Chicago Crime and Sex Trafficking Stories Explode in Monger at Her Story Theater Mary Bonnett’s play Monger: The Awakening of J.B. Benton tells a complicated Chicago crime story with several threads seemingly […]
If you’re familiar with the concept of a bottle episode of a TV show, you might also know how notoriously difficult they can be for writers. Bottle episodes keep a few characters […]
The Holocaust. Armenia. Cambodia. Darfur. Bosnia. Rwanda. South Sudan. Native Americans. Rohingya. Whether or not you had family or ancestors in those hellish genocides, you may find it hard to watch some […]
I read a lot of short stories, of varied styles and themes. I like the stories of George Saunders, Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick and Hilary Mantel, among others. But I have […]
Holding the Man Dramatizes True Story of Australian Actor’s Life With HIV Holding the Man, based on Timothy Conigrave’s memoir of the same name, tells the heartbreaking life story of the Australian actor during […]
Based on the synopsis alone—a housewife discovers she has a talent for solving jigsaw puzzles and enters a competition—you’d be forgiven for thinking that Puzzle, directed by Marc Turtletaub, is a quirky, wholesome […]
Every once in a while you get to see a work of theater that seems as if it could reinvent the form. Manual Cinema is a Chicago-based company that has earned international […]
Linda, the Steep Theatre production of Penelope Skinner’s 2015 play, is entertaining and poignant, cataloging the life and career of the successful brand strategist for a beauty company. Robin Witt’s smart direction benefits […]
Playwright William Inge is considered a quintessential midwestern writer. Born in Kansas, he worked in Kansas and Missouri, and died (by suicide) in Hollywood. His 1955 play Bus Stop is one of the […]
Every now and then, when I’m feeling particularly down, I’ll queue up this segment from the 2016 Tony Awards: a performance from the 2015 revival of The Color Purple featuring Cynthia Erivo […]
Ubiquitous big-budget bad guy Michael Shannon returns to his roots, his theater company, his kind of town in the remount of A Red Orchid’s Victims of Duty. He reunites with original co-star […]
Last weekend in Spring Green, I saw the Ionesco play, Exit the King, an absurdist but moving play about death and mortality. My first night at home, I attended another play with […]
