Darby Tillis begins his 50-minute autobiographical monologue by admitting he’s not an actor. Instead he’s onstage because of his powerful experiences: he was the first death row prisoner in Illinois to be exonerated, after he spent nine years in jail, framed for a murder he didn’t commit. The impact of those traumatic years is unmistakable in Tillis’s hulking but cowed physicality and in his wrenching original blues songs. But Tillis and director-adapter Laurence Bryan struggle to turn his experience into a cogent narrative, preferring broad hyperbole (death row is “the cruelest form of racism and genocide”) to humanizing detail....

The other night a colleague asked me how it can be that New Order sells out the Aragon while Echo & the Bunnymen can barely fill the Metro, when the latter group is so much more influential on modern rock. The only thing I could offer was, “Because they have a stupid name?” Great question, though: you can’t throw a rock at Coachella or South by Southwest without hitting a band that either cops the B-men’s moves–Interpol, British Sea Power, the Killers, the Arcade Fire, half the new Sub Pop roster–or cites them as an influence, like Pavement and Coldplay have....

Believe it or not, the fake ethnic dancing is the reason to see this low-budget show, now entering its seventh season. It’s certainly not the “plot,” which goes nowhere as the Beboians, residents of the fictional Bebo, recount how they’ve been chased from place to place while searching for their floss, or identity. Nor is pointed satire the reason to see Floss!, though it does bear some resemblance to Riverdance, given its glorification of an ethnic group and the way the Beboians solemnly report on their travails....

A triumph of affectionate and even passionate portraiture, this debut feature by cowriters Ryan Fleck and Ann Boden focuses on three complex characters: a politically radical junior high history teacher (Ryan Gosling) who’s devoted to his work but also addicted to crack, a fearless 13-year-old student (Shareeka Epps) who stumbles onto his secret and forms an emotional bond with him, and a smooth local dealer (Anthony Mackie) who employed her brother before he went to jail and now wants to take her under his wing....

Jhumpa Lahiri’s career got off to an impressive start–to put it mildly–with her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books), which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Depicting Indian immigrants or the American-born children of same, and the tensions between assimilation and cultural identity, the nine stories are elegant and descriptive, and the writing is never flashy. In the title tale a westernized young couple and their children visit India; a startling personal disclosure by the previously aloof wife to their middle-aged tour guide (who also works as a translator–or an “interpreter of maladies”–for a local doctor) leads him to examine his own unfulfilled dreams....

On its second album and U.S. debut, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (Mute), the French instrumental duo M83 uses 80s keyboard technology to create electronic effects and melodic bombast that recall the crossover work of early synthesizer pioneers like Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre. (A computer is used only once, to cut up some vocal samples on “0078h.”) But Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau’s underlying aesthetic takes them beyond the gauzy washes of sound and blandly pulsing rhythms of those obvious forebears....

Back in 2002 the regular splash page at therentals.com was replaced with a photo of front man and mastermind Matt Sharp wearing a crazy-man beard and holding a toy gun to his head, captioned with a cryptic message to the effect that we wouldn’t be hearing from him for a while. By then only the really fanatical fans were still paying attention, and we were pretty sure about what’d brought him low....

Friday 31 ROBERT PALLARD Guided by Voices epitomized how indie rock reinterpreted punk ideology in the 90s. Countless bands were prodding the “anything is possible” limits of punk’s stylistic reach, yet there wasn’t a “songwriter” to be found–just regular folks who happened to write songs. So it wasn’t just OK for GBV to sound like a crappy Badfinger cover band, it was a fucking quantum miracle: Robert Pollard wound up being a rock star and utterly not a rock star at the same time....

Bloodied by the Cutting Edge Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Klein, who’s 57, doesn’t want to be anything but positive about this: he doesn’t blame his customers or his artists. He says the closing was set in motion two years ago, when he had a “heart incident” and acquired a stent. His doctor told him to eliminate stress from his life, and “this business is hand-to-mouth,” he says....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But never mind. Believe it or not, these aren’t the important reasons why Bush is a catastrophically bad president. You might even approve of all of those actions and still fear the man, because he really does believe that being president is a lot like being, well, king. And if his belief is institutionalized, sooner or later a liberal Democrat will reach the throne, and then what?...

This is the first Chicago show put together by the Wisconsin Pop Explosion, a collective of Madison-area bands with a serious arts-and-crafts bent. Since forming in January they’ve put out a stack of handmade singles and staged themed concerts complete with pinatas, cupcakes, and onstage knitting–that last quirk a hallmark of live shows by headliners Charlemagne. The group is the brainchild of former Noahjohn front man Carl Johns, who played every instrument on Charlemagne’s 2004 self-titled debut on Winterlander; a brilliant disc of psych-country candyfloss, the record apparently caught the ear of Bruce Springsteen, who included “Prisoner Of” on a playlist of preshow tunes during his latest tour....

Billie Holiday’s story is rich in drama: raised in a whorehouse and married to numerous ne’er-do-wells, she was an addict determined to live life her way. Writer-director Jackie Taylor’s biographical revue is Black Ensemble Theater’s first R-rated work, complete with Holiday’s foul language, reliance on hard drugs, and swinging sexuality. Add 16 familiar musical numbers to the trauma and tears and you have toe-tapping entertainment. Regrettably, Taylor also gives the jazz legend competing inner voices (as annoying to the audience as they are to her) and relies on monologue more than conflict-filled scenes to capture the relationships between Holiday and others....

Alan Lightman’s precious, largely banal 1993 best seller makes for precious, largely banal theater. Snapshots of imagined worlds where time operates unconventionally–sometimes flowing back and forth, sometimes stopping, sometimes sticking here or there–are supposed to represent Einstein’s fantasies while developing his special theory of relativity in 1905. But most are too pedestrian or logically inconsistent to have seduced the unconscious of a great genius. Directors Dawn Arnold and Patrizia L. Acerra remount their 2000 show, this time for Clock Productions and Moving Dock Theatre Company, and coax subtler, more convincing performances from the new cast, who are captivating when they do something besides simply act out the narrated text....

The ninth European Union Film Festival runs Friday, March 3, through Thursday, March 30, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $9, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are films screening through Thursday, March 9; for a full festival schedule visit www.chicagoreader.com. A young Romanian couple arrive in Vienna for a no-budget holiday, get into a spat, and go their separate ways, the man hooking up with a horny blond travel agent and the woman falling under the wing of a balding nebbish who monitors surveillance cameras at a supermarket....

Merce Cunningham Dance Company | HARRIS THEATER FOR MUSIC AND DANCE, FRI 10/12 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » CRWDSPCR, a 1993 ensemble work on the Cunningham company’s first program at the Harris last weekend, is particularly odd looking. The merciless unitards that are Cunningham’s signature–revealing every articulation of the body as well as every bump–are divided into four different-colored quadrants. What Not to Wear wouldn’t approve of this harlequin look, but it does enhance perception of the body’s divisions....

Presented by Cinema/Chicago, this series of international films screens Friday, May 5, through Friday, May 12, at Landmark’s Century Centre. Tickets are $9, $6 for Cinema/Chicago members; a $30 festival pass is good for four admissions, or six admissions for members. For passes or more information visit www.chicagofilmfestival.com. Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Marcelo Gomes, who cowrote Madame Sata, makes his feature directing debut with this rambling, low-key Brazilian drama (2004)....

Brian Wharton needs to make $30 today–every day, in fact. That’s what he pays for his room at the Lakeview motel he calls home. Wharton is better known around town by the variety of names he uses as a rap artist–most often Sharkula, Thigahmahjiggee, or Thig–but better still as that guy on the el platform who sells homemade tapes and CD-Rs out of his backpack. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Over the years Warn Defever, the native of Livonia, Michigan, who’s been the brains behind His Name is Alive for nearly two decades, has demonstrated an almost schizophrenic array of musical directions, using his group to enfold his interests in pop, soul, country, folk, rural blues, and electronica, among many other things. I’m always a bit skeptical about such eclecticism....

If He Can Make It There Steinberg made it clear in his debut Daily News column, on February 13, that he sees himself that way too. He addressed a New York concern–the scratching of Wal-Mart at that city’s gates–by calling the chain the “Red China of corporate America–an enormous fascist beast rising to its feet and searching for new worlds to conquer.” He ingeniously manipulated the death of Arthur Miller into an occasion to insult his new opposition–the New York Times and the New York Post–as hopelessly thick-witted....

Most MCs are all about asserting their alpha-male status, but PIGEON JOHN is content to be an omega male. He’s a relentlessly self-deprecating dork, and really he barely even qualifies as a rapper: on Pigeon John Sings the Blues (Basement) he croons more than raps, about the sad state of his Toyota Tercel, his love for swing dancing, and his many encounters with romantic rejection. You get the feeling that much of this is tongue-in-cheek, but he can also sound remarkably sincere....