We often forget, especially when considering a single individual, that genius can have many dimensions. Although Chicago can boast of being home to some of famed Mies van der Rohe’s most important architectural contributions, there was another side to this modernist master. Known for the sleek majesty of masterpieces like 860/880 N. Lake Shore Drive …
Modernist Elegance Celebrated in McCormick House Read More »
Whether it’s on a wall or on a stage, altering expectations of what creative imagination can look like is what contemporary art is all about. Interested in celebrating how such transformations might manifest from the vantage point of black creativity, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s associate curator Tara Aisha Willis organized a dazzling trilogy of …
MCA Neeson Stage Overflows with Black Creativity Read More »
Since they mounted their first exhibit in 2016, movin’ in the right direction sums up the boldly ambitious goals of an arts collective known as the Floating Museum. The group sees the entire city as a museum and treats each neighborhood as a potential gallery. For the past three years they’ve collaborated with communities and …
Against the backdrop of today, seeing Kenneth Lonergan’s story about young people adrift in Reagan era America probably made this play darker than intended. Or it may have simply proven an odd reminder of how much some things don’t change regardless of the setting or the time. Often for very compelling reasons, there will always …
Born out of crisis 28 years ago, Dance for Life has become a beloved and perhaps even indispensable Chicago institution. Created to raise funds that would help address the dire health needs of dance community members stricken with the AIDS virus, it’s evolved to provide invaluable assistance to dancers confronting a variety of other health …
All’s forgiven if it slipped your mind that we have a National Picnic Month. It’s July of course, the most appropriate month of all when summer is at full flower. And perhaps the unlikeliest of suspects has created an ingenious way to celebrate al fresco dining at its purest. For the past few years, the …
Autobiography as performance art can be dangerous territory. Keeping an audience’s rapt attention while recounting the events of one’s life is not the habitat of the ordinary man or woman. But as we saw Friday night at Skokie’s North Shore Center of Performing Arts, Renée Taylor is far from ordinary. Resilient, talented and according to …
Renée Taylor Brings a Taste of Vintage Hollywood to the North Shore Read More »
You’d think the meaty new production, The Recommendation, currently playing at Windy City Playhouse was tailor made for immersive theater. With a few accommodating revisions from playwright Johnathan Caren, director Jonathan Wilson and his creative team fused a suspenseful story of trust and friendship on a kinetic “living” stage; making the combined effect more powerful …
Windy City Playhouse Takes Immersive Theater to the Next Level with The Recommendation Read More »
It’s hard to imagine that Beyond Therapy, the delightfully outlandish farce Eclipse Theatre now has running at the Athenaeum, could be nearly as endearing under the charge of any other director. Rachel Lambert in her staging of Christopher Durang’s 1981 lampoon on the dating game has overseen the production of a little jewel. Originally …
Eclipse Theatre’s Beyond Therapy Delivers Farce that Sparkles Read More »
Some things you merely enjoy and there are other things you feel very fortunate having experienced. Entering its final weeks within Wrightwood 659’s captivating galleries, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art, falls firmly in the second category. The show, which revitalizes our appreciation of the psychological power of art and challenges us to …
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art in a Class of its Own Read More »