The legal principle cui bono? matters because it clears the air: Who benefits? Yet American jurisprudence doesn’t hold the opposite question in the same regard: Cui patitur? Who suffers? The Will I’d known in school engaged life like a bookish Scaramouche, with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. I didn’t know this side of him. Maybe it came from Marsha, who was deeply religious. It might always have been there....
Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 exploration of the rot at the core of a prominent family is meant to be a scathing indictment of societal hypocrisy. But in this new take at Redtwist Theatre—adapted and directed by Erin Murray—the result is mostly maudlin moralizing. A son comes home from abroad stricken with the venereal disease he inherited from his late, sainted father. He falls for the beautiful maid who’s his father’s illegitimate child....
A few years ago, Jan Tichy was invited by the art department at Indiana University Northwest in Gary to create a site-specific work. Tichy, an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago known largely for his video projections that intersect with architecture, was shown several sites, including Gary’s abandoned and moldering Union Station. Tichy was intrigued by the possibilities but ultimately felt that the idea didn’t make sense....
If you have access to a human cloning machine or a Time Turner (a la Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), you might want to call dibs on it now for the first two weekends of November. The Chicago Humanities Festival is back, and bigger than ever. This year’s theme is Citizens, and 130 writers, thinkers, artists, scientists, philosophers, comedians, chefs, and musicians will be descending upon Chicago to discuss what it means to be an individual living in society....
At the core of the Chicago jazz and improv scene is the constant building of new groups fueled by distinct personnel, concepts, or instrumentation. Drummer-composer Charles Rumback has exemplified this particularly well in his many projects. In 2017, he released Threes and Tag Book with his trio of pianist Jim Baker and bassist John Tate, and both of those subdued acoustic albums play with the relationship between structured improvisation and composition....
The Annoyance Theatre’s new location features more theaters, a kitchen, a larger bar, and, in the case of Hitch-Cocktails, an onstage wet bar. The completely improvised show features six performers who create a Hitchcock-style two-act thriller on the spot, all while getting obliterated. If anyone in a scene is offered a drink, he or she must take it and finish it before the scene is over. The menu for the show I attended included red wine, rum and Coke, and vodka soda—each audience-tested to ensure alcoholic strength—and what started as sips from friendly pours became hard chugs from pint glasses by the time the lights began fading....
Sun-Times Media Forty-seventh Ward alderman Ameya Pawar wants you to know that he’s going to vote to raise your taxes. The morning after the city’s pension “reform” bill became a done deal, 47th Ward alderman Ameya Pawar walked into a North Center cafe wanting breakfast. Some strategic thinking was also in order, because Chicago is in a bit of a fix. Pawar counts himself as a supporter of the mayor’s—as well as his alderman, since Emanuel lives in the 47th Ward—and he backs the pension plan....
Efrim Manuel Menuck is a founding member of the anti-capitalist symphonic rock ensemble Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the equally outraged Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. In both of those groups, his muscular guitar is part of a vast sonic corpus of strings, tape loops, and pounding rhythm section. But on his recent solo LP, Pissing Stars (Constellation), Menuck’s anguished voice looms large over blasted, mostly electronic soundscapes. The songs on the album exorcise a preoccupation Menuck’s carried for 30 years; the affair between Entertainment Tonight hostess Mary Hart and playboy Mohammed Khashoggi, the son of arms dealer and Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi....
They held signs on rooftops, their arms stretched to the sky. They called on first responders, news helicopters, a higher source—anyone—for help. Yet in a flash, the single most powerful elected official who could’ve sat with them and shared their grief, who could’ve extended consolation, concern, and a commitment to full restoration, made a decision that characterized his entire tenure in office: he gazed down at the suffering, soaring above from the relative comfort of Air Force One, as a king might look upon the poor—with insincere pity....
The power couple: Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, 72, and Umberto Tosi, 76Years together: Three and a halfOccupations: Eleanor’s a painter; Umberto is a writer. Eleanor: A quick summation of who is on the other side of the handshake tells me just how I will introduce Umberto. For some older folks, my “partner” will do. To the young married folks, I like “my lover.” To the stranger who is taking info at the doctor’s office or emergency room, he becomes my husband and I his wife....
If you’ve been plugged into local hip-hop over the past year, you’ve no doubt listened to Phoelix, whether or not you recognize his name. The vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer met Chicago rapper-producer Saba in fall 2015. The two hit it off, and last summer they decamped to an AirBnB in Los Angeles with Chicago rapper Noname for roughly a month, where they worked on two of the best hip-hop releases to come out of any city in 2016....
Much of the action during this week’s 36th annual International Mr. Leather—the bootblack competition; the extensive leather market; the role-playing event Woof Camp, in which men take on the parts of submissive puppies or dominant handlers—goes down at the Marriott Hotel on the Mag Mile. IML’s titular contest, which rewards a participant’s pecs as well as his personality, happens at the Harris Theater. Both venues are miles away from what is, for the rest of the year, a major hub of Chicago’s BDSM community: the Leather Archives & Museum at 6418 N....
North-side microlabel Friendly Otter releases a lot of underground emotive posthardcore. Some of it’s the kind of bristling, erratic screamo spiked with whiny yelps that doesn’t have much reach beyond the folks who pack basement DIY spaces. And then there’s Asterisk Ellipses, which makes fragile, lightly detailed fourth-wave emo indebted to American Football. It’s a solo project from Luming Hao, a Lehigh University student majoring in computer science and music composition; his fragile, slightly restrained singing suggests he’s recording in a dorm room late at night and wrestling with a strong desire to belt out his vocals....
Twenty-year-old British R&B singer Jorja Smith hasn’t broken any new ground on her singles; her style is resolutely retro, with her throaty, jazz-tinged vocals sliding over smoky grooves. If that sounds boring, you should probably skip on down the playlist to some other artist. If throaty, jazz-tinged vocals and smoky grooves are your thing, though, you’ll want to check Smith out. Her highest-profile performance so far is probably her guest spot on “Get It Together,” a track from Drake’s More Life, where she runs her voice sensuously over and around a lounge beat by Black Coffee....
‘Twas near midnight on the night after Christmas. Gossip Wolf was stirring a drink at Rainbo Club, when what to these wondering eyes should appear but Cecily Strong! The current Saturday Night Live cast member (and former Second City and iO Chicago performer) was hanging with some pals, and this wolf didn’t have the guts to buy the funny lady a drink—or even interrupt her conversation, for that matter. But it was tough not to walk over and tell her that her set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last April (in front of the president, political reporters, and celebs) was totally killer—or ask for pointers on jokes and puns....
Since I first encountered it nearly a decade ago, I’ve repeatedly tried to engage with the music of Chicago trio Mako Sica. The determinedly exploratory ensemble couches improvisational impulses within meditative, expansive prog-rock modes more concerned with using chants, texture-rich guitar, and spacious rhythms to carve out space than with displaying hollow virtuosity. Unfortunately, their music has always left me underwhelmed, sounding noodly in parts where I wanted it to be probing....
The Art Institute and the MCA are cultural gems, but let’s face it: both spaces can be tough to navigate during the summertime, when they’re mobbed by tourists. Do yourself a favor this summer and check out these 11 museums, galleries, and art spaces outside the Loop and the northeast side that offer their own rewards. DuSable Museum of African American History Yes, DuSable is a major institution, but we included it for the folks who usually don’t venture farther south than the Museum Campus....
Ben Lamar Gay is one of the more mercurial musicians in town, appearing a bewildering variety of contexts. Of course, this is Chicago, where such versatility and curiosity is the norm—but even so, Gay is outside the norm. I know him primarily as a superb cornetist who works regularly with the likes of Ernest Dawkins, Mike Reed, and Jeff Parker, but he also makes weird trance-out sounds in El Is a Sound of Joy, and I’ve heard him play in several ad hoc configurations that touched (in various degrees) on noise, soul, drone, free improvisation, and less categorizable stuff....
Chicago Cubs Clark, the latest victim In an attempt to be like other baseball teams with their cuddly, family-friendly mascots—and, possibly, their winning records—the Cubs announced their latest hire on Monday: Clark the Cub. Clark is a sweet-looking little fellow. In the cartoon released by the Cubs, he sports a backward baseball cap and insouciantly leans on an upright bat. He does not, however, wear pants, which prompted Deadspin to call him “a nightmarish, perverted furry....
During the six months Richard Morrisroe was convalescing, barely able to move following gunshot wounds to the back, he would have recurring dreams about a particular night in Lowndes County, Alabama, when he was jogging along a dark country road. The stretch was not unlike the little roads he’d run around Mundelein in Lake County, where he’d gone to seminary. That August night in rural Alabama was foggy. He was 26, strong, and running just for fun....
