55 stories by "Dan Jakes"
Here's the thing about icons: they're not known for their flexibility. Take Pablo Picasso's towering, untitled 1967 Core-Ten steel sculpture outside Daley Plaza. It's been featured on so man…
One of the sinister knock-on effects of religious institutions rejecting queer people is how it encourages so many of them to negate inner faith altogether"to throw out the spiritual baby wi…
In a 1967 letter to his editor Annis Duff, author Don Freeman made an assertion that feels like it makes sense, even if it technically makes no sense: "Buttons and bears do go together, some…
The characters at the center of Samuel D. Hunter's plays aren't rude, per se. They're more what you might call post-courteous"people whose battles against the clock, their inadequacies, and/…
During a decade for Chicago theater that has largely felt like an endless in memoriam reel for retiring or shuttered companies, there's something reassuring about Factory Theater"a company t…
Could you call Chris Dritsas's and Zach Hacker's musical comedy a parody? They probably wouldn't fight you on it, but I might"the gags, send-ups, and compositions here (music by John Love) a…
Forgetting a hookup's name? Bad. Forgetting your spouse's name? So bad it requires Old Testament intervention.  Hetchman (Scott Danielson) is on a mission to find his lost partner (Da…
Despite my years of research in the fields of using cannabis and watching funny things, I have to confess: I have no idea what qualifies as "stoner comedy." Is it when the characters are hig…
Billionaires take up so much oxygen in today's political and cultural dialogue that it's easy to forget how few of them there really are. Over $12 trillion of the world's total spending powe…
The term storefront gets tossed around as a catchall for modestly budgeted performance spaces. But Chicago stage artists and viewers are likely familiar with an even more shoestring venue ca…
The roommates in Steve Yockey's 2013 one-act "Little Red Riding Hood" redux are too young to be spending their weekends hunkered down like grannies in a cabin, but that's exactly what their …
The title of writer/director Mark Pracht's second installment to his Four-Color Trilogy, a series about the comic books publishing industry, could easily be mistaken for one of the real-worl…
"If the Internet taught me anything," says Logan, a shaggy-haired, newly-out incoming college freshman played by Ben Ballmer, "it was that gay people are awesome." He's blessed in that every…
Last year, speaking to a BBC reporter about the Singapore government repealing Section 377A, a colonialist-era holdover that criminalized gay sex, local LGBTQ+ historian Isaac Tng paraphrase…
The phrase "white spaces" evokes quite a few strong images. Kohl's. The LDS Church. Late-night talk show desks. Bar Harbor, Maine. And, for too many comics, improv clubs. It's no secret that…
Originally developed by the Philadelphia-based Pig Iron Theatre Company in 2015, this queer adventure drag alt-comedy feels both like a natural fit for Hell in a Handbag Productions and a re…
Ask any middle-aged person about their first romantic breakup, and there's a good chance they'll laugh. Ask about their first friend breakup, on the other hand: no laughter. Director Ericka …
Like many of the American musical theater greats, Cabaret is one of those shows that can suffer from style-creep, wherein an unwritten but generally agreed-upon aesthetic tradition grows int…
There are two Christmas pantomimes based upon 19th-century fables currently playing on Chicago stages, and unless Mary Zimmerman has been up to some dramatic retooling, it's safe to assume t…
Frank Capra's 1946 Christmas classic film is packed frame-by-frame with small moments of storytelling perfection, and as I get older, there's one that just guts me like a fish. Exhausted, [�…
The surrealist, sometimes anarchic style of British playwright Caryl Churchill's prose invites a lot of directorial interpretation and creativity from the theater artists who've been drawn t…
Comedian, author, and volunteer ambulance driver Chris Gethard may be a fully Boylan-blooded New Jerseyan, but he's not shy about the extent to which his improv and stand-up DNA has […]
Th…
Organizational consulting is like a cube of lard: it looks like a sweet bite of white chocolate but sits heavy in the stomach. Stupid people are to be avoided, like […]
The post Sci-fi hea…
In the 20 years since Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis's gently irreverent and thoroughly catchy musical premiered, it's become such a beloved staple among professional and amateur companies tha…
There are a lot of substantive and weighty criticisms to be levied at the RuPaul's Drag Race franchise and its global juggernaut influence over drag culture. Then there are petty ones, like …
