As a Chicago native, I have a vague memory of the heatwave of 1995, a days-long invisible natural disaster that ultimately took the lives of hundreds of Chicagoans who didn’t […]

The Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical this year went to Daniel Fish’s stripped-down, timely interpretation of Oklahoma!, a Rodgers & Hammerstein classic that first opened on Broadway […]

The Grant Park Music Festival continued its tradition of touring the American songbook for thousands attending its annual July 4th concert at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. It […]

Except for a brief period in my pre-teens when I thought it wasn’t “cool,” I’ve always been an avid reader. I was practically raised in the library, and to this […]

I have to admit that I never got around to Crash Team Racing (CTR) on the PlayStation. I liked kart racing games, but being a Nintendo fan (which I still […]

Summertime in the city means it’s time for big things–music festivals, street fairs, parades, baseball and blockbuster exhibits on Museum Campus. Something big always seems to crop up just when […]

Ada and the Engine at the Artistic Home is a magical play about poetry and technology, tinged with tragedy. Ada Byron Lovelace was the daughter of the famous poet, a man […]

In the ever-changing world of music, everyone wants to compare artists to one another; Atlanta’s Faye Webster is no different. Having recently signed to Secretly Canadian, based out of Bloomington, […]

  Void Bastards is a strange game: It’s chock full of charm, but also crammed with weirdness. It’s one of those games that takes the ideas from multiple games and […]

Few top tier classical performers have done more to advance music and human dignity than cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He has incorporated public education and outreach into his touring schedule and […]

I’ll admit, I was genuinely surprised to hear that there were people in this world who were concerned that the fourth installment of Toy Story series might not be good. What […]

Mike “McBeardo” McPadden is truth in human packaging. A beard is indeed present, bristly, with streaks of grey—suggesting wisdom in matters strange and arcane. I’ve seen McPadden in action as […]