In 2007, the great violinist Joshua Bell, replete with his 303-year-old Stradivarius, set up as a busker in a Washington, D.C. Metro station. As famously recounted by Washington Post columni…
"Colorado takes top spots in new NEA arts-engagement study" read a headline in the Denver Post the other day. "Utah tops the nation in attending arts events" shouted the Salt Lake Tribune. V…
The most interesting character in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," the 1961 musical with the boffo score by Frank Loesser, is not J. Pierrepont Finch, the proto-millennial…
This is a column in praise of Travis Turner. Turner, a fearless 33-year-old Chicago actor, was at the very heart of two of the best Chicago shows of the 2015-16 season: The Steppenwolf Theat…
Although only its second year of eligibility, the Paramount Theatre in Aurora again wowed the Joseph Jefferson Awards committee, blowing away competition from Chicago's long-standing musical…
Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy, the diminutive but extraordinary wife of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and the mother of Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy Jr., John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, Rose Ma…
In 2008, amid some controversy, a Chicago couple named Bill and Wendy Spatz bought the Greenhouse Theater Center, located at 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., from the Victory Gardens Theater Company. A…
At one point in the Light Opera Works summer production of "Mame" " a show that history has proven prophetic " the infinitely annoying Connecticut snob known as Mrs. Upson sits down on a cou…
"Bloodshot," a genuinely enveloping thriller of the retro, noir school, begins with a man contemplating suicide. Which London bridge, he wonders, should be the scene of his demise? But the c…
Times Square seems the most unlikely place in the world for an anti-media critique. But high above the summer-tourist madness play images of female Olympic athletes. With a message. "Dear me…
The reader was furious. She'd read my positive review of "The House That Will Not Stand" at Victory Gardens Theater, showed up the following weekend and discovered an actress on stage readin…
The longtime Chicago actress Susan Moniz has landed a major role in the first national tour of the 2015 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, "Fun Home," the show's producers announced Monday…
The Wicker Park venue known as the Den Theatre said Monday that it plans to open another ground-floor space this fall. Named for the performer and arts educator Janet Bookspan, the new 99-se…
The 2016 season at Black Ensemble has been a year of reprises as this venerable Chicago theater has trotted out remounts of some of its biggest hits " the likes of "The Marvin Gaye Story," "…
In his biting, much-cheered defense of the work of local newspapers on his show "Last Week Tonight," the red-hot HBO satirist John Oliver had much fun at the expense of the role of "artifici…
Before the dog days of August bite, what do you still have time to see from the 2015-16 season in Chicago theater? More importantly, what should you make the time to see? We're all about to …
Each year as leaves fly, ice forms and blossoms bud, we scour the storefronts, basements, walk-ups and suburban palaces in search of the hottest new acting talent to hit Chicago. Then each s…
Given that we're just collections of atoms, our very consciousness designed mostly for reproductive advantage, our self-generated racial divisions, religious prejudices and petty quests for …
At one point in "Unelectable You," the very funny new political show at The Second City's UP Comedy Club, the host Cody Dove auctions off the next scene. Pay up, he says, and we'll improvise…
Mayor Rahm Emanuel sat down in his City Hall office July 20 for a wide-ranging conversation on the arts " his views on "Hamilton," his role in Chicago culture, his frustration over the abort…
Did the blue-skinned Na'vi need their destructors? If you're a fan of the movie "Avatar," you'll likely scream "No," given that James Cameron's 2009 cinematic masterwork " yes, I thought so …
A new Equity theater company " a transplant from New York that specializes in musicals " is to take up residence in Highland Park this fall. And you could not accuse the Musically Human Thea…
The Auditorium Theatre, which is owned and operated by Roosevelt University, has appointed Tania Castroverde Moskalenko as its new President and Chief Executive Officer. Moskalenko most rece…
Converts are, in general, an enthusiastic bunch. Christians are exhorted to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, and their moment of arrival in their faith, assuming there is a precise moment,…
Shattered Globe Theatre will stage Sarah Ruhl's play, "For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday" in May of next year. The play was written for the playwright's mother, Kathleen Ruhl, a resident of…