Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Red Clay Dance
Unlike musicians, dancers never put their instruments down. That's especially true of Red Clay Dance, where the intersection of art and activism f…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 01:00PMCourt Theatre
Under artistic director Charles Newell, Court Theatre is all over the place in the best possible way.…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 01:00PMThree one-acts from the fight for women's franchise provide a cutting history lesson with Artemisia.
If nothing else, this trio of one-acts that explore the uphi…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 30, 2019
A new musical about mental illness provided its creators a chance to confront their own struggles.
Mental illness as woman: It's a trope that keeps on giving. Fr…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 23, 2019
Levi Holloway's horror show for A Red Orchid Theatre gives a feminist makeover to a familiar genre.
Onstage or -screen, the tropes of horror (teens in peril, dem…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 16, 2019
Ida Cuttler's solo show for the Neo-Futurists considers the stories women tell to save their lives.
Toward the end of her rambunctious and profound one-woman sho…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMThree Crows tries to breathe life into a play bogged down in stereotypes.
Think The Dukes of Hazzard meets Night of the Living Dead, but more reliant on stereoty…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 9, 2019
The star of Porchight's revival talks about surviving the postingenue years.
Since arriving in Chicago in 1980, Ohio native Hollis Resnik has embodied a pantheon…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 2, 2019
Walkabout Theater's ensemble-created show suffers from too many unresolved threads.
Imagine watching a class of preschoolers hopped up on cupcakes, acting out th…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 25, 2019
Chicago Shakespeare's production is pretty and witty, but lacks dramatic tension.
The rise of Albert, Duke of York, from stammering puddle of self-doubt to globa…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 18, 2019
Thirty years later, Lauren Yee's play depicts the events during the failed Chinese uprising with sympathy and surprising humor.
In June, the Washington Post publ…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMJessica Swale's set-in-1896 drama feels depressingly contemporary in Promethean's production.
Jessica Swale's 1896-set drama should come with a trigger warning. …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 11, 2019
In His Shadow, an aspiring football player confronts his brother's legacy and the price of protesting.
Back in 2016 when she was still practicing law in Chicago,…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00PMTerry Guest's two-character play for Story Theatre delivers an emotional knockout.
When you think of the staggering levels of violence that members of the LGBTQI…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:00PMWednesday, September 4, 2019
Productions this fall in Chicago suggest their numbers are growing, but women in theatrical design still struggle for jobs and recognition.
Roughly 15 or so year…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, August 28, 2019
Jillian Leff's world premiere for Right Brain Project offers a fantasy version of the publishing world.
Playwright Jillian Leff's tale of a rookie novelist whose…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, August 21, 2019
Matt Foss's adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's World War I classic is both powerful and frustrating.
Red Tape Theatre's take on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 cla…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, August 14, 2019
A jukebox musical provides a stirring history lesson about gay life in the 1930s.
Long before the Viagra Triangle took root in the Gold Coast, 909 Rush Street wa…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMCollaboraction's annual anthology of short plays about peace, love, and understanding kicks off its season on the south side.
Eviction and art. As a grade-school…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, August 7, 2019
A touring musical about the town that hosted the world after 9/11 brings the love.
From the iconic image of the lone "falling man" to the gut-punch visual of wal…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 31, 2019
Black Ensemble Theater’s celebration of the history of funk dazzles with defiant joy.
Now onstage at Black Ensemble Theater: a hard-charging, gotta-dance, groo…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 17, 2019
Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood breathe fire into Steppenwolf’s revival.
If you've been banging around the Chicago theatrosphere longer than 25 seconds, y…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMAn adoptee seeks comfort and safety in lupine identity in Hansol Jung's latest.
Never doubt the emotional layers possible from an expertly crafted, exquisitely m…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 10, 2019
A binary-busting love story weds a 16th-century romance and the music of the Go-Go’s.
When the Go-Go's debuted the irresistibly catchy titular song in 1984, MT…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMary Zimmerman’s production sings, though the gender politics creak.
You can say this for director Mary Zimmerman's staging of Meredith Willson's multiple Tony…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, June 26, 2019
In the title role, Will Lidke is a nova of charisma.
It hasn't always been blindingly obvious that Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a riff on Plato's "Symposium." Bu…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMThursday, June 20, 2019
The theater company presented readings of three new one-acts by trans playwrights.
You don't have to look further than this year's Tony Awards to see why we nee…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 03:09PMWednesday, June 19, 2019
But all we've got is a murky early effort from Tony winner Jez Butterworth.
Playwright Jez Butterworth won the 2019 Best Play Tony Award for The Ferryman, but it…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, June 5, 2019
Firebrand’s production can’t rise over the limits of the script.
Michael John LaChiusa's musical Queen of the Mist contains a second-act song that critiques …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, May 22, 2019
Hey! Ho! Don't go!
John Ross Bowie's 90-minute drama purports to be about the creation of the Ramones' album End of the Century, but it's actually about a quarte…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, May 8, 2019
Playwright Lucy Kirkwood's devastated world is nightmarishly familiar.
It's comforting to regard the premise of Lucy Kirkwood's eco-thriller with a smug sense of…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PM 
