Along the corridor leading into the Rhona Hoffman Gallery is Tania Bruguera’s beautiful yet troubling installation Poetic Justice: used tea bags shingle both walls, broken occasionally by tiny LCD screens playing sepia film loops of marching figures or of black faces being touched by people outside the frame or being covered by an oxygen mask held by a nest of hands. The tea smells wonderful, and the quiet space is cozy and contemplative....
Rock, Pop, Etc. BEACH BOYS Mon 6/14, 8 PM, Pavilion, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay & Lake Cook Rds., Highland Park. 847-266-5100. DJS SPIN at a postshow party for Nomenil Theater Company’s show “Love Pollution: A Tekno-Popera.” Sat 6/19, 10 PM, Loop Theater, 8 E. Randolph. 312-744-5667. HONEYBEES Free concert. Fri 6/11, 12:15 PM, Randolph Cafe, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. 312-744-6630. KATIE MELUA All-ages. Tue 6/15, 7:30 PM, Park West, 322 W....
The Upper Room Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Upper Room is an account of the friendship in the early 40s between Viktor Lowenfeld, a Jewish artist who fled Germany in 1938, and John Biggers, the well-known African-American artist who was one of his students at Hampton Institute. But Barr never really focuses on either man: the play begins with a mournful Hebrew prayer, flashes forward to a speech by Biggers when he returns in triumph to his alma mater, then flashes back to the story of the Lowenfeld era at Hampton, a black college founded by whites in Virginia....
Where Even Pros Pay to Play Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Goode, the CRO’s manager and principal trumpet, had arranged something special. At its July 13 session the reading orchestra would perform two ambitious new works of music, with the composers–Silk Road competition winner Angel Lam and Loyola faculty member Bjorn Berkhout–in attendance. Lam, eager to hear her piece in professional performance for the first time, had already arranged to come here from New York, but as the date approached Goode found he was coming up seriously short of musicians....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nothing could be more retro than the movie theaters of S. Charles Lee, though it’s hard finding evidence, either standing or demolished, to prove that this Chicago-bred architect-designer ever practiced here at all. But he did, and his apprenticeship was formidable: with architectural giants Rapp & Rapp, prime purveyors of 20s movie palace baroque (is “churrigueresque” too strong a word?...
After a recent all-ages show in Milwaukee, Pit Er Pat singer and keyboardist Fay Davis-Jeffers took her turn hawking the band’s merchandise, including a secondhand T-shirt embroidered by drummer Butchy Fuego. He’d spent nearly two days stitching on the group’s name and an assortment of oddly shaped patches–it’s the only shirt he’s made so far, since Davis-Jeffers can do the same job in less than an hour. “One kid was like, ‘Shit, 15 dollars, I don’t have that much money,’” she says....
Benefactors Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Well, you know what comes next, don’t you? Swamped by physical and bureaucratic difficulties, David throws off hunks of idealism like so much ballast. His plans progress from 6 stories to 11 to 18, until he finds himself calling for a pair of–yes–towers 50 stories high. The year being 1968, he can expect a protest. What he’s not at all prepared for is the fact that the leader of the protest is his old school chum and neighbor, Colin Molyneux–the same snide Colin who’s spent so many evenings sponging dinner off David and his wife, Jane; the same Colin whose own helpless wife, Sheila, has begun to blossom as David’s office assistant....
If these two sketch-comedy duos were pitted against each other, Rebecca Jackson and Pip Lilly’s Straight & Nappy would win hands down. They demonstrate vigorous wit in their 25-minute set whether they’re eulogizing someone at a funeral, testifying to God, or taking a shot at rising coffee prices. Jackson’s heartfelt detour in a bit about depression is too much of a PSA, but otherwise the pair’s forceful personalities and physical presence make even the routine material soar....
The 16th annual Chicago Humanities Festival, this year themed “Home and Away,” continues through 11/13, offering dozens of lectures, readings, and discussions by an international coterie of writers, artists, and scholars as well as film screenings and theatrical and musical performances. All programs are $5 in advance, $6 (cash only) at the door, unless otherwise noted. (Tickets for some sold-out programs may become available; check at the venue no later than 30 minutes before the program....
David H. Bell’s exceptional cast finds all the brightness and humanity in this stage version of the 1984 film, about a troubled city boy stuck in a small town that’s outlawed dancing. The movie’s pop score mostly translates well in Walter Bobbie and Dean Pitchford’s 1998 adaptation of Pitchford’s screenplay. The high point is “Somebody’s Eyes,” which becomes a gospel refrain–gloriously led by Dorrey Lyles–highlighting the double meaning of prying neighbors and a vigilant God....
Wendy McClure went to her first literary reading as a freshman at the University of Iowa in 1989. The Oak Park native had come to hear poet James Tate. But first she had to listen to Meg Wolitzer read from her novel This Is Your Life, which was being made into a film directed by Nora Ephron. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “At the time I was at Iowa I thought the stuff I was doing was really important,” says McClure, who got her MFA in poetry from the Writers’ Workshop there....
Everybody old enough to remember when Kiss ditched the makeup probably also remembers the public’s almost involuntary response: “Oh my God, put it back on!” When two local tabloids printed unauthorized photos of these Finnish hard rockers without their masks following the band’s crushing victory at last year’s Eurovision Song Contest, they caught so much flak they apologized and promised never to do it again–Lordi fans want their darlings to stay monsters....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last night I dropped the new reissue of Machine Gun by the Peter Brötzmann Octet into my CD player. It had been a few years since I listened to the 1968 album, an indisputable milestone in the history of both free jazz and European jazz, but it still hit me with the same abrasive, ear-cleaning force as the first time I heard it....
The Pacifica Quartet certainly looks the part of a next-generation quartet: first violin Simin Ganatra’s family comes from South Asia, second violin Sibbi Bernhardsson is from Iceland (yes, he’s worked with Bjork), violist Masumi Per Rostad is half Norwegian, half Japanese, and cellist Brandon Vamos’s parents are prominent string instructors of Latin descent. And they typify the questing nature of the current crop of classical artists, offering powerful readings of the standard repertoire while working to develop a contemporary canon....
This touring festival of digital videos stops for four days, October 6-9, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door; call 312-397-4010 or visit www.resfest.com for a complete schedule. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Resfest can’t be accused of neglecting its sponsors: each work lists the digital software and hardware used, letting viewers see what Canon, Apple, and Panasonic products can do....
This annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe, coproduced by Curious Theatre Branch and Prop Thtr, runs through 11/4. This year features two full-length trilogies, “The Madelyn Trilogy” by Beau O’Reilly and the “Danger Face Trilogy” by Idris Goodwin. Admission is $15 or “pay what you can,” except where noted. Performances take place at the Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, and the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, and elsewhere as noted below....
My boyfriend of three years has a lower libido than I do and rarely wants to do anything sexual. For a variety of reasons, I will not DTMFA. We no longer have arguments about this, but I do feel lonesome for the type of physical contact he won’t provide. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We’ll get to your issues in a moment, PALS, but first an issue of my own: I’ve been abusing DTMFA letters of late–that is, I’ve been using a lot of questions from readers who need to “dump the motherfucker already....
A maroon T-shirt with led zeppelin and 1973 tour printed in yellow on the front is going on the block at Christie’s in New York on Saturday. It’s one of just a handful made for the band’s road crew, and it’s expected to go for $1,500. When I think about that shirt—probably saved from ending up as a shop rag only by luck, and now treated as an object of veneration—I’m reminded of everything that’s terrible about the rock ‘n’ roll establishment....
In the past few years a fascinating group of Japanese experimental musicians has been cultivating an improvisation style so austere that even “minimalism” seems too noisy a term to describe it. In Berlin last year I caught a performance by guitarist Taku Sugimoto, the de facto leader of this movement; a two- or three-note cluster of damped guitar plucks marked a major shift, sandwiched as it was between three or four minutes of pure silence....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What Stantis didn’t draw on was any particular sense of Drury himself. Stantis didn’t grow up here, and for the past 11 years he’s been the cartoonist for the News in Birmingham, Alabama. (He also draws one cartoon a week for USA Today, and a daily comic strip, Prickly City, that the Tribune used to carry.) Stantis keeps tabs with Chicago because the city fascinates him and also because he sends the Tribune the occasional Chicago-based cartoon....
