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Kim McKean directs Caryl Churchill’s 2012 assault on the senses disguised as a play. Assembled from dozens of fragmented vignettes breathlessly performed over 80 lightning-fast minutes, Love and Information leaves one feeling a bit whiplashed afterward. But the cumulative weight of what at first seems like cacophony makes itself felt if you just let it wash over you rather than looking for a narrative or an explicit point. Strobe lights, glitchy TV monitors, and multiple references to social media and tabloid scandal enhance the overall portrait of a society that can’t pay attention or sit still, but that desperately wants to connect, to have something to believe in....

For the last few months, I’ve been watching the twists and turns of the ongoing Lathrop Homes saga, waiting for the TIF shoe to drop. This being a TIF, the mayor generally lets us know how he’s spending the money only after he’s already spent it. In 2011, the CHA authorized a development group called Lathrop Community Partners to redevelop the property as a mixed-use facility, with a blend of low-income and market-rate rental housing....

In 2011, with racial segregation off the radar as usual in the mayor’s race, we interviewed the candidates on the subject. See our related story: “The most important issue no one’s talking about in the mayoral race.” Dock Walls was nine when his family moved into the South Chicago neighborhood in 1966, from nearby Park Manor. The second black family on the block, at 81st and Euclid, they weren’t cordially welcomed....

Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media The kickoff of last year’s Chicago Gay Pride Parade Pride Month whips itself into a frenzy this weekend as Chicago plays host to several celebrations over and above the parade next Sunday at noon, from drag shows to comedy performances to a Sunday-night Britney Spears bash. But it’s not all partying—there are also discussions of Chicago LGTBQ history and Pride-centered storytelling nights. Read on for a detailed roundup....

Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney’s latest glittering offering, follows a girl named Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) on her quest to piece together a fractured Dragon Gem in order to save her people from the literally petrifying Droon. Along the way, she encounters Sisu (Awkwafina), the last living dragon, who accompanies her on her journey. With creatures like a giant pill bug named Tuktuk (Alan Tudyk), a nod to the eponymous auto-rickshaws common in southeast Asia, and effervescent sidekicks—including a con artist baby named Noi (Thalia Tran)—the film is rollicking and vivacious, a feast for the eyes....

Straight white Americans are the worst. Especially but not exclusively straight white American men. How do I know? I saw a lot of theater in Chicago this year. Sure, you might glean the same conclusion from news stories (Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore) or history books (slavery, genocide) or social media (@realDonaldTrump). But a play distills behavior in a way nothing else can. And the distillate left by a remarkable number of recent shows is the message that straight white Americans suck....

About 24 hours after David Axelrod, spin master supreme, publicly predicted in the Sun-Times that his old pal Mayor Rahm Emanuel was too loyal to ever—and I mean, ever—sack his other good buddy, Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool, down came the boom. Of course, there was no need for Rahm to fear Claypool, who’s been a loyal factotum for years. One of my favorite revelations from the trial of former governor Rod Blagojevich was the taped 2008 conversation in which Emanuel, who was leaving Congress to work as President Obama’s chief of staff, asked Blago to fill the vacancy with Claypool....

In the promotional materials for his superb new album I Long to See You (Blue Note) veteran reedist Charles Lloyd calls himself a “sound seeker,” and says that “the deeper I dive into the ocean of sound, I find there is still deeper and further to go.” Lloyd is 77, and I can think of only a few musicians of his generation and age who’ve continued to push their music forward by working in new contexts....

In 1999, two midwestern professors, Cary Nelson (University of Illinois) and Stephen Watt (Indiana University), teamed up on a cheeky pseudo-dictionary that was also a serious critique of academia. The MLA convention, which is part bone-chilling interviews for precious few jobs, part deeply quirky research reports by panels that can outnumber their audiences, and part a bookworm’s version of hard-partying weekend on the town, is also a guaranteed source of frustration....

On James Hunter’s recent Whatever It Takes (Daptone) a brief liner note by pianist Sam Boncon delivers some straight talk that might seem like a dis in most contexts: “There’s nothing new here.” Indeed, not only does the album sound of a piece with his last four, it remains easy to think that the British soul devotee made this collection six decades ago; he elegantly collides influences like Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke, and Freddie King for a rippling old-school R&B record that crackles with ease and concision....

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre launches a hybrid 2021 season on April 22, with an in-person and livestream performance to inaugurate a new partnership with Epiphany Center for the Arts; new works by co-founder and artistic director Wilfredo Rivera and choreographers Stephanie Martinez, Monique Haley, and Shannon Alvis; and a fall concert series three weekends in October. At Epiphany Center for the Arts, an 1885 Episcopal church in the West Loop recently redeveloped into an arts, music, and performance space by owner and developer David Chase, CRDT will present its first in-person performance in over a year, a performance that will launch a long-term partnership with the center and open the door for other dance performances at the venue....

Charli XCX has no chill. The pop star has spent much of her time during the pandemic making a new album, How I’m Feeling Now, which came out May 15. The record’s 11 bittersweet electro-pop tracks document the minutiae of her life under lockdown, including her conversations with her therapist, her online shopping expenditures, her experiences sheltering in place with her boyfriend, and her intense nostalgia for pre-pandemic partying. Charli also churned out supplementary content through every step of her process, including Instagram Live songwriting sessions and a delightfully DIY green-screen video for the love song “Claws,” and this transparency made the project feel like performance art....

Over the past few years, Chicago has steadily grown its beat scene, and producers dedicated to instrumental hip-hop have a few monthly showcases to check out their peers, chief among them the Whistler’s Push Beats and Cafe Mustache’s Open Beats. And late in 2018, the Fresh Roasted series (also usually at the Whistler) held a massive, March Madness-style live beat-making competition that culminated with a December championship show at Sleeping Village....

On Sunday night at Constellation, celebrated New York-based new-music group Mivos Quartet will premiere Chain Reactions/Five Events by composer and electronic musician Sam Pluta, who moved to Chicago a little over a year ago to become an assistant professor of music at the University of Chicago. The concert doubles as a release event for Broken Symmetries (Carrier), Pluta’s second album devoted to his own compositions. You might expect Pluta to promote the show by foregrounding the significance of Chain Reactions, which brings together his practices as a composer, improviser, and performer—or to point out that it appears on Broken Symmetries, alongside three more electroacoustic works (performers on the album include Mivos, Wet Ink Ensemble, violinist Josh Modney, and flutist Anne La Berge)....

Does a comic strip belong on a museum wall? I ask this not to question the value of cartooning, but because I wonder whether a wall is the best place to experience what comics are designed to do. This ate at me as I wandered through “Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now,” the generous survey of 60 years of Chicago’s cartoonists currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. There’s absolutely no question that much of the work on display deserves to be known and celebrated....

This week’s gig poster advertises one of several livestreamed music festivals scheduled for this weekend. Terrell Davis created this image in support of the Diamond Formation URL online festival: a 13-and-a-half-hour lineup of music, performance, and multimedia that starts this Saturday afternoon at Smart Bar, organized by Chicago artists Ariel Zetina, Dutchesz Gemini (recently relocated to Minneapolis), and Miss Twink USA. The concert will feature 15 DJs, including DJ Stingray from Detroit, Akua from Brooklyn, and They/Them DJ from Los Angeles, along with live performance by Cae Monae, Darling Shear, and others....

My nightstand is a graveyard of books left open and abandoned. It isn’t their fault really. It’s hard to slow down a racing mind, especially one that works in media, reading words all day long. Before quarantine, I would read on the bus or before a meeting, or on my lunch break. My home is my office now and that means I work late into the night—there isn’t a clear line of when to “clock out....

Blood and Black Lace Later this week, Doc Films is showing Kidnapped, aka Rabid Dogs, one of the final films by horror master Mario Bava. The film represents the director’s only foray into the crime genre, and it screens as part of Doc’s “Poliziotteschi: Shoot First, Die Later” series. It’s an interesting film, relatively staid compared to Bava’s other stuff, but it has a visceral edge that plays with audience expectations....

This review contains spoilers. Evelyn is the sister of Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), a free-market enthusiast who comes to the rescue of the family after their battle with the Underminer in the last few minutes of the first movie. In keeping with the first movie’s conservative themes, the police chastise the family for interfering, the media depict them as criminals, and the government condemns their activities. “Politicians don’t understand people who do good just because it’s right,” observes Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks), one of the only sympathetic government officials....

Summer is coming to a close—and taking its seasonal outdoor film screenings with it. This week marks the last of Comfort Station’s “Silent Films and Loud Music” series and of Northwestern University’s summer cinema offerings. To help you keep track of the remaining alfresco entertainment, here’s a roundup of 28 free films screening this week: Una Boda en Castañer Puerto Rican romantic-comedy in which a soon-to-be bride and groom face cultural and familial obstacles leading up to their impending wedding....