What does it mean to record your experiences even as you're experiencing them? Are you living a life of pastiche, with the cultural influences and opinions of friends and strangers who are j…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:02PMIn a way, theater is a year-round Halloween party — it's all about dressing up and pretending to be someone (or something) you're not. But in honor of the ghostly season, several companies…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:24PMAfter the disastrous Great Chicago Fire Festival this month, Redmoon Theater gets back to basics in a big way. Which is to say, a small way. Well, in a way.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:48PMThey say Rome wasn't built in a day, but its final collapse takes place over one histrionic 24-hour period in Gore Vidal's "Romulus," which he adapted from Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenm…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:38PM16th Street Theater has made much of the subject of neighbors in recent years. Steven Simoncic's "Broken Fences" last fall examined gentrification's impact on a West Side neighborhood. In Sh…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:38PMIf two shows can constitute a trend, then the latter half of 2014 is turning into the Year of the Desperate Woman Waiting for a Bus. In Martyna Majok's "Ironbound," produced in August with S…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:33AMCreative resurrectionists can never let Mary Shelley's creature rest in peace. They pick at the bones of her story and refashion her monster into a postmodern Prometheus in their own images,…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:56PMTrap Door Theatre has made the works of Polish proto-absurdist Stanislaw Witkiewicz ("Witkacy" to the cognoscenti) a specialty from the very beginning — "The Madman and the Nun" is listed …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:16PMThough the shootings of unarmed black men by police officers have understandably had an increasing profile in public discourse since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Mo., the Agency T…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:16PMOvert physical violence has never been a hallmark of Edward Albee's work — he's good enough at the verbal variety of bloodletting, lord knows. But there is nearly always a dark foreboding …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:58PMAs the heat rises between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, the state of Chicago public education has come under the stage lights in a trifecta of new play…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:36AMThe distance between Berlin and Broadway is about 4,000 miles. The distance between the onlookers and the performers in Theo Ubique's "A Kurt Weill Cabaret" can be as close as 4 inches. Yet …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:48PMChuck O'Connor's period-piece drama has the aura of an old basement rec room, where the musty memories of family arguments cling to the walls, no matter how much psychic ammonia one applies.…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:56PMSkyline StageWorks makes its inaugural bow with Patricia Henritze and Shawna Tucker's reduced take on Shakespeare's tragedy. "Antony and Cleopatra: Undone" feels more unfinished than undone.…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:56PMCharlotte Bronte's best-known novel, as adapted by Christina Calvit, makes its third appearance since 1991 on Lifeline's stage. But this production, directed by Dorothy Milne, marks my first…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:03PMTony Fitzpatrick's latest show is his swan song to Chicago — the 55-year-old artist/poet/performer/provocateur is packing up and moving down to the Big Easy by the end of the year. But in …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:08PMThe Chicago Fringe Festival turns 5 this year and is celebrating with nearly 50 performances scattered around the Jefferson Park neighborhood.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:09PMA crisis on the water unfolds in Anne Walaszek's "Lamp Oil," presented by Duplicity Ensemble at the Ketchup-less Stage (aka the Gift Theatre). A sailor (Gabriel Franken), who has been left a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:09PMThe enthusiastic homecoming for the Jackie Robinson West Little League team this past week ran through my mind as I watched Luis Caballero's hagiographic "Clemente: The Legend of 21." Is it …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:32PMThe last time I saw "The Arsonists" — Max Frisch's 1953 masterwork about the dangers of ignoring the obvious — was at Trap Door in 2012. That production was heavily influenced by Europea…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:11PMA late-night show that requires its audience to huddle together on floor mats and tiny stools is already asking a lot. But Morgan Ashley Madison's "Fairytales: Not Suitable for Children," ru…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:22PMNeil Gaiman's 2002 fantasy novel about a precocious 12-year-old girl, Coraline Jones, who finds a parallel and increasingly scary world on the other side of a brick wall in her home, got two…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:22PMTerrence McNally has served as the go-to chronicler for gay life in America — or at least for a certain subset of educated white gay men who live primarily in New York — for decades. So …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:25PMThe three plays in Steppenwolf's ninth annual First Look Repertory share something beyond their official status as developmental productions grown through the theater's new-work program. Eac…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:19PMTommy Lee Johnston's "Geezers" has its heart in all the right places. But the writing in this world premiere for Redtwist Theatre, directed by Jan Ellen Graves, could use some tweaks to over…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:50PMSome day (if it hasn't already happened), a women's studies Ph.D. candidate will examine the significance of women as bakers in post-millennial American pop culture.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:50PMJonathan Caren's "Catch the Fish" brings a millennial TMZ spin to the young-strivers-in-Hollywood genre, a la Nathanael West's "The Day of the Locust." Caren's piece, now in a local premiere…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:44PMJonathan Caren's "Catch the Fish" brings a millennial TMZ spin to the young-strivers-in-Hollywood genre, a la Nathanael West's "The Day of the Locust." Caren's piece, now in a local premiere…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:44PMTHEATER REVIEW: "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the Oak Park Festival ★★★ "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing," observes Gwendol…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:32PM"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing," observes Gwendolen in "The Importance of Being Earnest." That line serves as a mission statement for Oscar Wilde's…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:32PMTHEATER REVIEW: "Intimate Apparel" by Eclipse Theatre Company ★★★ Lynn Nottage's "Intimate Apparel" shares some of the same foundational supports familiar to fans of Henry Ja…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:28PM
