Month: October 2021

Illuminate a Glimpse into Giordano Dance Chicago’s Future?

Dance has been bubbling back to the surface for a few months now but there was something about Giordano Dance Chicago’s (GDC) Illuminate performance October 22rd that had the whiff of a full resurgence.  The show marked the opening of the company’s 2021 home season and seemed intent on showing the world what it had …

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Play Ingeniously Revisits Edgar Allan Poe and His Unsettling Fixation

The sensory impact of David Rice’s The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe:  A Love Story, now extended to November 21st in Oak Park, may be it strongest asset.  Performed by the Oak Park Festival Theater (OPFT), the play capitalizes on the suburb’s rich architectural heritage to transport audiences back in time and revive a forgotten …

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Glass Half-Full Second Night of Logan Center BluesFest

Last Saturday night’s installment of the Third Logan Center Blues Fest came dabbed with surprises.  Headlined by a legend, and opening with a rising star; the show was an amazing study in contrasts.   And there was something about how the performances unfolded that exposed a seismic shift in what we call the blues. From most …

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Windy City Playhouse’s Marriage of Farce and Food a Recipe for Success

Windy City Playhouse, king of the immersive theater concept in Chicago, is back with a brand-new spin on how to insert audiences into a theatrical performance.  With Recipe for Disaster, they’ve gone in a completely different direction and partnered with Chicago restaurant royalty to show how malleable and fun live theater can be.  Rick Bayless, …

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Miniature Golf Flexes its Superpowers at Elmhurst Art Museum

A tad gaudy and slightly fantastical as they sit along suburban thoroughfares, their themes can run the gamut from the aquatic to the Jurassic.  A part of the American fabric since the 1920s, miniature golf courses have been around almost a century and can still rightfully claim millions of fans for two reasons.  Visiting them …

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Gallery Looks Back at Paradise Before it Was Bulldozed

Romanticism to Ruin: Two Lost Works of Sullivan and Wright, a new exhibit at Lincoln Park’s Wrightwood 659 gallery, makes the obscure sensational.  By looking at the rise and premature fall of two buildings, each designed by architectural deity, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, we gain a newfound appreciation for design genius and see …

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Architecture as Art and Legacy: The Obama Presidential Center

Billie Tsien considers architecture a verb; something you experience and stimulates a response.  She, along with her husband, Tod Williams, won the commission to design Barack Obama’s presidential center. When it comes to presidential libraries, architecture can also tell you something about the person it’s commemorating. Personal attributes can be projected into the lines, contours …

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