Complexions Contemporary Ballet emerged in 1994 as the creation of two Alvin Ailey alumni Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden. They moved the parameters around ballet with their careers and then […]
Playwright Clifford Odets set Waiting for Lefty in 1935, but this one-act classic play about unions has echoes of life in America today. Unions’ battle against big business was illustrated […]
Lights come up on a live broadcast. On the television on the far corner of the small apartment, we witness President Barack Obama announcing that American troops would withdraw from […]
“The truth is, I needed to know I could love someone.” That’s all so many of us want—to love and to feel loved. That can look a number of different […]
Shattered Globe Theatre’s new play, Flood, is about family issues—parents who don’t understand their children, children who never call home, elderly parents who ignore the realities of today’s world. There may […]
Champion is the story of welterweight boxer Emile Griffith’s career in boxing with a life-defining fatal bout in 1962 against Benny “Kid” Paret. I believe that an opera in jazz […]
Puppets have stories to tell. And they tell them in all sorts of fanciful and humanistic ways. The 6th annual Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has come to an end […]
I have four copies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in my library and while I have a weird fondness for dark morality tales, I also enjoy the story of the stepchild […]
The 6th Annual International Puppet Theater Festival is under way in Chicago and we have a few brief reviews to whet your appetite for your own puppetry experiences. The festival […]
Get your tickets and grab your seats. On the relatively small stage at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Porchlight Music Theatre is putting on a big, big show: […]
Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 play, Mother Courage and Her Children, is the greatest anti-war play of all time. Anti-war, anti-government and anti-capitalism, as we learn in the opening scene of this stirring […]
A revolt of the animals to save the planet. The adventures of a marooned astronaut. The creation of an Afro-futurist Pinocchio. A monster who can’t scare a scaredycat. Urban youth […]