Kaylen Ralph, author at Chicago Reader

The artist sits, facing the camera, in his Paris studio. Various in-progress paintings surround the artist, as do drawings and art materials.

Jake Troyli contains multitudes

by Kaylen Ralph April 11, 2023October 16, 2023

Jake Troyli moved to Chicago in September 2020, the same month “Don’t Forget to Pack a Lunch!,” his first-ever solo exhibition in Chicago, opened at Monique Meloche Gallery. In the exhibition’s titular work, Troyli puppeteers a small army of cloned characters through siloed loops of never-ending labor—physical, emotional, and otherwise. Small firefighters ascend a burning […]

In the work Library of Love, there are fresh flowers, comfortable furniture, and reading materials for visitors to peruse. The work is staged like a living room, with blue wallpaper, a record player, and framed art on the walls.

Arts & Culture

Excavating the unconscious

by Kaylen Ralph January 11, 2023January 10, 2023

Krista Franklin has a recurring fantasy in which she burns all her journals. “Watching the flames dance in a fire pit glowing from the kindling of my memories,” she writes in “On Time,” one of several lyrical essays included in Solo(s): Krista Franklin, a catalog of visual art and poetry by the Chicago-based artist. It […]

Two young Black men sit at a table in a posture of arm wrestling. They appear to be in some sort of conference room or holding area with a large glass window behind them.

Theater Review

Seeking sanctuary in Routes

by Kaylen Ralph October 28, 2022October 28, 2022

Nearly a decade after it debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in 2013, Rachel De-lahay’s Routes has landed at Theater Wit for its American premiere. Presented by Remy Bumppo, Routes is a story of progressively intertwined, mirrored vignettes of two characters and the handful of people who will determine their respective fates. Olufemi (Yao Dogbe) […]

Art Feature

A new home, a new energy

by Kaylen Ralph September 16, 2022September 21, 2022

When I first set out to profile gallerist and art dealer Mariane Ibrahim, she didn’t exactly decline, but she didn’t immediately say yes, either. After being heavily profiled over the past couple of years—both for her curatorial style as well as her unconventional path to Chicago’s gallery scene via Seattle—the gallery’s focus was understandably on […]

Theater Review

Southern gothic heat

by Kaylen Ralph July 6, 2022July 6, 2022

For their inaugural production, Violet Sky Theatre company has chosen Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke from 1948. As is expected with any of Williams’s canonical works, Summer and Smoke is a portrait of the delicious agony of unrequited love. Alma Winemiller, the minister’s daughter, has been in love with John Buchanan, the boy next door, […]

Two people seated at a table. A man in a blue shirt and gray vest is on the left, and a woman in a pale flowered dress is on the right. They smile at each other.

Theater Review

Love in the time of fascism

by Kaylen Ralph March 2, 2022March 2, 2022

The rescheduled world premiere of The Black Knight by Angeli Primlani with Lifeboat Productions (directed by Brian Pastor) is billed as a timely tale of love, trust, and resistance. It’s indeed timely—set in Nazi-occupied Prague during 1942-1943, the play is ultimately an exploration of how easily fascism can take hold during periods of uncertainty. More […]

LED light installation in black, white, and red from Barbara Kruger at the Art institute of Chicago

Arts & Culture

Thinking of us

by Kaylen Ralph January 7, 2022January 7, 2022

Barbara Kruger, collagist, conceptual artist, and Futura Bold Oblique font savant, will turn 77 two days after her exhibition “THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.” closes at the Art Institute of Chicago on January 24. The expansive exhibition, which opened in September after being delayed almost a year by COVID-19 concerns, is […]

Three people kneeling, with man on left raising his arms in the air. A park bench is visible behind them.

Arts & Culture

Decisions, demons, and doom

by Kaylen Ralph January 5, 2022January 5, 2022

While many of us (perhaps too optimistically) planned to complete any number of creative projects over the course of pandemic isolation parts one, two, or—dare I say it—three, 300 Chicago-area high school students managed to write and submit one-act plays to Pegasus Theatre Chicago’s 35th Annual Young Playwrights Festival. And three of those students—Laylah Freeman […]

Woman in cut-off denim shorts and purple sleeveless top sitting on unmade bed, looking at man in chair on the right in messy motel room

Theater Review

Bug captures our current malaise

by Kaylen Ralph November 18, 2021November 19, 2021

There was only one weekend left in Steppenwolf’s original production run of Bug when the theater announced it would be closing its doors to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on March 12, 2020. Twenty months later, the company has launched its “comeback” season with a second, complete revival run (once again directed by David Cromer) […]

Theater Review

Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? explores identity and family codependency

by Kaylen Ralph October 14, 2021October 15, 2021

As part of this year’s Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, Visión Latino Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? Written by Puerto Rican playwright Nelson Diaz-Marcano and directed by Xavier M. Custodio, Y Tu Abuela is not the writer’s first collaboration with VLTC, a company of Latinx artists […]

Theater Review

American Mariachi finally gets its Goodman debut

by Kaylen Ralph September 28, 2021October 15, 2021

Eighteen months after it was originally slated to run at the Goodman Theatre, American Mariachi, written by José Cruz González, makes its midwest premiere under the direction of Henry Godinez, presented in association with the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA) as part of Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival. It was so worth the wait, […]

Woman stands in front of columns and fountain in Millennium Park, surrounded by suitcases

Arts & Culture

Destinos showcases local and international theater companies

by Kaylen Ralph September 23, 2021September 30, 2021

By definition, futurology is the study of current trends, the findings of which can be used to forecast future developments. It’s also a schema that applies perfectly to this current, uncertain era of Chicago theater, and one that is the driving ethos behind Teatro Vista’s 30th season, the first to be helmed by the company’s […]

Arts & Culture

Race, fate, and sisterhood on the south side

by Kaylen Ralph September 10, 2021September 14, 2021

“My earliest memory of myself is of my sister. My earliest understanding of my world comes from three women—my mother, grandmother, and aunt.” In her new memoir Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Story of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, Dawn Turner turns her journalistic eye toward her own story, one she weaves as inextricable […]