After what I thought was a dismaying year in 2013, Chicago theater bounced back with impressive aplomb this year. There were a lot of world premieres (some much readier for primetime than …
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 01:06PMIt’s a big, tasty world out there. I know, I know, this sounds like quite the headscratchingly obvious statement, but sometimes, as I go through my daily perusal of online articles and s…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 03:36PMI’m back! And no, I wasn’t cocooned inside Noma’s Nordic Food Lab trying to make edible moss or permanently ensconced as family butler in the Dustin Lance Black-Tom Daley household for…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 07:00PMWe’re very fortunate that Chicago has become quite the incubator of new plays for the national theater scene. But that’s a double-edged sword: as I’ve said on this blog over the years …
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 09:53AMIf you’ve been around these blog parts for years, you’d know I’ve outed myself as an inveterate lover of Greek tragedies years ago. One of the most indelible and enriching cultural exp…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 05:09PMIf you’ve been hanging out in these blog woods for a while, you know I’m never one to shy away from a challenging theatrical experience. Over the years I’ve cheered and rabble-roused f…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 05:39PMContinuing my musical theater queen recertification process (not that I ever lost my designation as beloved BFFs and theater buddies can attest), the third musical I saw this past week was G…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 12:20PMWhen I first started seriously going to the theater in Chicago way back when in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, full-blooded musical productions outside of the avowed musical theater specialis…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 05:36PMThe 50th edition of the Chicago International Film Festival ended last night with the screening of Reese Witherspoon’s Oscar hopeful, Wild. With the marked improvement in both audience exp…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 11:49AMI’ve been derailed from posting on the films I’ve seen at the Chicago International Film Festival by a major customer proposal I’ve been working on in my day job. But rest assured thou…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 03:27PMI just got through the first weekend of the 50th edition of the Chicago International Film Festival and I’m pleased to report that everything is running like a well-oiled, gently-humming m…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 12:10PMActually, I’m probably the mad man as I try to fit in as many theater and arts events before all of my waking time (well outside of working and eating) is taken up by the exciting 50th edi…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 04:11PMIt is the first day of October, and other than wondering truly where the year had gone (it seemed just like yesterday that we were calling the Polar Vortex the worst thing that had happened …
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 06:04PMIn the May 2014 issue of Travel and Leisure magazine, one of my favorite writers Gary Shteyngart writes an astringent yet admiring profile of Beijing and says “This is where it’s at. Bei…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 06:59PMI’m back! It was a hectic summer where I was literally everywhere, from San Diego to Sao Paulo, from New York City to San Francisco. But I’m staying put in Chicago for the next several…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 06:55PMOnce a long, long time ago (well, the 1940s and the 1950s) the word musical theater didn’t really mean a collection of jukebox hits that your parents listened to, or a musical version of e…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 05:16PMWith the number of nationally-anticipated/written-up/reviewed theater productions this summer in Chicago, you’d expect there to be more people coming into town to see a show than to go eat…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 08:03PMIt’s been another hectic theatergoing weekend. Despite the maddening fluctuations of Chicago not-yet summer weather (alternating hot weather and thunderstorms), audiences continue to flock…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 04:41PMFor hard-core musical theater queens there are few shows that have the same mesmerizing cult status pull as that of Side Show, Harry Krieger’s and Bill Russell’s (of Dreamgirls fame)…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 03:59PMChicago theater audiences are a lucky bunch. With the abundance of world premieres in this city, we are almost always able to say, “Yep, I saw that first.” The Chicago Tribune just rep…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 12:00PMEvery musical theater queen worth his or her salt talk about the dubiously legendary Carrie: The Musical in reverentially snarky tones usually reserved for mausoleums of dictators’ wives.�…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 05:38PMI’ve been run ragged by my consecutive three-play weekends (hmm, dear readers, although it seems like I’m at a theater all the time, I do have a normal, regular day job to go to during t…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 12:33PMA theater-lover just doesn’t spring from the ground fully-formed reciting Shakespeare and high-kicking it to “Oklahoma”. It takes years and years of watching and re-watching plays to…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 07:15PMI was in Portland last year for the first time and when I got back to Chicago some of my friends who’ve never been to the city asked, “Were there a lot of hippies?” I guess they were…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 04:02PMMost of the time when people talk to me about Filipino food, they start off with the question “Have you had balut?” I tend to shut down pretty quickly any talk about balut, the boiled …
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 03:39PMAs I’ve always said all these years on this blog, theater is ultimately for me a writer’s medium. You can have all the life-sized war horses, swinging chandeliers, flying helicopters, …
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 08:15PMI’ve been flying to Charlotte a couple of times a month since the beginning of the year for my day job. Sometimes I’d scan the performing arts listings of Creative Loafing, their equiv…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 06:28PMAs I’ve previously mentioned on this blog, I saw my first play at 10 years old when I was growing up in Manila, thanks to my mom who loved musical theater with a passion. Since then I’…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 09:40PMA couple of weeks ago I was at a party with my dear friend Jonathan (who has traipsed through these blog pages before) and after several gushy mentions of shows currently playing, he (cattil…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 04:55PMDuring the Middle Ages (actually 2003), I rushed back to Chicago from wherever I was commuting to at that time for work (New Jersey, which was and continues to be seemingly stuck in the Midd…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 11:51AMThere was a brief tease earlier this week that this winter of 2014, the harshest one I’ve experienced in my 16 years of living in Chicago, would finally leave us alone. As I write this blo…
SOURCE: From the Ledge at 02:54PM