Kerri Sancomb remembers when she discovered her friend’s secret. She and Millicent Souris were part of a group of young artists and musicians living–not entirely legally–and working in a four-story industrial warehouse in the West Loop. In the summer of 1998 the group decided it was time for a party. The Butcher Shop, a gallery housed on the third floor, would sponsor the event, which would double as a showcase for the gallery’s artists....

This interactive romp by Jeff Rogers Productions works something like a mock casting call. Rogers and his cohorts, playing the producers of a fictitious play, put audience members through a variety of onstage paces as though they were auditioning. Theater folk will recognize simplified and sillified–OK, more sillified–versions of warm-up exercises and character-building techniques; kids and normal people may not, but that’s no impediment to joining in. “Volunteers” generally get plucked from their seats in groups of three, a smart moral-support strategy that also ensures the participation of a high percentage of the people in the 50-seat-or-so house....

Gavin Geoffrey Dillard wrote this charming revue, a West Hollywood import, for dog lovers. There are songs about chasing one’s tail, singing to sirens, and whizzing on stuff, as six puppies in a pound sing perkily about their past lives as beloved pets, working dogs, and street tramps–and howl to be adopted. The cast, particularly Cory Goodrich as a formerly pampered poodle and Tony Barton as a dangerous pit bull with a bit of flirty chihuahua mixed in, are warm and adorable, and Sharell Martin’s inventive costumes capture the dogs’ personalities....

The Caribbean Jazz Project started in 1993 as a studio band of Latin-jazz heavyweights: expat Cuban reedist Paquito D’Rivera; steel-pan drum virtuoso Andy Narell, who commands even more respect in the island nations where the instrument originated than he does here; and vibist-marimbist Dave Samuels, best known for his work in Spyro Gyra, a workmanlike fusion band that earned some jazz cred when he showed up. Samuels seems like the odd man out: he was raised on the North Shore and broke in with saxophonist Gerry Mulligan in the early 70s, which isn’t exactly the pedigree you’d expect of a Latin-jazz expert....

The premise of this show is at least new-ish: to improvise a faux documentary in the tradition of Christopher Guest films (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show). But the problems that bog it down are as old as improvisation: denial, dumb ideas, bad acting, poor preparation, lousy teamwork. The two women in Dirty South Improv, Erica Reid and rubber-faced Kristen Studard, know the importance of being emotionally open and setting up high-stakes relationships, especially when the characters and situations must be maintained for 45 minutes to an hour....

Samuel Beckett famously peppered his dramas with bits borrowed from silent comedians and music hall clowns. The protagonists of Waiting for Godot are essentially a pair of baggy-pants vaudevillians, and the playwright once wrote, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” Still, it’s a dangerous choice to play Beckett for laughs, in part because his message–summarized in the line “They give birth astride of a grave”–is so bleak. Director Christopher Bayes takes the risk and reaps the rewards in this finely wrought production of one of Beckett’s darkest works: Bayes has mastered the art of winning laughs one minute and shocking the audience the next with the play’s dark truths and despair....

“What is it about the decade of the 1960s that makes it age so badly?” wondered Hedy Weiss last Sunday, beginning her Sun-Times review of Sweet Charity, a Broadway hit in 1966 but a dud today. Revivals of Hair don’t work either, even as nostalgia. The 60s are an era Americans haven’t figured out how to remember. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In awe of this “Great Backlash,” Thomas Frank writes: “It matters not at all that the forces that triggered the original ‘silent majority’ back in Nixon’s day have long since disappeared; the backlash roars on undiminished, its rage carrying easily across the decades....

I love this place. It’s filled with Puerto Rican drag queens and has fabulous Mexican food and fabulous cocktails–which I need after dealing with some of the people I’ve photographed. I mostly do weddings now, but I’ve done my share of nightlife and celebrity shoots, and let me tell you, I’ll take a nervous bride any day over some of the celebs I’ve had to shoot. One of my most memorable nightmares would be the former news anchorman who walked into my studio, took a look around, and said with a straight face, “Why is there no photo of me on your walls?...

River North has always gone out of its way to procure a variety of stylish, entertaining works. This year the premieres include Blown Away, by Tony-nominated Lynne Taylor-Corbett, a self-described storyteller. Her accessible piece revolves around eight Depression-era characters whose vignettes combine to create the sense of a stressed but vital community. Two new dances by Chicagoans are remarkable for not quite doing what the choreographers seem to intend–though that might be a good thing....

The line outside the Town Hall Pub in Boys Town was filled with the young and aggressively fashionable last week, all anxiously waiting to get into the packed monthly dance party thrown by the local DJ duo Flosstradamus. The bar’s proprietor, a gruff white-haired man in a beat-up hat, was parked at the door, barking “no” at anyone who tried to hustle their way past him. People sent text messages to friends inside begging for help....

Last year on Book of Silk (Ropeadope) the chamber ensemble Tin Hat Trio became a quintet, adding harpist Zeena Parkins and tubaist Bryan Smith. But as ever, their elegant mix of musical flavors–French cafe, classical, bossa nova, jazz, blues, and Gypsy among others–sounds like the most natural thing in the world. On the cheekily titled “Elliott Carter Family,” Carla Kihlstedt and Rob Burger muck around with extended technique–she produces long tones on violin, he plays prepared piano–as guitarist Mark Orton slowly unveils Appalachian arpeggios, while on “Pablo Looks Back” they layer Morricone-esque whistling over brittle banjo playing and gently hammered piano strings....

Breathlessly, exhaustively clever, Tom Stoppard’s 1974 play ingeniously (sometimes tediously) returns Lenin, James Joyce, and dadaist poet Tristan Tzara to 1917 Zurich. Layering absurdity over historical anecdote, Stoppard depicts these disparate pioneers as remembered by British mediocrity and accidental spectator Henry Carr, a consular flunky, and in the process has great fun with the mutations of memory: this is history as the product and prisoner of untrustworthy neural connections. Governed by Carr’s addlepated recollections, the action becomes increasingly zany, playfully contrasting artistic and political revolutions: which last longer, and which change us more?...

It looked like former art dealer and wannabe kingpin Paul Klein was trying to have it both ways back in June. Spearheading a protest of the city’s proposed new public-art ordinance, he e-mailed a break-your-chains manifesto and posted it on his Web site, Art Letter. Klein was attempting to rouse art workers to support an alternate ordinance and flex their muscle at a rally at the foot of the Picasso. “Do you understand why the Mayor doesn’t care about you–the Chicago artist?...

Chicago Shakespeare Theater may be the current best local presenter of international theater. And in a city renowned for its improvisational comedy, what could be a more appropriate import than a classic work of commedia dell’arte? Piccolo Teatro di Milano makes its first appearance here with this effervescent, ingenious production of Carlo Goldoni’s 17th-century farce. Trying to fill his belly, the hapless Arlecchino (aka Harlequin) must work for two demanding masters–a situation that leads to a dizzying array of pratfalls, practical jokes, and romantic misunderstandings....

Closing In (Matador), the full-length debut from EARLY MAN, passes over contemporary extreme-metal subgenres in favor of classic headbanger stuff like Celtic Frost, Black Sabbath, and Mercyful Fate, not to mention Diamond Head and some other NWOBHM acts. Guitarist and vocalist Mike Conte has known drummer Adam Bennati since they were kids in Columbus, Ohio, playing together in a Minor Threat cover band, and when they reunited in Brooklyn in 2003 Conte was already working out some of the material that would become Closing In with a four-track and a drum machine....

Asmara Cafe Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Because of the war,” he said, meaning Eritrea’s 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia, which ended in 1991. “A lot of Eritreans were displaced all over the world. During the war I was forced to join the Ethiopian army. My brother was on the other side, fighting for independence for my country. The only choice I had was to flee....

No-wave avant-funk legend James Chance will forever be associated with the downtown New York art-music scene, so it’s easy to forget he was a Milwaukee boy. Midwestern roots might help explain why he’s found kindred spirits in the Watchers, a deservedly hyped local outfit that plays a nuanced form of dance punk that deals in multicolored pulsations instead of idiotproof beat cushions. Chance and the Watchers first got together for a short tour in late 2003, which featured Chance material of various vintages....

For much of the 70s and 80s La Donna Tittle was the queen of local black radio. She was number one in her time slot, showered with awards, and tens of thousands of fans roared when she took the stage at funk and R & B concerts. A longtime midday fixture on local radio, she was, as her nickname put it, your Tittle in the Middle. Her mother, Juanita, among other jobs, managed the pool hall and also a record store, McKee’s Bop Shop, at 47th and South Park Way (now Martin Luther King Jr....

Take a mix of funk and hip-hop rhythms laced with New Orleans street beat, slather it in tried-and-true harmonies for five horns, and keep it airy enough to incorporate Basie-style riffs and Balkan counterpoint. Voila, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet–a hearty hybrid of latter-day rhythms grafted to jazz melodies and chords. Anchored by Hammond organ and heavy on both baritone sax and flute, the ensemble has a cosmopolitan sound that encompasses the earthiness of hard bop and the neon tones of a jam band; its second disc, this year’s Husky (Hyena), quivers with smarts and energy....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mariza, perhaps the best-known exponent of Portuguese fado–the national song form of romantic longing and languor–has just added a special date in Chicago, performing August 2 at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park with the Grant Park Orchestra. (Fellow fadista Cristina Branco was originally scheduled to perform but recently pulled out.) Details of her repertoire aren’t available yet, and while she typically performs accompanied only by bass, acoustic guitar, the Portuguese guitar, and a touch of piano, she has given orchestral concerts in recent years, including a season-opener with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2003....