1 Chicago stepping lessons from award-winning south sider Shaun Ballentine of Effortless Stepping. —Salem Collo-Julin Open group lessons Wednesdays at 7 PM, Effortless Stepping Studio, 1850 E. 79th. $20 per person, 21+ only. For private lesson rates or information about having Ballentine do a stepping class at your event, message through Instagram or Facebook.  2 […]

The post The <i>Reader</i>’s 2023 Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Chicago Reader.

A piercing wind from the north whipped down darkened Dearborn Street, turning noses and fingers to icy lumps and testing the resolve of pedestrians on the opening night of Goodman Theatre’s 46th annual production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol last weekend.   As if current events weren’t already enough to chill the holiday spirit! Dreadful, […]

The post Lights, music, Scrooge, and Shostakovich appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Lyric Opera audiences have the luxury of expecting great performances from everyone on the Opera House stage. It’s par for the course; we’re spoiled that way. But once in a while, someone comes along who knocks our socks off. Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, in a stunning Lyric Opera debut as the title character in Jenůfa, […]

The post Seduced, abandoned, and excellent appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Opera seasons are usually planned far in advance, so there was no way for the folks in charge of scheduling at Lyric to predict that not one but two actual wars would be raging when the curtain went up on their second production of the season, Gaetano Donizetti’s 1840 comic work, The Daughter of the […]

The post Lyric’s victorious <i>Daughter of the Regiment</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Years ago, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, which is the business end of the CSO, was undergoing one of its periodic contract negotiating face-offs with its unionized musicians, someone close to the musicians told me something surprising: the administration wouldn’t really mind a strike. If the orchestra doesn’t play, they save money. It’s better […]

The post Navigating a rocky arts and culture recovery appeared first on Chicago Reader.

It’s common knowledge in the book business that a well-publicized ban can lead to a short-term spike in sales. Take Art Spiegelman’s two-volume graphic novel Maus for example, which tells the story of his parents’ experience in the Holocaust, as told to him much later by his father. After it was banned by a Tennessee […]

The post <i>Maus</i> in wartime appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Last week, the Tony Award-winning play The Lehman Trilogy opened in a TimeLine Theatre/Broadway in Chicago coproduction at Broadway Playhouse. The play is based on the novel Qualcosa sui Lehman by Stefano Massini, first published in Italy in 2016 and in an English translation by Richard Dixon in 2020. If you’ve never read the bookyou […]

The post Something about <i>The Lehman Trilogy</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Director Christopher Alden is back at Lyric Opera for the first time since his racy production of Rigoletto created an uproar there back in 2000. The Alden project onstage now—his take on Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman—is of the same approximate vintage, debuting at Canadian National Opera in 1996. And yes, on opening night last […]

The post Little orphan Annie meets Dracula appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Despite rumors of its demise, live performance is still happening in abundance on Chicago stages this season. Here are just a few suggestions in opera, dance, theater, and comedy to consider in the months ahead. And as always, be sure to check out our updated reviews and features every week for the latest comprehensive coverage. […]

The post Season of plenty appeared first on Chicago Reader.

If you were a Bloomie’s Chicago customer at the River North store, you won’t be hugely surprised when you walk into Bally’s new pop-up casino in the 111-year-old Medinah Temple. Bloomingdale’s saved this massive Moorish Revival architectural fantasy (at 600 N. Wabash) from demolition when it opened a store there in 2003, restoring the dome-topped […]

The post High-wire act appeared first on Chicago Reader.

My throat was slit. It was back in the dark ages of the 20th century, but if you take a close look at me you can still see the scar—a fine line running along the base of my neck, from ear to ear.  It’s the necklace I can’t take off, the trail of a scalpel. […]

The post The butterfly in your throat appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Thanks to Reader reader Anthony Gargiulo Jr., who read this story about Chicago connections to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer film and pointed out via Twitter another one: former Loyola University (and Northwestern University) chemistry professor Ward V. Evans. Evans was the surprise dissenting vote on the three-man panel that recommended permanent suspension of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s […]

The post <i>Oppenheimer</i>‘s Loyola connection appeared first on Chicago Reader.

At my elementary school, a lifetime ago, duck and cover was as integral to our routine as recess. An alarm would signal the drill, and we first-through-sixth graders would drop whatever we were doing and scramble into a crouch under our wooden desks. The prescribed position was head down—one arm curled around your noggin, the […]

The post A well-timed <i>Oppenheimer</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

What’s the Chicago connection to the events depicted in Christopher Nolan’s explosive, confusing, and acclaimed Oppenheimer film? Here’s what I learned from University of Chicago professor emeritus and astrophysicist Don Lamb. We spoke last week, before the film opened.   J. Robert Oppenheimer led the World War II effort known as the Manhattan Project, but the […]

The post The Chicago Project appeared first on Chicago Reader.

On July 4, 2023, the hottest day on earth, residents of Highland Park gathered in front of their city hall to remember the victims of the massacre that took place there a year earlier. There was music, a moment of silence, and Mayor Nancy Rotering spoke of the damage done by a single gun in […]

The post What we talk about when we talk about guns appeared first on Chicago Reader.

We’re coming up on the three-year anniversary of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s stealth eviction of Christopher Columbus from Grant Park. Under the cover of darkness—and for his own good, she said—the larger-than-life explorer/looter was separated from his 20-foot pedestal and hustled off to storage where he’d no longer offend the protesters seeking to topple him for […]

The post Monumental endeavor appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In July 2020, Amy Dodson posted a diversity statement on the Facebook page for the public library system in Douglas County, Nevada, of which she was director. Like many other statements posted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, it denounced “all acts of violence, racism, and disregard for human rights,” and also said, “We […]

The post Freedom to read appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Here’s a question: How many elements can you strip from an iconic building before it loses its identity? Could you pull the clocks off State Street’s flagship Marshall Field Building? Slice the big Tiffany dome from the Chicago Cultural Center? Cut the X braces from the Hancock? How about tearing the Trump sign off Trump […]

The post <i>Starship Chicago II</i> has landed appeared first on Chicago Reader.

There’s a nicely curated selection of Art Shay’s photography up through May 27 at Gallery Victor. It includes a lot of familiar images—Marlon Brando kissing his dog, Hugh Hefner with typewriter and playmates in his bedroom office, and, of course, Simone de Beauvoir’s bare bum. Iconic photos of entertainers, athletes, and politicians share the wall […]

The post The father, the son, and the archivist appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago Opera Theater is trying out a new opera at the Athenaeum next week. Titled The Cook-Off, it’s about a televised contest in which three young chefs face off over the same meal. The exotic dish they’ll be cooking? Mac and cheese—the mainstay of American tables during the Great Depression. It’s an apt choice at […]

The post Food, glorious food! appeared first on Chicago Reader.

A welcoming committee armed with signs and slogans gathered outside Northeastern Illinois University’s iconic El Centro building last Thursday, an hour before the university Board of Trustees was scheduled to meet there. “UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT BUSINESSES,” one sign read. “How much money have you spent hiring outside people to fire our own?” asked another. Buoyed […]

The post At NEIU: a painful lesson in mission creep appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Looking for a short answer to the question of why Chicago needs to save, say, the shuttered, circa 1920 Continental Can Company building at 3815 S. Ashland? Or that ordinary little old yellow brick warehouse at 206 S. Jefferson? Stumped about why anyone should have to be worried about something as recently built as 1965’s […]

The post Best person to tell you everything you wanted to hear and more about why that neglected building that’s attracted a developer’s eye shouldn’t be torn down appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I was introduced to Ann Sather Restaurant around the time that alderperson Tom Tunney bought it from the actual Ann Sather, which, according to the restaurant website, was in 1981. Tunney—who’s retiring from the City Council this year—wasn’t yet an alderperson then, and the restaurant was a few storefronts further west on Belmont, in what […]

The post Best breakfast spot run by a soon-to-be-former alderperson appeared first on Chicago Reader.

No matter what dreary business might have drawn you to the Thompson Center before Google purchased it last year, every visit offered its own rewards. For me, they included the jaw-dropping architectural splendor of the lobby (best appreciated with a hot coffee and a Munchkin from the food court), the rotating exhibits of the Illinois […]

The post Best shop booted from the Thompson Center when Google took over appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Spectacle? It’s long been the grand opera’s calling card. But never quite like this. Lyric Opera’s world premiere production of Proximity—closer to Immersive Van Gogh or Art on the Mart than to Aida—opened at the opera house last week. Directed and “mixed” by Yuval Sharon (creator of the parking garage Wagner, Twilight: Gods, which he […]

The post Lyric Opera’s <i>Proximity</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

After a promising Chicago workshop performance four years ago, Chicago Opera Theater’s The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing returned for a two-performance world premiere at the Harris Theater last week, conducted by COT music director Lidiya Yankovskaya. It’s a gut-wrenching piece in a well-crafted production, with two major themes that couldn’t be more contemporary: […]

The post A timely <i>Turing</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Winter might have been more mild than usual this year, but spring is coming in hot with live performances to light up the season. From remounts of favorites to world premieres, Chicago stages offer an intriguing seasonal bouquet in dance, opera, theater, comedy, and more. Here are 20 shows to consider in the days and […]

The post Spring in our steps appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Never mind those icy patches on the sidewalk: spring is here, bringing with it our seasonal theater and arts preview issue. Accordingly, while the global banking system teeters, Xi and Vlad (nukes in their back pockets) rendezvous, and Trump seems poised to take the first-ever presidential perp walk, the issue I’m stewing about is this: […]

The post Spring awakening appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I was a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times in 1980, when St. Pete got the idea of turning itself into Salvador Dalíwood. Not everyone was on board: on the one hand, there were grumbles about Dalí’s apparent tolerance for fascism (including a cozy long-term relationship with Franco), and on the other, sneering art-world objections […]

The post Hello, Dalí appeared first on Chicago Reader.

John Mossman has a scary new movie, but he’s not just trying to scare us. Good Guy With a Gun (not to be confused with a 2020 short with the same title) is a feature-length drama/thriller slated for a regional premiere February 27 as part of the Midwest Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film […]

The post Good guy with a gun appeared first on Chicago Reader.

We’re finally getting a taste of the usual winter weather, but that’s no reason to stay housebound. (Unless you’re being extra COVID-cautious, for which we don’t blame you!) But if you’re up for some cultural adventures, there are some great possibilities on tap the next couple of months. Chicago Theatre Week, sponsored every year by […]

The post Gray days, but vibrant stages appeared first on Chicago Reader.

This surrealistic production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 opera version of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale—seen twice before at Lyric—should probably be a Christmas show. But since Joffrey became Lyric’s roommate, we’re getting it now. Visually it’s nightmarish, claustrophobic, and monochromatic as a gray January day—but also striking: think fish-headed dream-scene maitre d’ overseeing a troop […]

The post Grimm and surreal appeared first on Chicago Reader.

No industry has been more of a closed and creaky old white boys club than classical music. Things are grudgingly changing now that the Western canon appears to be on its deathbed, but, according to research by the League of American Orchestras, “Women conductors are still rare, especially in the high-status position of music director.” […]

The post Who’s getting tarred? appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Update: 01/12/2023In an email today seeking to “clarify misinformation posted on the museum’s website,” Chicago Park District Director of Communications Michele Lemons said this: “The Chicago Park District did not approve construction on a 5,000 square foot facility nor did the District approve a structure of any size.” Juanita Irizarry delivered a gut punch of […]

The post No walk in the park appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The best we can say about 2022? It’s been transitional. If we’re lucky, the shift will be to something better. In the meantime, the war in Ukraine drags on. Predictably, unconscionably, we’ve become inured to it. Inflation rages at a pace new to most of us. The experts pushing and pulling the levers on the […]

The post Fusion and firearms appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Peter Friederici has a history in these pages. In 1987, the Chicago native—then a recent Northwestern University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and no clear path to a career—got hired as a Reader editorial assistant. He spent two years in that job, working under editors Michael Lenehan and Alison True. Now an […]

The post Hey, it’s getting warm in here! appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for nonprofit theater, is about to release its latest annual report on the fiscal health of the field, Theatre Facts 2021. (Yes, it’s almost 2023, but this stuff takes time to collect.) The news is not great. The report, which compares results over a five-year period, tracks the startling […]

The post Long COVID for the arts appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Deeply committed Verdi fans ought to get themselves to Lyric Opera’s first ever production of Don Carlos, the four-hour, five-act, 1867 French language version of the shorter Verdi opera they already know as the Italian language Don Carlo. This love vs. duty tale of historical fiction, loosely drawn from the life of a 16th-century Spanish […]

The post The Don and the Count appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The People Issue’s class of 2022 showcases folks from many walks of life. As subjects, their common thread is an incessant need to create welcoming spaces for other individuals like them, enact change, further their craft, do good, and in one instance, amplify the representation of stoner lesbians in graphic novels. Read profiles of 21 people by and as told to 15 Chicago Reader writers.

The post The Chicagoans appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Is death life’s greatest mystery? Or would we just like it to be? (Therefore, ghosts, devils, heaven, hell, organized religion, and Halloween candy.) Those are not among the five major questions that serve as an organizing mechanism for the Field Museum’s expansive new exhibit, “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery,” however much they hang in the air. […]

The post You will die. Then what? appeared first on Chicago Reader.

When Michael Fanone, the former Trump supporter and D.C. cop who nearly died at the hands of the January 6 mob at the U.S. Capitol, comes to the Chicago Humanities Festival next week to join We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism author Andy Campbell […]

The post From domestic terrorism to the voting booth appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Move over, Grandpa. You think ageism is your cause? Last week, Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies came to town, making stops at the city’s largest college campuses. At Northwestern, they set up shop on Sheridan Road, displaying enlarged images of dismembered fetal parts and passing out leaflets announcing that “Abortion […]

The post Anti-abortion activists float a new argument: ageism appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Lyric Opera introduced Chicago audiences to director Barrie Kosky last year, when it brought his production of The Magic Flute—created for Komische Oper Berlin, where he’s been music director for a decade—to the Opera House on Wacker. Kosky staged the Mozart favorite as a silent film. So the announcement that Kosky’s production of Fiddler on […]

The post Tradition with a twist appeared first on Chicago Reader.

It’s impossible to summarize everything that’s happening onstage this season. (It’s also hard to tell you exactly what COVID-19 precautions are required at venues now; we suggest checking ahead and being prepared to show proof of vax, and wearing a mask as a courtesy to other patrons.) But here are ten offerings that promise to […]

The post Some best bets for the fall harvest of performance appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Starting Sunday, for three consecutive nights, WTTW will air a new six-hour Ken Burns documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Burns and his filmmaking partners, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, based the series on a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit curated by Chicago-area native and current Newberry Library president, Daniel Greene. From 2014 […]

The post The U.S. and the Holocaust appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Thanks to CNN, this weekend I went right from Lyric Opera’s season-opening production of Ernani—featuring Charles V of Spain—to the pomp and circumstance surrounding the launch of Charles III of England. Castles, crowns, cannons—it was all of a piece.   And that did something I hadn’t anticipated: it brought an evening of seldom-seen Verdi to life.   […]

The post When melodrama meets breaking news appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Last Sunday, stuffed with antibiotics, numbed by painkillers, and facing a date with an oral surgeon the next morning, I made my way to the International Museum of Surgical Science for an artist’s talk by James R. Wilke. It’s not the best way to visit this unique repository for the medical devices of yesteryear, but […]

The post Pox Americana appeared first on Chicago Reader.

When Anne Ford interviewed Adam Selzer for the Reader in 2014, it was all about his job as a ghost tour leader. You didn’t have to read between the lines to sense that it wasn’t the perfect gig for a truth-seeking research glutton.  “No matter how skeptical I tried to be, I felt like I […]

The post Walking with the dead appeared first on Chicago Reader.

So, a bicyclist walks up to a beach on the North Shore. It’s hot, he’s been riding, he just wants to put his feet in the cool Lake Michigan water that he can see sparkling behind a booth and a prominent “beach pass required” sign. A hapless kid with a summer job is manning the […]

The post Sun, sand—and segregation appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Nothing was said about it on the July 4 television interviews I saw, but among the security experts interviewed during coverage of the Highland Park parade shooting, one face and name had resonance. Crisis management expert and former FBI agent Phil Andrew survived another mass shooting in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, more than three decades […]

The post A bloody Independence Day in Highland Park appeared first on Chicago Reader.

There’s a whole lot of story in history. And so much depends on the perspective of the storyteller.   What, for example, will the future think it knows of our fraught time? What will be included? What will be omitted? What will be the spin on events like the war in Ukraine or the 2020 presidential […]

The post Sun, surf, summer: time to head to the library appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Summer is officially here, in case the sweat and lightning bugs weren’t enough of a clue. In addition to the shows and artists we profiled in our summer arts preview issue this week, we’ve got just a few suggestions for other offerings in theater, dance, and opera that look promising—whether you’re looking for a nice […]

The post Hot weather, hot shows appeared first on Chicago Reader.

They were there. No fuss, no ballyhoo, but queer artists have been a significant part of Bronzeville’s South Side Community Art Center since its founding in 1940. You might or might not see it in the art. That’s the main takeaway from “EMERGENCE: Intersections at the Center,” on exhibit at SSCAC through July 2. “EMERGENCE: […]

The post Out at the Center appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Last week, amid the usual tsunami of grim news about inflation, mass shootings, pandemic, and war, came word that the New York Court of Appeals is considering whether the Bronx Zoo is violating the rights of Happy, an Asian elephant who’s lived there for more than four decades, by confining her to a portion of […]

The post Flashpoints, free speech, and the law appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Regarding the recently revealed U.S. Supreme Court draft ruling on Roe v. Wade: WTF? Because, it’s the F we’re talking about, right? That little itch we’re biologically programmed to scratch and its inordinate, inequitable aftermath? As I’ve opined here before, if cisgender men were the ones carrying a pregnancy for nine months, suffering through an […]

The post The end of <i>Roe</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

What kind of God allows a church to burn down on Good Friday? That’s the question that came to mind when the 130-year-old Antioch Missionary Baptist Church at Stewart and 63rd Street went up in flames earlier this month, followed by a familiar answer: the same god that has allowed slavery, Holocaust, plague, war, and […]

The post Chicago’s blessed with a motherlode of stunning churches appeared first on Chicago Reader.

This commission by Chicago Opera Theater brings to town a new opera by the prolific and celebrated Belize-born British composer, singer, pianist, and performer Errollyn Wallen, with librettist Deborah Brevoort. Loosely based on S.I. Martin’s novel Incomparable World, the story is grounded in the little-known historical fact that the Brits recruited enslaved people in the […]

The post In search of freedom appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Something else took me to Arizona last week, but on what the locals considered a pleasant Tuesday afternoon I was in Surprise Stadium, in the Phoenix suburb of the same name, for the Cubs’s final preseason game. They were facing the Texas Rangers.    Both teams were wearing Cubbie blue. The temperature on the field was […]

The post Bleacher bummed appeared first on Chicago Reader.

While the BA.2 variant of COVID-19 looms as a possible impediment to attending live performances (even as some of us now qualify for a second booster), shows are booming. We’ve got a baker’s dozen of events to consider if you feel up to getting out and about in the next couple of months. We also suggest […]

The post Springing ahead with live performance appeared first on Chicago Reader.

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 Hitler.”   I was thinking I could blame Mel Brooks. If I’d never seen The Producers, maybe a rousing full-cast anthem titled […]

The post Holocaust, the opera appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Journalist Charles M. Blow once wrote in his New York Times column that he “likes to think of himself as a Southern writer.” His childhood in Gibsland, Louisiana, shaped his writing, and in the south, “you don’t so much say words as sing them.”  Now, at Lyric Opera, his own story is literally being sung. […]

The post Coming of age in an ordinary and dangerous place appeared first on Chicago Reader.

There’s a war raging in Europe. A brutal clash that includes an entrenched repressive autocracy and ordinary civilians determined to fight for their freedom. Tyrannical power is vested in one man—a deranged “security” professional who cares only about his own twisted agenda. He decides who lives and dies; everyone trembles before him. Someone needs to […]

The post A resonant <i>Tosca</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.

There were two crowds in front of Saints Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukrainian Village on a frigid afternoon last week. One was the medieval crowd that’s always there, on the church’s iconic mural—a depiction of the baptism of the Ukrainian people. The other consisted of several hundred live and livid Chicagoans reacting […]

The post ‘Are we calling this an invasion? It’s really a war.’ appeared first on Chicago Reader.

A couple of couches and a video player have been set up in the little balcony lobby outside the fourth floor exhibition hall at the Chicago Cultural Center. If you plop down there for a few minutes before entering the galleries to see “Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott,” a retrospective spanning […]

The post Offense intended appeared first on Chicago Reader.

She didn’t want to talk about it. Fritzie Fritzshall survived Auschwitz, came to Chicago, and built what most of us are lucky enough to think of as a normal life, with work and marriage, a child and a home.     She did it by putting her Auschwitz experience in a mental box and shutting it away. […]

The post A survivor’s tour of Auschwitz appeared first on Chicago Reader.

How bad is COVID-19 damage to the arts sector? Arts Alliance Illinois says it’s been researching that question and will be releasing the results any day now. I didn’t have them by press time, but it’s safe to assume they’ll be brutal. The heads of both the AAI and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and […]

The post Arts folk: what would you do with $20 million? appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Everybody knows, especially at this season of the year, it’s a bad idea to look a gift horse in the mouth. But what if he opens it? What if he flashes you a great big horsey smile? And you just can’t look away fast enough? I’m asking because we got a wonderful gift last week, […]

The post Thompson Center survival is glad tidings appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Trudging east on Randolph toward the Siskel Center on a gloomy, COVID-depopulated early evening last week, I heard something that stopped me in my tracks: “Mom, mom, what’s that building?”   I turned to see the source. A boy of ten or so was pulling at his mother’s arm as they walked south on Clark. With […]

The post The verdict on Chicago’s endangered Thompson Center is imminent appeared first on Chicago Reader.

I was spending a day in bed with a laptop when I got an e-mail from a reader linking to an article titled “20 Essential Studies that Raise Grave Doubts about COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates.” It got my attention. After a Moderna booster the day before and a restless night, I’d awakened that morning woozy and […]

The post ‘Misinformation in listicle format’ appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Composer and tenor Steve Wallace says the first time he heard the Nas song “Undying Love,” the final track on the rapper’s 1999 album I Am . . ., “I immediately saw it as a verismo one-act with chamber orchestra, but I stored it away for a later time.” It wasn’t until 2014, when Wallace […]

The post ‘Undying Love’: the Opera appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Barrie Kosky’s magic take on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has been circling the globe for nearly a decade and seen by 700,000 people, landed on the Lyric Opera Stage this week. Concocted by original codirectors Kosky and Suzanne Andrade for Komische Oper Berlin, it’s magic in the most literal sense—a visual sleight of hand […]

The post What a concept! appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Reader cofounder and original editor Bob Roth had some radical ideas about editors. He didn’t want them to prescribe what went into the paper, or to solicit it. He wanted the stories to crop up like some natural urban flora and make their way on their own to the Reader office. The editors’ jobs would […]

The post ‘The narrative was the key’ appeared first on Chicago Reader.

It’s 1980, and I am unemployed. After giving up a staff writer job at the esteemed St. Petersburg Times to return to Chicago, I have found myself, as the saying goes, shit out of luck. Chicago has gone from four daily newspapers to two, and is awash in unemployed journalists, all more experienced than me. […]

The post No assignments, no deadlines, no promises, no job appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial focuses on a "deeper engagement with the local community" in "The Available City."

The post A more local Chicago Architecture Biennial appeared first on Chicago Reader.

This take on Gaetano Donizetti’s 1832 comic opera, L’elisir d’amore, is a two-act antidote for our COVID-plagued reality. Cleverly directed by Daniel Slater and beautifully designed by Robert Innes Hopkins, it’s another one-set production, but what a set! In contrast to Macbeth’s interminable gray, this Elixir transports us to a sunny resort hotel in colorful […]

The post Good medicine appeared first on Chicago Reader.

A Verdi classic, a twist on Bizet, and a doubleheader of new work kick off the opera season in Chicago.

The post Risking all for opera appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography examines America's obsession with guns in a new exhibit.

The post Out of our cold dead hands appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Theaters, comedy clubs, museums, galleries, and other venues are blowing off the COVID-19 shutdown dust and preparing to welcome you back this fall. Many companies are picking up with productions that were cut short in March 2020, while others have world premieres up their sleeves. We suggest calling venues ahead of time or checking their […]

The post Jump back into the cultural stream appeared first on Chicago Reader.

If you’ve seen Judas and the Black Messiah, the multiple-award-winning film about the 1969 murder of Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, you’ve got a picture in your head of the 4:30 AM raid in which a drugged and sleeping Hampton was killed by a barrage of police bullets. The raid was carried out […]

The post Fred Hampton is having a moment appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Here’s one way to think about the Ravinia Music Box, the new, high-tech attraction that debuted this month in its own building on the festival grounds: it takes the legendary music venue back to its earliest days. In 1904, when Ravinia first opened, it was an amusement park, intended to drum up passengers for a […]

The post Ravinia opens its Music Box appeared first on Chicago Reader.

"Helmut Jahn: Life + Architecture" at CAC offers big pictures and tiny buildings.

The post With the Thompson Center on the block, CAC celebrates its late creator appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Protect Our Parks wants to put the brakes on the Obama Center groundbreaking.

The post Groundhog Day in federal court for the Obama Center appeared first on Chicago Reader.

In “Roots, Branches: Ancestor(s) Stones,” Monica Brown traces ancestral legacies.

The post Looking for YOMHN with Monica Brown appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Dr. Charles Smith and other artists find a new home at the Art Preserve.

The post Sheboygan visionaries appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The "musician-governed" Chicago Philharmonic looks to innovative programming for the future.

The post Terell Johnson joins Chicago Philharmonic as executive director appeared first on Chicago Reader.

North Park Village Nature Center provides an ideal setting for Lyric's Hansel and Gretel.

The post Lyric’s al fresco Hansel and Gretel is a family-friendly treat appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The Pritzker Museum highlights Bill Mauldin's 50-year fight with injustice.

The post The art of war and more from Bill Mauldin appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Joffrey Ballet announce in-person 2021-2022 seasons.

The post Lyric and Joffrey, together at last appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Can we save his most important Chicago building?

The post Helmut Jahn is gone, and the Thompson Center is for sale appeared first on Chicago Reader.

While Chicago opera plays on your phone, Symphony Center announces May opening.

The post Opera on your phone; CSO (lite), live and in person appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago’s new Arts 77 program will spend $60 million on cultural facilities and art.

The post Arts 77 shores up the city’s creative infrastructure appeared first on Chicago Reader.

With 41 pieces flagged as potentially problematic, the city seeks input about next steps.

The post Rethinking public art with the Chicago Monuments Project appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography's "Reproductive" raises questions about the future of Roe v. Wade.

The post On display at MoCP: Reproductive: [Women’s] Health, Fertility, Agency appeared first on Chicago Reader.

A year after the shutdown, they’re bringing it back.

The post Lyric and CSO face the music appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Former Reader editor Alison True's investigation fuels a new Peacock series.

The post John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise raises questions about the official story appeared first on Chicago Reader.

But Protect Our Parks says more legal challenges are coming for the Jackson Park plan.

The post The Obama Center: opening in 2025 appeared first on Chicago Reader.

His Chicago labs brought us modern miracle drugs and much more.

The post Percy Julian: chemist and catalyst appeared first on Chicago Reader.

Chicago's first and only cultural historian goes on emeritus status, but there's plenty of work ahead of him.

The post Tim Samuelson may be retiring, but he’s not history yet appeared first on Chicago Reader.

The nuns are in COVID shutdown, but she's got a new, Chicago-centric book

The post An encounter with Vicki Quade appeared first on Chicago Reader.

She earned the title—still he was dissing her! Would he do the same to, say, Dr. Kissinger?

The post The gremlin and the EdD appeared first on Chicago Reader.