James Morrow says he looked back over his troupe’s five years to create “Cult Classics,” a program of “all the pieces people have been bugging me to do again.” The eclectic mix of nine dances includes several by nonmembers, one by Morrow, and two by assistant artistic director Raphaelle Ziemba. Her Illustration III is part of a series inspired by works in other media–in this case, an Anais Nin story. Set to music by Tom Waits, Illustration III begins and ends with four women slowly shifting their weight from foot to foot while lightly caressing their own arms; by the conclusion, four seated men hold the women’s thighs....

It took the threat of a local appearance by Irish writer Jamie O’Neill to get me to finally read his brilliant At Swim, Two Boys (Scribner, 2001), which has been weighing down my to-read stack for about three years. O’Neill spent ten years on At Swim while working as a night porter in a London psychiatric hospital. Set in and around Dublin in 1915, against the backdrop of Ireland’s struggle for independence from Britain, the novel tells the story of two 16-year-old boys: Jim, a handsome, intelligent, and shy shop owner’s son, and Doyler, the dark-haired, more worldly son of a dung man....

Wholesale Chicago’s multimedia antiwar piece, directed by Dolores Wilber, is blessedly oblique and nonaccusatory. Two towering men in orange jumpsuits (Steven Thompson and Douglas Grew) repeat such odd actions as spinning a safety pin on a clothesline and pretending to cook nonfood items, including what looks like sawdust with turds in it. At times the work seems an exercise in aversion therapy, as if comically gruesome sights, simulated or on video, would turn us from our warring ways....

What’s “natural” in William Inge’s family tragedy, set in Chicago, is the lack of affection between the characters. A troubled young man abandoned by his mother early in life returns to her, now living with a deadbeat boyfriend. Far more bleak than Inge’s earlier hits Picnic, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Bus Stop, this despairing 1963 work prefigures his suicide ten years later. Mockingly set at Christmas, the play depicts infidelity as inextricably tied to relationships, and incest as the ultimate expression of love....

In this biodrama/revue, playwright Ebony Joy gives a good sense of the variety in singer-pianist-composer Nina Simone’s repertoire, including her renditions of “I Love You Porgy” and “I Put a Spell on You” as well as Simone’s own protest songs “Mississippi Goddam” and “Four Women.” As Simone, Yahdina U’Deen reveals a strong voice but delivers her earnest lines too earnestly–though to be fair, there’s little humor or fun in the script....

A few minutes before midnight on Saturdays, a busboy tapes garbage bags over the windows of the Twisted Spoke in preparation for Smut & Eggs, the bar’s weekly pairing of dirty movies and late-night brunch. Sometimes only a few people show up, but on a recent Saturday the mostly young, mostly female crowd was two deep at the bar. At the far end, sitting by himself and drinking beer from a short glass, was a tiny, trim 50-year-old who goes by the name Pudgy....

The Chicago Humanities Festival asked me months ago if I had any ideas for the current festival, whose theme is “Peace and War: Facing Human Conflict,” and I suggested putting historian Joseph Ellis on a panel that would try to explain what about valor in combat is so important to some that if they can’t claim it honestly they’ll lie. The protagonist of Pouncey’s book is a scholar, MacIver, who is dying over a winter in the dilapidated country house he’d shared with his late wife....

Tidy, picturesquely gritty Bridgeport resembles the Wicker Park of 20 years ago: rich in architectural history, it has a large, stable working-class population and good access to public transit. Home to the White Sox, the Chicago Police Department, and the Daley regime, it’s also become the latest destination of local “independent” culture with the advent of Select Media Festival 4, a jam-packed month of exhibits and events spearheaded by Wicker Park interventionist/impresario Ed Marszewski, the man behind Buddy, Lumpen, and the Version media festival....

The 43rd annual Chicago International Film Festival continues through Wednesday, October 17. Following are selected films screening Friday through Thursday; for a complete festival schedule visit www.chicagofilmfestival.org. R America the Beautiful Rouben Mamoulian’s 1935 film was the first feature shot in the three-strip Technicolor process. It isn’t all that impressive in the dim, smudgy color prints that have been in circulation–Mamoulian’s congenital heavy handedness seems particularly problematic in an adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair–but final judgment should, of course, be reserved for the unique opportunity to see this restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive....

A contemporary western with political overtones and acerbic gallows humor, Tommy Lee Jones’s first theatrical feature as director (2005) is impressive. Inspired by the unpunished 1997 killing of 18-year-old Ezequiel Hernandez Jr., the script by Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros) concerns the accidental and unpunished shooting of the title character, a Mexican ranch hand (Julio Cesar Cedillo) working in west Texas. Jones plays the ranch hand’s foreman and friend, who kidnaps the border patrolman responsible (Barry Pepper) and drags him and Estrada’s corpse across the border, determined to fulfill his friend’s wish to be buried in his remote hometown....

Friday 29 SCOUT NIBLETT On her latest album, Kidnapped by Neptune (Too Pure), Scout Niblett employs drummer Jason Kourkounis (Burning Brides, Hot Snakes) and guitarist Chris Saligoe, giving some of her tunes a new faux-metal wallop while keeping her melodies sweet and modest. Her naif postures, like the hand claps and chanting on the opening of “Safety Pants,” are getting a bit tired, but the new album proves she can kick ass too: on the title track her girl-group shoop-shoops and sensual purrs are nicely offset by a sinister bass-and-drums throb....

In the 1980s New Yorker Len Jenkin penned a series of dazzling plays–Limbo Tales, Dark Ride, American Notes–full of shady, marginalized characters bumbling through the fun house-mirrored halls of the imagination. His cheesy but menacing phantasmagorias dove into the darkest recesses of human love and obsession. But by this 1993 misfire, about an aspiring Christian video actress kidnapped by a crazed plastic surgeon trying to evade hoodlums by remaking his face in the image of the actress’s boyfriend, his style had ossified into overwrought tomfoolery....

The 12th annual Chicago Underground Film Festival continues through Thursday, August 25, at the Music Box. Tickets are $8; a discount card, redeemable for ten tickets at the box office, can be purchased by calling 866-468-3401. For more information visit www.cuff.org. RThis Revolution Shot in summer 2003, this compelling 80-minute video documentary follows various members of the Miami police department’s sexual battery unit as they come under intense political pressure to apprehend a serial rapist in Little Havana....

While circulation for serious newsweeklies is flat or declining, a recent Tribune item noted, readership is on the rise for vulgar rags that celebrate and chastise the rich, famous, and beautiful. This is the cultural climate that Australian actor Barry Humphries satirizes as Dame Edna Everage, whose latest show hits Chicago next week. A frumpy, dithery housewife who’s reinvented herself as a glamorous megastar, egomaniacal Edna revels in her own grandeur as she deigns to interact with fans (“possums,” she calls them), offering psychic readings and marriage counseling....

Like most workplace send-ups, this one by Second City Theatricals is hilarious if it doesn’t hit too close to home. The revue chronicles a new kid’s speedy rise to CEO. But instead of dodging bullets from vindictive execs, this young climber has to sidestep broken office equipment and steamy piles of political incorrectness. Some material is recycled: mandatory diversity training–saw it on The Office. But other segments are keenly observed and fresh, like the working mother’s song about doing it all and the show’s conclusion: despite ground-shaking talk, corporate leadership is usually one big rerun....

From Bad to Verse Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hoover has run Columbia’s poetry program single-handedly forever, though he’s never had the title of director. He’s developed the courses, assigned the classes, overseen the Columbia Poetry Review, and curated a reading series. When he and his wife, poet Maxine Chernoff, moved to San Francisco a decade ago it didn’t cause a blip on the screen....

For four and a half “very intense” days last April, Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp videotaped a succession of people having orgasms. “One couple didn’t want to stop,” says Hafferkamp. “We finally turned off the cameras and went and had lunch.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The result of their shoot, culled from 48 hours of tape, is the hour-long video Orgasm! The Faces of Ecstasy....

The recent announcement that the Art Institute will pack up 92 impressionist works—the core of its flagship collection—and send them off for an extended sojourn in Texas next year arrived like a stealth bomb. In a press release issued November 2, the Art Institute explained that this “unprecedented loan” to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth is related to its own renovation: the impressionist galleries will be closed for sprucing up before the grand opening of the modern wing in 2009....

This multidisciplinary event, presented by Performing Arts Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, runs weekends through 4/10. The avant-garde showcase, now in its third year, features presentations by established and emerging artists (including a number of SAIC students and alumni) working in theater, performance, circus arts, puppetry, storytelling, dance, music, video, and sound and installation art. The shows range from family-oriented to adults-only. Participants include Goat Island, the Curious Theatre Branch, Free Street, Theater Oobleck, the Hypocrites, the Neo-Futurists, Plasticene, Teatro Luna, Mathew Wilson, Mad Shak Dance Company, and many more....

It’s no mystery how this Cleveland avant-garage institution has survived for three decades, despite innumerable lineup changes, the occasional breakup, and a lack of commercial success so consistent it looks like a strategy: PERE UBU is undergirded by the iron will of front man and sole constant member Dave Thomas. Despite his rep as a prima donna–he’s a perfectionist with an idiosyncratic definition of “perfect,” which isn’t something easily communicated to soundmen–even a bumpy Pere Ubu gig has more promise than the most inspired set from a typical headliner....