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  • Feature , Front page , Stages , Storefront

Staging Survival: How Chicago Theaters Are Responding to the Pressures of COVID and Authoritarianism

This is the second in our series of articles on The Art of Survival, in which we explore how small Chicago arts organizations are surviving post-COVID and weathering the anti-humanist […]

  • Karin McKie
  • September 6, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Storefront , Theater

    Review: Strawdog Theatre’s The F*ck House Explores the Hazards and Absurdity of Being 13-Year-Old Girls

    The F*ck House, now being staged by Strawdog Theatre, is a comic coming-of-age story about two 13-year old girls. The world premiere by playwright Susan H. Pak brings us a […]

  • Nancy S Bishop
  • September 2, 2025
    • Fiction , Lit , Reviews , Stages

    Review: Comedy and Tragedy in Chicago’s Storefront Theater World—The Very Last Production of King Lear by Richard Engling

    Richard Engling is a Chicago theater guy—actor, director, artistic director. He’s taken his years of experience as the raw material for a trilogy of novels about life in Chicago storefront […]

  • Nancy S Bishop
  • August 25, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Storefront , Theater

    Review: Incandescent Performances Highlight How to Transcend a Happy Marriage at Redtwist Theatre

    Redtwist Theatre is high-kicking and playing on the edge for Season 21, themed “Defiant Femmes.” It is a timely theme and, in my opinion, needed to bolster the energy and […]

  • Kathy D. Hey
  • August 18, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Theater

    Review: At Writers Theatre, Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar Brings Duality to the Stage

    Opposites may or may not attract but they can certainly produce lively theater. After years of creating solo portraits of famous composers—Gershwin, Chopin, Debussy among them—Hershey Felder pairs Sergei Rachmaninoff […]

  • Susan Lieberman
  • August 17, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Theater

    Review: Broadway in Chicago’s Dungeons and Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern Is a Night of Uproarious Laughter and Fun

    Cast of Twenty-Sided Tavern. Photo credit: André Chung

    Our mighty heroes have started their adventure. The Warrior (Madelyn Murphy), Mage (Diego F. Salinas), and Rogue (Anjali Bhimani). The goal? To save the Forgotten Realms. Projections designers Derek Christiansen […]

  • Lauren Katz
  • August 17, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Storefront , Theater

    Review: Female, Ashkenazi With a Sewing Machine Tells a Story of Love and Illness

    This oddly named play is a love story as well as the drama of a serious health risk faced by many women. Rather than treating it in documentary style, its […]

  • Nancy S Bishop
  • August 16, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Theater

    Review: Sentinels Tracks Women Supporting Women in Secret

    In the world of gender dualities, a playground finds boys competing at physical games while girls chat and jump rope. Sentinels, which just ended a short run in a co-production […]

  • Susan Lieberman
  • August 12, 2025
    • Review , Stages

    Review: Music Theater Works’ Fiddler on the Roof Hits the Right Notes—If Not New Ones

    Based on the city’s north side and staged at Skokie’s North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Music Theater Works regularly produces a slate of relatively traditional American musicals. Last […]

  • Lisa Trifone
  • August 11, 2025
    • Broadway , Review , Stages , Theater

    Review: Parade Is a Crowd-Pleasing Hit, But It’s Not for Everyone

    The first national tour of the musical Parade arrived in Chicago this week with impressive credentials. Based on a true story set in Atlanta, it involves the 1913 rape and […]

  • Anne Siegel
  • August 10, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Storefront , Theater

    Review: Buddha’s Birthday by Lucid Theater Focuses on One Character—Plus That Raccoon

    Buddha’s Birthday by Lucid Theater is a little slip of a play, a story of family relationships and conflicts—husband/wife, mother/daughter, aunt/niece. One character in each of those pairs is played […]

  • Nancy S Bishop
  • August 9, 2025
    • Review , Stages , Theater , Theater Festival

    Dispatch: Juicy Plays at Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre Are Ripe for the Picking

    There’s no better time for Chicagoans to point their cars north towards Wisconsin than right now. Some people might head to campgrounds, others may find a secret fishing spot, and […]

  • Anne Siegel
  • August 8, 2025
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