In an empty room with white walls and just a single wooden deck chair, a man assesses the environment: "Hotter," he says of the room's temperature. "I want her to melt."
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:21PMA woman shows up at the door of a man she dated — briefly but intensely — 24 years ago. "For one whole summer we were lovers," she says, jogging his memory of that time when she was 17 a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:54PMA woman shows up at the door of a man she dated - briefly but intensely - 24 years ago. "For one whole summer we were lovers," she says, jogging his memory of that time when she was 17 and h…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:54PM"I made the decision to do comedy," naval reservist Landis Frederick says in a YouTube trailer for this show, "because I always enjoyed making people laugh, and my experiences with the milit…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:28PMTo hear Peter Kim describe his parents' courtship (funny, intricate, delirious) and their subsequent marriage (brutal and violent) is to witness a master storyteller at work. Full of detail …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:28PM"I made the decision to do comedy because I always enjoyed making people laugh," naval reservist Landis Frederick says in a YouTube trailer for this show, "and my experiences with the milit…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:28PM"I'm not talking Vlasics, but somebody was in a pickle!" There are a handful of wonderfully bad zingers in this film noir spoof — too few, I'd say. They come from the mouth of Rick Larkin …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:04PMIn comedy, rhythm's the thing. Without it, you might as well be on the receiving end of a limp handshake. That's the big sticking point in this production from Saint Sebastian Players, altho…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:04PMI'm not sure this comedy about fan fiction devotees fully works, but there is a lot to recommend in this Strange Bedfellows production.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMPicture someone online, alone late at night, with only a blueish glow from the screen for company. All the world is asleep, it seems, except this person, pecking away at the keyboard, hoping…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:33PMPicture someone online, alone late at night, with only a blueish glow from the screen for company. All the world is asleep, it seems, except for this person, pecking away at the keyboard, ho…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:33PM"They keep waking me up!"
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PM"They keep waking me up!"
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMIt begins with an audience suggestion, as most improv shows do. Asked to name an unusual fear, someone calls out "sinking ships," resulting in a screwy nautical-themed (mostly) cohesive thri…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:02PMIt begins with an audience suggestion, as most improv shows do. Asked to name an unusual fear, someone calls out "sinking ships," resulting in a screwy nautical-themed (mostly) cohesive thri…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:02PM"Well, you know what they say," a guy observes in Douglas Maxwell's story of three childhood pals, "you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family."
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMMuch as I like the ambitions behind Tympanic Theatre Company's project, I'm not sure any of it works. A collection of short plays by 12 writers, each tackling a track from Radiohead's 1997 a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:36PM"I was wondering why I'm so hooked on sugar, and I remembered an incident that occurred when I was about 5 years old," Katie Nixon says in her new sketch show. At Bible school, they were ser…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:36PMIt took only a few short years for the Internet to upend our definition of the media. Traditional publications like this very newspaper jostle for attention alongside hundreds of tweets and …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMChristopher Shinn's drama isn't a cohesive story so much as a series of conversations and negotiations. Sex is on the table for two different couples, but no one in either scenario walks awa…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:18PMThough it starts out as a wry comedy about college keggers and hookups, this spiky drama from Paul Downs Calaizzo turns into something quite different by the end. Who did what — and why �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:28AM"There's a lot of weird stuff online and we're here to make fun of all of it," reads the description for this show on Under the Gun Theater's website. "Each week a panel of distinguished gue…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:28AM"There's a lot of weird stuff online and we're here to make fun of all of it," reads the description for this show on Under the Gun Theater's website. "Each week a panel of distinguished gue…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:28AMThe movie of the moment "American Sniper" is, above all else, sober in tone and intent — "and don't you forget it," the film all but implores. Steve J. Spencer's "Push Button Murder," in a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMThe movie of the moment "American Sniper" is, above all else, sober in tone and intent — and don't you forget it, the film all but implores. Steve J. Spencer's "Push Button Murder," in a w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMBoth a lampoon of late-night talk shows and a sincere (if twisted) homage to form, the show devised by Kevin Knickerbocker and Nick Mestad for Tuesday nights at iO feels like they're picking…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:51PMBoth a lampoon of late-night talk shows and a sincere (if twisted) homage to form, the show devised by Kevin Knickerbocker and Nick Mestad for their Tuesday night slot at iO feels like they'…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:51PMThe press materials peg playwright Erin Courtney's drama as a "hauntingly romantic play with a mystery at its center," a mischaracterization as baffling as it is just plain wrong.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:58PMI'm a sucker for plays that plunge into the world of academic infighting, teeing up on the exploits of the overeducated when they are reduced to turf wars, ego-baiting and petty grievances.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:58PMJason R. Chin, a longtime improv performer, director and instructor at iO Theater, was reported dead late Thursday.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:34AMJason R. Chin, a longtime improv performer, director and instructor at iO Theater, was reported dead late Thursday. He was 46.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:34AM
