BIG SUIT Narrowly Filled at Evanston Space Show
Steve Kikoen was producing and performing in the Steely Dan tribute band Deacon Blues when he was approached to cover Talking Heads music. He assembled BIG SUIT: A Tribute to […]
Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.
Chicago Shakespeare Brings Proper Prestidigitation to Macbeth
J.R.R. Tolkien often railed against the supernatural in Shakespeare despite appropriating many of the tropes in his own work (the Lord of the Rings’ Ents were a counterpunch referencing Birnam […]
God Is in the Details of Lyric Opera’s Jesus Christ Superstar
I don’t like musicals. I’m an atheist. I love Jesus Christ Superstar. I was a budding theater nerd when my cool uncle Tommy turned me on to The Who’s Tommy […]
Ferguson, Missouri, Matters in Solo Show Until the Flood
In 2014, unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown was shot at least six times by a white police officer. His body remained on the street for four hours in Ferguson, Missouri, […]
Review: I Spy with My Big Eye the Raucous Residents
In this cult of personality era, The Residents, part of the Bay Area’s Cryptic Corporation, played a refreshingly product, not person, focused set at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk […]
Oprah and Oppression in MCA’s Poor People’s TV Room
Oprah is a leitmotif in the multimedia movement narrative Poor People’s TV Room, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art from April 12-15. United States Artist Fellow Okwui Okpokwasili and director-designer Peter […]
Get It On, Bang Some Gongs with Mind Over Mirror’s Bellowing Sun
Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art co-commissioned Bellowing Sun, the sixth album from Jaime Fennelly’s Mind Over Mirrors, once a solo project and now a quartet including Jim Becker, violinist from […]
Energy Efficient Architecture in Chicago and the World Shared in Peter Land Retrospective
British-born architect Peter Land has taught at Harvard and here in Chicago for over four decades at the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which recently hosted […]
The B-52’s Reimagined in Cindy Wilson’s Change
On Valentine’s Day, 1976, Cindy Wilson met her future husband Keith Bennett, and performed in her first B-52’s show. Her band mates were fellow Athens, GA, denizens Kate Pierson (vocals, […]
Memes Become Scenes in Theater Wit’s Delicious Women Laughing Alone with Salad
Playwright Sheila Callaghan (writer/producer of Showtime’s Shameless) morphs memes into scenes in the delicious Chicago premiere of Women Laughing Alone with Salad. Guy (Japhet Balaban) is EveryGuy, a dope-smoking dilettante […]
The Importance of Not Being Earnest Absent in Walkabout’s The Brink
Writing teachers ask their fledgling essayists to answer the question: “So what? Why write this? What’s the point?” Theater artists also should have a similar rubric for plays. Walkabout’s music, […]
Review: (Wo)Mano a (Wo)Mano in Chicago Shakespeare’s Mary Stuart
Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Mary Stuart aligns with the zeitgeist of today’s #TimesUp moment, where women seize the front and center, onstage and off, trying to harness and wield what power […]