Review: Artistic Home’s Eurydice Captures Playwright Sarah Ruhl’s Quirky Charm
Orpheus and Eurydice are on the beach—two adorable young lovers. He’s lost in his music and in describing his love for Eurydice. He plays the melody he wrote for her […]
Nancy S. Bishop is publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review. She’s a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com, and follow her on Twitter @nsbishop. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Review: Broken Nose Theatre’s Audio Play, Kingdom, Tells a Black LGBTQ Story With Heart
Arthur and Henry are long time partners; they’ve lived together for 40 years in Orlando, in the shadow of the “Magic Kingdom.” Now same-sex marriage has been legalized and the […]
Review: Newberry Exhibit Introduces Five Female Pioneers of the Chicago Avant-Garde
Five Chicago women—all artistic, ambitious pioneers—form a circle of 20th century innovation and boundary-pushing experimentation in Chicago during the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. Their stories and their connections are curated […]
Review: Steppenwolf Opens 2021-22 Season With Tracy Letts’ Trio of Virtual Plays Set in an Off-Kilter World
Steppenwolf Theatre adds to its Steppenwolf Now series with three short plays by Tracy Letts, available virtually through October 24. These three pieces, totaling about 40 minutes, create the opening […]
Review: Little Girl, a Sweet, Sensitive Story of a Family’s Battle for Their Trans Daughter’s Acceptance
Little Girl, a 2020 documentary about a young French trans girl, would be a good introduction to what it means to feel you were born in the wrong body. It’s […]
Review: Wrightwood 659 Exhibit Views Two Doomed Buildings by Sullivan and Wright in Romanticism to Ruin
Wrightwood 659 is a museum dedicated to socially engaged art and to architecture. Its new exhibit—Romanticism to Ruin: Two Lost Works of Sullivan & Wright—is an appropriate homage to that […]
Feature: We Visit the Artist at Work, Retyping a Chicago Literary Masterpiece
I could hear the clickety-clack of his typewriter a block away. It was quiet around the Union Stock Yards Gate with only an occasional car or truck passing. And as […]
Review: The Adventures of an Urbex Photographer in Abandoned Chicagoland: Rust on the Prairies
Abandoned Chicagoland: Rust on the Prairies By Jerry Olejniczak Arcadia Publishing I’ve always been drawn to—and repelled by—demolition sites. Crumbling walls, shattered by a wrecking ball and revealing shards of […]
Review: Mellencamp Biography Reveals a Belligerent, Multi-Talented Artist
Mellencamp By Paul Rees Atria Books/Simon & Schuster Release date September 14, 2021 The first music he loved was Motown soul music that he listened to on AM radio stations […]
Preview: Music Lives Here Pays Tribute to Chicago’s Legendary Music History by Marking 50 Historic Sites
Chicago now has a set of historical landmark markers arrayed all over the city that pay tribute to the spaces, places and people in the grand history of music in […]
Review: See the Best of Noir Now in The Third Man, Full of the Style and Shadows of Postwar Vienna
The nighttime streets are dark and shadowy, elegant in rubble and 19th century buildings. Cobblestones glisten in the light from street lamps. Carol Reed’s 1949 film, The Third Man, shows […]
Review: Chilean Film Ema Tells a Fiery Family Story With a Pulsing Beat
Ema, a film by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, is the story of an unhappy family set to the pulsing, percussive beat of reggaeton music and images of fire. But its […]