Billie Holiday was dead at the age of 44. Had Lady Day moved to Europe like Nina Simone, Dexter Gordon and so many of her other peers, would her life story have had a different ending? That'…
Bert Haas has arguable heard more jokes than anyone on this planet. Since 1980, with only a reluctant interlude of a few years when he unsatisfactorily tested other careers, he has worked at…
When the great American playwright Terrence McNally wrote "Master Class" in 1995, it was generally accepted that studying the arts with a famously tempestuous diva " like, say, the late Mari…
The Chicago Humanities Festival's fall fest, bearing the title "Graphic!," began this weekend and continues with a calendar of cultural events through Nov. 11. Saturday's programs included t…
The Harris Theater can be a tough space for dance companies, swallowing up the subtleties of fine-tuned gestures, text or facial expressions. It's got a chilly subterranean atmosphere that r…
Now a hipster highway, Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago was known in the first decades of the 20th century as Dinner Pail Avenue " it was so named for the legions of workers carrying their food a…
Here's why you need to get out more and see international artists' perspectives on our riven America and its fraught democratic processes. You will encounter things that no U.S. company woul…
The 86-year-old Elaine May " who last appeared on Broadway 52 years ago in a show that ran for about 30 seconds " is gifted with a face formed in the shape of a smile. And anyone who remembe…
Before we get into Betty Buckley as compared with Bette Midler, trains and parades passing by, Sunday clothes to be put on, galloping waiters and all the rest of that glorious Broadway mishe…
"A Shayna Maidel" âœâœâœâœ Barbara Lebow's 1980s play "A Shayna Maidel" is a much richer work than I ever realized, especially in director Vanessa Stalling's exquisitely acte…
On Wednesday, Porchlight Music Theatre announced the 2018-19 "New Faces Sing Broadway" series. A multimedia program, the show features trivia games with prizes, sing-alongs and more, with a …
Whatever day you might have, the evening will be improved by a visit to a Colombian circus. Just such a troupe, Circolombia, has arrived at Chicago Shakespeare Theater's fabulous new Navy Pi…
Behold the brand-new Green Line Performing Arts Center. As of Nov. 10, Chicago will have a well-equipped, 100-seat, $5.5 million, storefront-style theater, replete with separate rehearsal sp…
At the 50th Jeff Awards, Chicago's theater community came together for a night of celebration " and served. some. looks. From nominees to supportive family members to superfans, here are our…
Theater Unspeakable takes a cue from the Reduced Shakespeare Company by condensing the history of the American Revolution to 50 minutes. Then it further "reduces" the story by confining the …
The Goodman Theatre's gripping and highly stylized production of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" and American Blues Theater's lively staging of "Buddy " The Buddy Holly Story" were …
During World War I, many British soldiers, which is to say many young men of 16 or 17 years old, were court martialed and then shot, proverbially at dawn, by a firing squad made up of combat…
Sunday "Cosmologies": In this comedy, a young man's negotiation for a date goes totally awry, transporting him through different worlds and identities. Through Dec. 9 at The Gift Theatre, 48…
Jez Butterworth's "The Ferryman," which opened with a howling roar of cacophonous humanity on Sunday night on Broadway, packs more juicy and prophetic Anglo-Irish storytelling into a fantast…
With many comedians embracing increasingly restrictive cell phone policies in recent years, it was a bit refreshing Friday night at The Vic to see French-Moroccan superstar Gad Elmaleh settl…
If you stitched together a butoh performance and a zombie film, you'd come close to capturing the look and feel of the opening minutes of Remy Bumppo's "Frankenstein." Greg Matthew Anderson,…
Aged out of haunted houses, prefer cocktails to punch, like puzzles and intimate conversation and yet still craving a seasonal scare? "Masque Macabre" is here to serve your lingering date-ni…
Choreographer Tere O'Connor splits his time between New York and Champaign, where he is a professor in the dance department at the University of Illinois. As the occasional U. of I. alum has…
"Truth isn't truth," Rudy Giuliani famously spluttered on "Meet the Press" last summer, trumping even presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway's much-derided coinage of the phrase "alternative …
Thirty-six years after its birth, the musical spoof "Little Shop of Horrors" still resides in a special chamber of the heart of its mega-successful composer. "Like few things in my life," Al…