made […]
Writing this review is a labor of love for me, just as making this film must have been for the filmmakers and the cast. Pressing On is the story of how letterpress printing […]
This is the 20th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death at the hands of two young thugs in Laramie, Wyoming. There was a great outpouring of sympathy and support for Shepard and for […]
Mies Julie is a scorchingly sexy, shockingly violent adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, transported from 1888 Sweden to 2012 South Africa. Incidents that may or may not happen offstage in 1888 […]
Trap Door Theatre takes on the contemporary issue of gender identity with the story of a famous soldier, diplomat and spy in 18th century France. Chevalier Charles-Genevieve-Louise-Auguste-Andre-Thimothee d’Eon had a distinguished career working […]
Thinking about going to the theater this weekend? The world on stage never really slows down in Chicago. Here are eight plays we’ve reviewed recently. Take a look at our reviews; then […]
Hog butcher to the world. City of the big shoulders. Those familiar Chicago phrases are part of Carl Sandburg’s famous poem, “Chicago,” written in 1916. The PBS series, “Poetry in America,” will […]
Chicago aldermen have introduced an ordinance to strip the name of an Italian fascist aviator from East Balbo Drive and rename it for Chicago journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells. See […]
You know the scene. “A country road. A tree. Evening” Samuel Beckett couldn’t have been more succinct in the scenic direction for his existential classic, Waiting for Godot. That tree takes on mythic proportions as […]
The Originalist profiles one term in the career of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The Court Theatre production, directed by Molly Smith, proves that although Scalia may have been a “monster,” […]
Refrigerator is a play about the future. A dystopian future, of course. Playwright Lucas Baisch speculates that some day we will be willing to get rid of our physical bodies and allow our […]
