The volcano rabbit is one of the smallest rabbits in the world. It has rounded ears, eats leaves and bark and what domesticated crops it can get its teeth into, and makes a high-pitched sound rather than thump its feet to signal danger. It is most active at dusk and dawn. The rabbit lives only on the pine-studded slopes of four volcanos near Mexico City, and there only tenuously: it’s being pushed up the mountain slopes by habitat encroachment, overhunting, and climate change....

“[A]s if life isn’t hard enough without us being deliberately hurtful and cruel to each other.” —Fred, in Downstate The subject that dare not speak its name in Downstate is pedophilia, especially as it’s regarded by our culture and punished by our laws. Four men—Fred, Dee, Gio, and Felix—are convicted sex offenders, having served out sentences for everything from father-daughter incest to carrying on a long-term gay relationship with a teenager....

Potatoes didn’t arrive in northern Europe for at least a couple centuries after the reign of Jadwiga of Poland, the female monarch (technically a king) largely held responsible for spicing up her court’s royal cuisine with exotica from her father’s native Hungary. As for most of her subjects in the Middle Ages, it was a lot of groats until the Andean tuber arrived in the late 18th century and took hold with a tenacity that persists today....

Because reedist Aram Shelton first made his name during his years in Chicago and continues to work in numerous ensembles featuring strong local players, that’s the context in which he tends to get covered by the Reader. But he moved to Oakland, California, in 2005 and he’s been superactive in the Bay Area since then, so even we don’t hear about those activities so much. Shelton has just released On and On (Singlespeed Music) with the second iteration of his long-running group Ton Trio....

Few labels are as synonymous with emo as Jade Tree. Throughout the 90s and early 2000s the independent Delaware label released pivotal albums by the Promise Ring, Jets to Brazil, Pedro the Lion, and Cap’n Jazz, among others. The scope of Jade Tree’s catalog isn’t confined to emo, though, and you can find the evidence on the label’s brand new Bandcamp page. Owners Tim Owen and Darren Walters launched their Bandcamp yesterday following a lengthy quiet period for Jade Tree, which has been in the news again since Brooklyn Vegan said the label “is back” in a throwaway blog post from a couple weeks ago—Walters referenced that post in a Billboard story he wrote about Jade Tree’s history the following week....

Photo courtesy of David Drazin David Drazin has been playing piano at silent-film screenings in Chicago for almost 30 years. If you’ve seen a silent movie in the city (outside of the Music Box, that is, where Dennis Scott is the house accompanist), chances are you’ve heard Drazin play. I can hardly estimate how many screenings I’ve attended where he was providing the soundtrack—at some point I began to take for granted that if I went to a silent-film revival he’d probably be there....

On his bracing new album Cruel Optimism (Room40) veteran Australian sound artist Lawrence English subtly erases boundaries between ambient drift and industrial roar, forging aqueous instrumentals that seem to occupy an entire world. Normally he creates his turbulent recordings entirely on his own, as he did with the 2014’s bruising Wilderness of Mirrors—an appropriate precursor in terms of its visceral chill—but for the first time he’s enlisted a number of guest musicians....

Ask Your Doctor: A Pharmaceutical Musical It took eight people to write book, lyrics, and music for this Annoyance musical? Maybe too much input diluted the output. The premise is golden: pharmaceutical giant Mendacium pedals a designer pill with such restorative powers that people who take it need only two hours of sleep per night. Supermodel drug reps, tyrannized by glammed-out sibling managers Gabriel and Gabrielle, devolve into amoral profit machines until conscience-stricken ingenue saleswoman Morgan sabotages everything....

Mike Sula Oxtail, polenta, baby fennel at Cellar Door Provisions If you must have a reason to venture out into the rimy hellscape of never-ending winter, I’m going to suggest it should be to hunch over the oxtail polenta at Logan Square’s Cellar Door Provisions and thank Providence for good grain and meat. It’s listed at the very bottom of the changing menu at this new, minimalist breakfast-and-lunch spot from some of the guys behind the underground dining posse Thurk....

David Rabe has spent a lifetime honing his craft. And it shows in Cosmologies, a remarkably well-written play receiving its midwest premiere at the Gift Theatre (which counts him as an ensemble member). Rabe first made his name in the 1970s writing savage, dark comedies about his experiences in Vietnam (Streamers, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, and Sticks and Bones, which won him a Tony) and later in the cocaine-addled world of Hollywood in the 1980s (Hurly-Burly)....

Carsten Fleck Reut Regev The second Israeli Jazz & World Music Festival kicked off on Tuesday, but some of the best shows take place in the coming week. In this week’s paper I wrote a preview of Sunday’s concert by the trio led by trumpeter Avishai Cohen—arguably the most exciting Israeli jazz musician in the world—but another terrific New York-based expat will take the stage on Tuesday at the Chicago Cultural Center....

It’s 1963, and it’s sweltering in the basement where Caroline Thibodeaux (Rashada Dawan) spends her days doing laundry—a full load a day from the Gellman family, washed in conditions that mimic the contradiction of Louisiana, underwater and above ground all at once. The darkness and the heat of the basement, the smoke of Caroline’s cigarette, the danger implicit in the iron she wields, and the bass of a singing dryer (Micheal Lovette) contribute to an atmosphere like a cauldron about to boil over....

Todd Rosenberg Hubbard Street and Second City try out the ole song and dance to make ’em laugh. Hubbard Street Dance and the Second City are cultural institutions in Chicago. And, if you think about it, they’re pretty similar at their cores—each uses improvisation and new ideas to create a contemporary version of an ages-old art form. In fact, when I talked with comic Tim Mason and dancer Robyn Mineko Williams for the Fall Arts guide, both seemed pleasantly surprised at how similar their processes were once they started working together....

Last year, when director Zachary Baker-Salmon and his cast and crew at Oracle Productions began preparing This House Believes the American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro, their re-creation of a debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University in October 1965, they had no idea that on August 9, Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, would be shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer....

Alex Wroblewski/Sun-Times Mayor Rahm miraculously finds some TIF money to hire a few teachers—just in time for next year’s election. At the end of my recent heart-to-heart with 47th Ward alderman Ameya Pawar, he made a prediction that I’ve been thinking about ever since. Sure enough, in the last few weeks Mayor Emanuel has slowly started to discover his inner Woody Guthrie. The funding comes from the good ol’ TIF slush fund—where, of course, it could have been “found” years ago, had the mayor been looking for it....

See our sidebar for a rundown of the bands playing the Chicago International Movies & Music Fest. Boyce & Hart: The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart penned some of the Monkees’ biggest tunes—”Last Train to Clarksville,” “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone,” the TV show’s “hey-hey” theme song—and later scored a few hits as a performing duo themselves (“I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight”) before shuffling off to Vegas for an act with Zsa Zsa Gabor and finally calling it quits in the early 70s....

Gustavus Franklin Swift was the Chicago meat-packer who coined the phrase “everything but the squeal” to describe how efficient his slaughterhouses were at turning whole live animals into meat, soap, fertilizer, glue, and oleomargarine. Swift was also the guy who figured out how to ship butchered cows in refrigerated railcars, and is thus largely responsible for turning us into a nation enslaved to cheap meat. The brassy, wood-paneled, multitiered curvilinear space features multiple dining rooms, a subordinate “Tavern” (aka the bar) with its own abbreviated menu, an embedded adjunct seafood-focused restaurant called Cold Storage, and a working concierge desk to help you score theater tickets, or maybe tell you where to get a good steak....

In a city segregated by race and class, one theater festival hopes to create meaningful relationships across identities and locations: the Chicago Home Theater Festival, a 15-day event running from May 14 to May 29. This year, the series takes place in 14 different Chicago neighborhoods. Unlike theater festivals that rely on established performing arts venues, CHTF takes place entirely in the homes of artists and activists throughout the city. Hosts open their residences to complete strangers in order to share a meal, experience performances rooted in social justice, and introduce community outreach organizations to audiences in an attempt to encourage involvement after the show....

On a drizzly day in early February, state representative Will Guzzardi stood in front of a group of housing activists and community organizers in Bronzeville to announce his new bill, which is just seven words long: “The Rent Control Preemption Act is repealed.” The act, he said, was passed in 1997 by state legislators in fear of “the bogeyman of rent control.” Days after the announcement, it became clear that the bogeyman is alive and well, as Guzzardi was inundated with a flood of protest e-mails and calls ominously predicting that his bill would spell the end of development and rehab of the state’s housing stock....

Philip Glass arrives in town this Friday to appear as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, but he’s no stranger to the city. He first came here in 1952 to begin his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago at the prodigious age of 15. He remembers sitting outside jazz clubs like the Beehive in Hyde Park, too young to be admitted, listening to bebop waft out the door. Philip Glass & Third Coast Percussion Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival....