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Forever vs. now
Q: I’m a 28-year-old queer woman. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a relationship, as it was impossible for me to make a physical or emotional connection with anyone after I was raped four years...
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Here, now, and everything in between
Planted in the woods like an extraterrestrial monolith, both completely alien and perfectly at home in its environment, lies Image Continuous, a mirrored, eight-foot-tall cube with a sky-reflective...
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Classifieds
JOBS Small Loop firm desires part time staff support/ reception. Bilingual preferred. MWF $18 per hour. Send resume to ratown@comcast.net. Chicago’s First Lady Cruises has a rare opening for FT or PT...
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Tanzanian producer DJ Travella cranks up his nonstop dance tracks to...
Tanzanian producer DJ Travella sounds like he’s having the time of his life. The 19-year-old artist specializes in singeli, a frenetic style of dance music that sets raves ablaze in his home country....
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A note from the writer of this week’s cover story
Credit: On the cover: Photo by DuWayne Padilla Breaking is usually seen on screens and in solo competition, manifesting in bursts of energy that erupt in rapid detonations of aggression and...
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‘A lot of us took on breaking because we were missing something from our lives’
Bboy Ram1n Credit: DuWayne Padilla for Chicago Reader Feet sizzle and fly like minced onions on a hot pan. Limbs wind into a knot, then spring loose. Fulminant levitation—transformation of momentum...
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Laced has echoes of Stonewall and Pulse
Sam Mueller’s Laced lives in the shadow of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, but it is rooted in a club that preceded Pulse by several generations: Stonewall. Through Mueller’s monologue-dependent...
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Space mystery
In Otherworld Theatre Company’s Murder on Horizon: An Immersive Sci-Fi Noir, the cast and crew have devised an immaculate hyperspace straight out of a video game. The story begins when audiences step...
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West Virginia woes
Williamson, West Virginia, is in the heart of Hatfield-McCoy history, but the conflict driving apart a family in Madison Fiedler’s Spay, now in a world premiere at Rivendell under Georgette Verdin’s...
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Sweat, tears, and blood
Lynn Nottage’s gripping drama Sweat launches a new direction for Aurora’s Paramount Theater, a 1,000-plus seat, 87-year-old Versailles-on-acid space known for award-winning musicals. Directed by...
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In defense of dirtbags: Jake Johnson on why he loves a checkered past
A north-side native who spent his youth frequenting Wrigley Field and following the gospel according to Del Close, Jake Johnson is Chicago to the core. The Evanstonian has drawn from his background...
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Holocaust, the opera
It was a little disturbing that in the final moments of Chicago Fringe Opera’s stirring production of the Holocaust opera Two Remain (Out of Darkness), what should pop into my head but “Springtime for...
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Meshuggah grind deeper into the tunnel that only they can dig
Meshuggah have developed an approach to progressive death metal so distinctive and compelling that it’s spawned an entire subgenre of imitators. And right from its title, the Swedish band’s ninth...
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Ahed’s Knee
When Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s proxy, the veteran director Y (Avshalom Pollak), lands in the Aravah desert for a celebration of his career at a remote public library, he’s flush with the...
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The Automat
As a woman of a certain age, I have the great fortune of actually remembering the Automat restaurants, the marvelously entertaining subject of what Mel Brooks has deemed a “meshugganah documentary.”...
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The Contractor
In Tarik Saleh’s The Contractor, Special Forces operator James Harper (Chris Pine) is forced out of the military when a change in command prevents him from utilizing his less-than-aboveboard medicinal...
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Jump, Darling
Humiliation and heartbreak send aspiring drag queen Russell (“Fishy Falters”) to the country, where he finds his grandmother, Margaret, in rapid decline. The two soon develop a renewed bond and an...
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Mothering Sunday
In her review of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel Mothering Sunday, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote that it felt less “self-consciously literary” than the writer’s previous novels; conversely,...
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The Cool Kids reunion bears an orchard’s worth of fruit on their new triple...
The zeitgeist’s thirst for nostalgia has driven otherwise sensible people to dig up some guys who haven’t moved the needle since the late 2000s, but meanwhile, one of the most exciting hip-hop acts of...
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These events ain’t for fools
Even though we’re posting this on April 1, we’re not foolin’: we think you’ll find something to enjoy in this week’s list of upcoming events. FRI 4/1 Chicago Repertory Ballet celebrates its tenth...
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