Note to T.S. Eliot: Sorry/not sorry, April isn’t the cruelest month. That would be January, the annual 31-day slog when, in Chicago, both sky and ground are a monolithic gray. If you aren’t among those who use “winter” as a verb (i.e.: “We’re wintering in Cabo”), consider 2019’s roster of festivals the entertainment equivalent of a high-wattage sun lamp. From young playwrights to veteran puppeteers, January stages bloom with diversions. Read on for the particulars.

The Rhinoceros Theater Festival

When the local CBS affiliate ran a story about missing women from Chicago’s south side, playwright B.B. Browne was left with more questions than answers. “It was only a snapshot,” she says. “No follow-up. But the community has been talking about this, black and brown women disappearing. We don’t have hard numbers, but people are worried. And we know that if this was happening on the north side, we’d be hearing more about it. The question for me became, ‘How can I as an artist uplift these sisters who are crying for help?’” The answer lies in Missing, a short play Browne hopes to expand to full-length.

“This was the late 1980s, early 90s,” Lomnicki recalls, “when there were ‘handicapped’ hotel rooms which always only had one bed. The company I worked for was too cheap to give us our own rooms, so I’d literally wind up sleeping with strangers. I mean, fine, I can bring a stool to get to the towels or whatever. But sleeping with strangers? Come. On.”

Puppet Fest was born in 2000, co-curated by Thomas and Susan Lipmann in collaboration with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 2015, it’s been a biennial. This year’s festival is vast, encompassing 70 events performed by 50 artists. Among them are:

Fests are not forever. The Chicago International Theatre Festival? Gone. The Chicago Fringe and Buskers Festival? Likewise. This year came word that the Chicago Fringe Festival (which some argued was redundant because what is Chicago’s vast off-Loop theater scene if not a yearlong fringe festival?) is also kaput, after 10 years and an estimated 367 shows. The Fringe’s volunteer staff was no longer up to the demands of producing the annual shebang, or so explained the official RIPress release. But mark your calendars! There’s a commemorative party slated for Saturday, June 11, at the Windsor Tavern and Grill, 4530 N. Milwaukee. January will surely be over by then.   v