4,000 stories from Newcity Stage
If you're coming to the show expecting a reenactment of Whoopi Goldberg and company's feel-good film where a wayward woman finds God and changes her life as well as the lives of others in ne…
RECOMMENDED A stage swathed with oriental rugs. On it a tambourine, a tape deck, a table lamp, a silicone-sleeved glass water bottle, an electric guitar, an amp and a suitcase. Harmonies: ra…
RECOMMENDED Shakespeare's problematic play "The Tempest" is a heady undertaking for any theater company. Never mind the need to replicate an onstage shipwreck. Culminating in the playwright'…
Let's start here: all the stuff you've seen and read about Romeo and Juliet was fake, an elaborate ploy so that the pair could run off to Reno together. Juliet (Jillian Rea) is horny and blo…
Monday "A Loss of Roses" at Raven Theatre. The "nearly-lost classic" from William Inge returns to Chicago. Through April 2. For tickets and more information visit raventheatre.com "Romeo and…
RECOMMENDED In the gun debate there are only two sides to choose from. Either you stand with those who hold the Second Amendment sacred or with those that believe guns are the root of all…
RECOMMENDED If you were involved in the dramatic arts in high school, you probably don't remember the performances as being the best part of your experience. Then again, perhaps the young pe…
Two years ago, Hamburg Ballet was onstage at the Harris Theater when a stagehand interrupted a dress rehearsal of their production of “Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler,” an exeges…
RECOMMENDED "2666" is unlike anything you've ever seen before. That much I can promise. Beyond its gargantuan run time"which will be plenty of reason to put some out but also just enough to …
RECOMMENDED Lauren Yee's "In A Word" will leave you in a poetic state of mind. You'll find yourself grasping for ways to describe this manic work that will ultimately fall short of the breat…
RECOMMENDED All architecture is created by human beings to contain their lives, but houses particularly so. Homes are the space"usually safe, sometimes otherwise"where we play out our mos…
I am of two minds over this mentalist act now ensconced at the Apollo. On the one hand, it's technically amazing, a blast of psychic gee-whiz wonderment as Salem appears to effortlessly read…
RECOMMENDED "The Awake" details three people's flight from their lives, from circumstances impossible to accept: Nate (Kaiser Ahmed) dreams of being a school teacher while violent interrogat…
RECOMMENDED The big screen is our escape hatch into a world more vivid and exciting than our everyday one. But what happens when the hatch closes and the lights come back on? One kind of …
RECOMMENDED Carving out the social history of the Bronx promises, according to the artist statement, to provide viewers of this multidisciplinary performance with a glimpse inside the boroug…
RECOMMENDED The tenth season of UrbanTheater Company (UTC) kicks off with the Midwest premiere of José Rivera's "Adoration of the Old Woman." Directed by UTC artistic director Juan CastaÃ�…
It's been nearly a year since "Today We Escape,” Tympanic Theatre Company’s short-play festival dedicated to the seminal Radiohead album "OK Computer." They return with "Blueb…
Monday February 15 "In A Word" at Strawdog Theatre Company. A world premiere from celebrated playwright Lauren Yee following the success of “Samsara” at Victory Gardens. Through …
RECOMMENDED Many musicians stir hearts, some are worshipped, but few have been literally canonized as jazz great John Coltrane was after his brief life of inspired saxophony, destructive add…
At times, "Estrella Cruz" resembles a collage, a junkyard of ideas that twine together lyrically. Playwright Charise Castro Smith has a sense of dramatic poetry. The playfulness of her langu…
RECOMMENDED If you're a progressive"or merely impatient"the wheels of change can feel like they belong to a covered wagon rather than a Tesla. We tend to view entrepreneurs as renegades to b…
RECOMMENDED "Welcome to Berlin," say several cast members to the young American writer arriving from Paris in search of his novel. The time is 1929 and Berlin is in the waning age of the Wei…
RECOMMENDED The ghosts in the Ohio River and the Blue Rose Strangler are omnipresent fears, if only in the imagination of the town of Rising Sun, Indiana. The Harper family, on the other han…
RECOMMENDED A longstanding collaborator of the renowned Bebe Miller Company (whose namesake performed in Chicago recently as part of the lauded aMID Festival), Hauser teams up here with Smit…
You have quite possibly already seen or heard of Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things,” a 2001 play that swiftly became the 2003 movie starring Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd. Th…
