Friday 1/30 – Thursday 2/5
31 SATURDAY Hot on the heels of the fourth World Social Forum, the annual international meeting of anti-globalization activists that concluded January 21 in Bombay, the first Chicago Social Forum will bring together activists from around the city for a day of more than 40 discussions and workshops. Subjects range from affordable housing to the war in Iraq, and scheduled speakers include Carl Davidson (cofounder of Chicagoans Against War and Injustice), Reverend Calvin Morris (executive director of the Community Renewal Society), and University of Chicago sociologist Saskia Sassen. It’s today from 9 AM to 6 PM at Jones College Prep, 606 S. State. Admission is $10, $5 for seniors, students, and the unemployed; the first 250 registrants also get a free lunch. To preregister or for more information call the American Friends Service Committee at 312-427-2533 or see chicagosocialforum.org.
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In these sober times, the image of the hard-drinkin’ writer is often more romantic than realistic–there’s little time for the occasional cosmopolitan, let alone a hangover. Still, the idea that firewater lures the muse persists, providing fodder for still more art in the Neo-Futurists’ chamber piece Drinking & Writing. “Writer-performers Sean Benjamin, Steven Mosqueda, and Diana Slickman cannily balance the ineluctable glamour of art-inflected alcoholism with relentlessly harrowing portraits of self-destructive genius,” wrote Reader critic Brian Nemtusak when the show–performed in the friendly environs of an actual bar–premiered in 2002. “Like Charles Bukowski at his best, it’s mostly, inexplicably, leavened with laughter and light.” Remounted in Evanston after runs in Chicago and Arlington Heights, it starts at 7:30 tonight and every Monday at Nevin’s, 1450 Sherman. Admission is $12, $8 for students; call 847-869-0450 or see the theater listings in Section Two for more information.
