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Producer SqueakPivot has long been a crucial member of the Chicago hip-hop collective he’s incorporated into his stage name, applying his talents largely to mixes and DJ sets—I’m hard-pressed to think of a Pivot Gang show I’ve seen where Squeak wasn’t behind the turntables. He’s infrequently released his own music, though that began to shift when Pivot dropped the playful 2019 group album You Can’t Sit With Us. Squeak brought an understated cool to the songs he coproduced, two of which (“Jason Statham, Pt....

Augustin-Eugène Scribe would’ve felt right at home in today’s television industry. The most popular French playwright and librettist during a good chunk of the 19th century, Scribe anticipated the Hollywood writers’ room by maintaining a creative staff whose members assembled the hundreds of entertainments that appeared under his name. He also invented the well-made play, a template capable of generating endless variations within an ironclad set of narrative rules. Scribe was, as his 1861 New York Times obituary noted, “Less a dramatist than a manafacturer [sic] of comedies, vaudevilles and opera librettos....

If you were a young American feminist in the late 90s or early 00s with a penchant for punk and indie rock, there’s a good chance you grew up listening to Sleater-Kinney. Formed by guitarist-vocalists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein in 1994 and completed by longtime drummer Janet Weiss in 1996, the group spent their first decade delivering increasingly adventurous albums that merge vibrant guitar interplay and dynamic drumming with smart, sometimes intimate, sometimes biting lyrics....

From Brianna Wellen’s introduction, “Losses and gains: Best of Chicago 2020”: Some business to get out of the way: the reader poll results were determined by you, the readers! If you’re angry about the results, you only have yourselves to blame! Let this be a reminder to keep a close eye on when voting begins next year so you can campaign for your favorites to get the top spot. Or better yet, share your own losses and gains on social media and tag us @Chicago_Reader with the hashtags #bestofchi and #BoC2020....

Since arriving in Chicago in 1980, Ohio native Hollis Resnik has embodied a pantheon of troublesome troubled women. She’s inadvertently eaten her children as Tamora, Queen of the Goths. As a Mother Superior of a Jersey convent, she helped her sisters outwit gun-toting mobsters. She’s traversed into the woods as a witch. She’s dreamed and died in Parisian penury, screamed of demons setting London on fire, carpe diem’ed through the Great Depression in Manhattan, celebrated angels in 20th-century America, revolutionized the dress code for the Hampton elite, and outfoxed a family of southern vipers....

Magic Inc. has more than a few tricks up its sleeve. Set foot inside the shop and you’re quickly greeted by affable clerks who also happen to be highly skilled magicians ready to demonstrate almost any illusion. On a given day, tricksters stop in to socialize and kill time comparing card-shuffling techniques, collectors breeze in on a hunt for rare magic books, and wide-eyed children cross the threshold to experience the wonder of magic—and its attendant accessories—for the first time....

Since the Michigan Avenue Apple Store opened in 2017, its Macbook-sleek design and proximity to the river have attracted crowds of Mag Mile shoppers, not just to buy or to seek tech support for Apple products but also to attend free events from the store’s busy calendar of classes, panel discussions, live interviews, and performances. As part of its Today at Apple series, the tech giant’s flagship Chicago location regularly hosts local musicians and other creative workers in front of an enormous video wall—a space it calls the Forum....

Last week, I walked around my neighborhood looking to photograph other people who were still working amid the pandemic. I spotted a U.S. Postal Service carrier almost half a block away and waved to get her attention. I smiled, but she probably couldn’t see it behind the face mask I was wearing. It was a surgical mask, which was sent from my roommate’s mother in the Philippines. As a visual journalist, I don’t have the luxury of always working from home....

The tattoo industry, as we typically think of it, seems like no place for queer people. Even with early pioneers like Cliff Raven and Phil Sparrow, it’s remained an overwhemingly heteronormative, patriarchal, and white field, a fact that was only confirmed by my search to find Chicago queer tattoo artists, especially folks of color, which yielded many a “nobody like that works at our shop, sorry!” But pockets of queer tattooers exist and seem to be growing, forming their own communities and reimagining industry standards, especially to cater to clients beyond those who are typically represented....

Amour There’s something beguiling about this quirky 2002 musical, in which a nobody Parisian civil servant becomes a somebody when he suddenly gains the ability to pass through walls. Maybe it’s the offbeat score, by French composer Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, among many others); maybe it’s the literate, playful, sung-through libretto, translated from the French by Jeremy Sams (who also wrote the English book). But in this production, a Chicago premiere from Black Button Eyes, the show’s charm is muted by a rough, uneven cast—some overplay the show’s comic moments, while others lack the pipes to bring out the best in Legrand’s ear-pleasing tunes....

Ben Fasman didn’t have to look far for the subject of his art-book imprint’s first release. The answer was literally written on his arm, thigh, and buttocks, all of which have been tattooed by the artist Robert Ryan. Fasman first began tinkering with the idea of starting an imprint several years ago, as he was winding down as a freelance writer for outlets such as the Economist, Juxtapoz, and Stop Smiling....

There’s something wonderfully firsthand about this brilliant new work from playwright Beth Hyland and the Sound, directed by Rebecca Willingham. To begin with, it’s a small theater in Chicago performing a play about small theater in Chicago. Red Bowl Ensemble, a fictional company, have netted several Non-Equity Jeff Award nominations this year for their production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and here they are at the Jeffs, in jumpsuits, jackets, and a very memorable cape, ready to face the music and disparage the competition....

On February 28, Chris Rock hosts the 88th Academy Awards ceremony—the “White BET Awards,” he tweeted last month, when for the second year in a row there were no black nominees in prominent categories and #OscarsSoWhite was taking off again. Woodson started Negro History Week to address the subject’s absence from American history, especially as taught in public schools. According to a paper on the origins and purpose of Black History Month by black conservative think-tanker Stacy Swimp, Woodson believed that “if white Americans knew the true history of blacks in America and in Africa, it would help overcome negative stereotyping....

We’re now in the eighth month of the COVID-19 pandemic, and millions are struggling to maintain their incomes and housing. But even before the pandemic started, one Chicago nonprofit, the Urban Growers Collective, was working to address residents’ struggles to access another basic necessity—fresh, healthy food—and the current crisis has only emboldened that work. “It’s really an issue of apartheid and where we value putting a diverse kind of selection of options,” Allen says....

Twenty years ago, Anthony Rapp played the role of Mark Cohen in the off-Broadway debut of the musical Rent, a cultural watershed that made the AIDS crisis resonate with a wider audience and, for many straight and queer people, offered the first glimpse at a loving, homosexual relationship. Rapp, now 44, has helped to sustain Rent‘s legacy, and not just by reprising his role onstage and onscreen in the 2005 film version—he’s performed numerous nuanced portrayals of homosexual characters throughout his career....

It’s back to the world of livestreams for this week’s featured gig poster. Cape Town-based illustrator and graphic designer Simon Berndt specializes in sometimes trippy but always informative concert merch for psych and heavy-rock shows and festivals, and he made this art for a virtual Dead Meadow show on Saturday, February 20. Berndt has created posters for the past few editions of the Levitation music festival (formerly Austin Psych Fest), and he usually does so in collaboration with Austinite and Levitation founder Rob Fitzpatrick—who assisted on this doozy as well....

Derrick Clifton is a writer and commentator focusing on the intersections of identity, culture, and social justice issues. Clifton wrote the Reader‘s award-winning Identity and Culture column during the 2016 election season. The loved ones I’m sheltering with live in a food desert, so I journey at least four to five miles away to the south suburbs to gather groceries and supplies. That includes venturing for paper products at the Walmart superstore in Evergreen Park where two employees recently died from complications of COVID-19....

Dandelion Theatre presents the world premiere of Brynne Frauenhoffer’s plaintive, often overloaded exploration of family and identity, directed by Ben Kaye. When expectant parents Josh (David Stobbe) and Michelle (Gabriela Diaz) leave Chicago to visit Josh’s small Missouri hometown, a powder keg of hot-button issues goes off. Josh’s teenage half sibling (K. Holland) is wrestling with gender identity and at constant loggerheads with their mother, who grudgingly agrees to call them “Ru” rather than Ruth....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, December 2, 2016. Have a great weekend! San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick donates to Black Youth Project 100, discusses Chicago ahead of visit San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has made national headlines by kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games to protest racial inequality in the U.S. Now the football player has donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Black Youth Project 100 to help the fight for racial equality....

I cruised through my pre-date ritual with a rhythmic familiarity: showered, moisturized, tweezed errant hairs from my eyebrows, put on makeup, threw on my favorite jeans and sweater, and paced around my room to whittle away at the nervous pit in my stomach. Standing in front of the mirror, I swiveled back and forth to investigate every angle, grimacing at the way my ass looked in my jeans as I normally would before catching myself—on the other side of the webcam, I would exist only from the shoulders up, and in one dimension....