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Humboldt Park is changing, but it's Not for Sale
UrbanTheater Company's production uses humor and empathy to offer a range of perspectives on gentrification. Sara Carranza directs the world premiere of Guadalís Del Carmen's play about gentrification...
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I Am Not a Witch signals the auspicious arrival of a fierce new talent,...
A Zambian girl, falsely accused and imprisoned, refuses to be objectified or underestimated. Women, on the whole, are used to being categorized, objectified, and underestimated. Many of us learn and...
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Camazotz, the Mesoamerican bat god, arrives in Chicago alone and undocumented
Raúl Dorantes uses a mythical creature to tell an immigration tale. In his potent new play for Colectivo el Pozo, Chicago playwright Raúl Dorantes shows a knack for extracting a kind of ironic mythic...
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Indecent tells the story of the Yiddish play that scandalized Broadway
Paula Vogel’s play, now making its Chicago debut, retraces the path of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance. One of the early revelations in Paula Vogel's acclaimed, based-on-a-true-story one-act drama is...
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With Downstate, Bruce Norris finally earns his Pulitzer
And director Pam MacKinnon and her Steppenwolf cast give us a masterwork."[A]s if life isn't hard enough without us being deliberately hurtful and cruel to each other."—Fred, in Downstate…
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Elvis and singing and dancing superheroes will be among the biggest...
And who needs any more encouragement than that? As runners in the 41st annual Chicago Marathon bustle their way toward the finish line, the mellifluous melodies of the King of Rock will break the...
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Chicago rap futurists Air Credits find joy amid dystopian ruin
The members of Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree appear to have a soft spot for Chicagoans. In June, their label (also called Doomtree) dropped a full-length collaboration between theirproducer...
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Winnipeg trio KEN Mode deliver more explosive noise-rock perfection on Loved
When a band has been hammering out metallic noise rock with enough intensity to blow down a skyscraper for nearly 20 years, a new release full of expertly crushing music is always welcome, but hardly...
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The reunited midwestern jazz band takes on funkier flavors and shares healing...
More people of consequence have passed through Yellow Springs, Ohio, than you might imagine. The home of liberal-leaning Antioch College, the town hosted Coretta Scott King as a student in the 40s;...
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Philadelphia fivesome Restorations find better living through emo on LP5000
The best emo bands are the ones led by artists who follow the genre tradition of using music as a tool for self-examination in a lifelong quest toward maturity and growth, and capturing specific...
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Owen Ashworth imparts feelings about grief and loss on Advance Base’s Animal...
In 2015, Chicago singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth told me he considered Nephew in the Wild, the then-forthcoming second album of his solo project Advance Base, a make-or-break effort: “The fate of this...
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Dave Rempis teams up with Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon in Kuzu, a new...
Dave Rempis is an indefatigable concert organizer and bandleader. While his activities are essential to Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene, they aren’t entirely altruistic; they create multiple...
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On Chosen Family Thin Lips riff smarter, not harder
Chosen Family (Lame-O Records), the new record from Philadelphia trio Thin Lips, opens with an snippet from a conversation in which vocalist Chrissy Tashjian lays out her understanding of queerness,...
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Genre explorer Toby Driver plunges deep into cinematic ballads on They Are...
Few people in heavy music are as versatile or prolific as New York multi-instrumentalist and singer Toby Driver. With his exploratory bands Kayo Dot, Maudlin of the Well, and Vaura; his electro-goth...
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On the new Liberation, Christina Aguilera’s voice continues to outshine her...
The musical catalog of Christina Aguilera has always been erratic and somewhat frustrating. Gifted with a powerful, operatic voice, she’s struggled to find material worthy of her natural talent.…
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Satan’s new album, Cruel Magic, is a brilliantly timeless evil romp
Satan formed in 1979 and went on to become one of the biggest names of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The band brought a meaner, faster sound to the movement than their peers, operating closer...
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Experimental Sound Studios brings together a duo of improvising giants
Lou Mallozzi and Douglas Ewart are both seasoned interdisciplinary artists who approach sound and music from a multitude of perspectives. Mallozzi, who founded Experimental Sound Studios (ESS) over 30...
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Firebrand's Caroline, or Change revels in tension, both racial and domestic
Firebrand's production features fearless, fantastic singers. It's 1963, and it's sweltering in the basement where Caroline Thibodeaux (Rashada Dawan) spends her days doing laundry—a full load a day...
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A man creates havoc among dogs to harass a woman because All I Want Is One...
Otherworld Theater's excellently plotted saga is enjoyable and moving. The weirdest thing about this play, Otherworld Theatre's first full production in their new digs off Irving Park, is not that...
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Robert Greene’s documentary Bisbee ’17 explores the soul of a town haunted by...
An Arizona community reenacts a century-old episode of monumental cruelty. To date, most of director Robert Greene's films have been self-reflexive documentaries about the creation of performances....
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