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Presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater as part of Shakespeare 400 Chicago (a yearlong, citywide tribute to the Bard on the 400th anniversary of his shuffling off, mortal-coil-wise), this collaboration between Moscow’s Pushkin Theatre and London-based Cheek by Jowl puts a wobbly but exhilarating spin on an especially problematic problem play. Measure for Measure is notoriously creepy, only partly because it concerns a prim bureaucrat named Angelo who tries to coerce a novice nun into sleeping with him....

In the summer of 1940, six-year-old Beno Weiss’s family was awakened by pounding on the door of their home in Abbazia, then in northeast Italy. It was a year and a half after Benito Mussolini had bowed to the influence of Nazi Germany and passed the Italian Racial Laws, which stripped civil rights from Italian Jews. “Pandemonium broke out,” according to Beno’s widow, Susan. Both King’s and Reilly’s offices said the aldermen are still open to renaming the drive after a worthy Chicagoan....

Mick Jenkins Water represents knowledge and life force to south-side rapper Mick Jenkins. On his breakout 2014 mixtape, The Water[s], he glides through cerebral raps about the systemic oppression of black populations and the struggles that young people of color undergo to escape the traps society lays for them—even his knottiest, most complicated rhyming goes down easy, thanks to his magnetic personality, the resplendent soul-influenced instrumentals, and the concepts for water that flow through and unify it....

Tomorrow night local trio Facs celebrate the release of their stark debut album, Negative Houses (Trouble in Mind), with a headlining set at the Empty Bottle. As regular readers of Gossip Wolf already know, the band made their live debut in early 2017, emerging during a hiatus by Disappears, the long-running band fronted by Facs singer and guitarist Brian Case. (Disappears bassist Damon Carruesco had left, and at this point the hiatus looks to be permanent....

In a year of upheaval, perhaps no Chicago theater company has seen more of it than the Company Formerly Known as Pride Films and Plays. Rocked by social media allegations that founder David Zak (a pioneer of LGBTQ+ theater in Chicago) had either engaged in patterns of abuse and harassment toward actors and staff or ignored such incidents from others involved in the company (as well as wide-ranging complaints about the general safety and hygiene of the rehearsal and performance spaces), Zak announced he was stepping away on July 3 of last year....

For those of you who don’t know the lingo, let me explain. Listen instead to what Pritzker said in a conversation with another powerful white man that we weren’t supposed to hear. Crass, just to be clear, is an adjective that means “lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence.” They just got caught. We’re used to that brand of racism. The way Pritzker talks in code, though, stokes the greatest fears of black folk who navigate white spaces or welcome whites into theirs....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, July 29, 2016. Under Superintendent Garry McCarthy, stop and frisk was one of the Chicago Police Department’s main strategies for deterring criminals, according to WBEZ. The method is supposed to discourage people from carrying weapons or drugs. But during the first six months of 2016 (and without McCarthy), stops were down 84.1 percent from the first six months of 2015, according to data obtained by WBEZ through a Freedom of Information Act request....

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with The TRiiBE that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Phor Robinson has the whole hood standing in the middle of 87th and University Avenue, like he’s about to shoot a music video. “Marynook, to be exact. This is where I grew up,” he says, before taking us on a walking tour. Phor actually has made a video in Marynook....

In the summer of 2009, at the height of Mayor Daley’s push to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, I had a conversation with an alderman that resonates with me to this day. “And if you’re wrong?” I asked. My aldermanic buddy was by no means the only silently skeptical Olympic flag-waver back then. And the perverse thing is, they all knew Daley’s Olympic dreams were folly. They knew they would saddle us with unspeakable debt....

Fatour Seidi Ghali is surely not the first person to become enamored of an older sibling’s guitar. When she was about ten, her older brother, Ahmoudou Madassane (who currently plays rhythm guitar for Mdou Moctar), brought a guitar from Libya back to their home in Illighadad, Niger. Since Tuareg girls aren’t encouraged to pick up the instrument, she had to dodge disapproving parental eyes to give it a try, but she proved to be a natural....

Austin quintet Temple of Angels have been flying low under the radar since they dropped their self-titled debut EP in 2017, but they’ve cut their way out of the undergrowth of a dark postpunk forest to build a following through touring and judicious festival bookings, including SXSW and Austin Terror Fest. Last year’s full-length Foiled (released on cassette and digitally) shows the young band finding their footing and developing an organic, jagged-but-ethereal sound....

Beauty and the Beast Married performance artists Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser, billing themselves as Oneofus, spend a none-too-subtle evening drawing parallels between the titular 18th-century fairy tale and their own romantic relationship. Muz, a burlesque performer and onetime Miss Coney Island, is the beauty, while Fraser, a self-described disability artist with thalidomide-induced phocomelia (he calls his arms “small and perfectly deformed”) is, discomfitingly, the beast. For 80 minutes they alternately enact the fairy tale, ably assisted by clever puppetry and cunning scenic design, and recount the course of their romance....

DePaul women’s team, 13 consecutive seasons @DePaulWBBHoops Exactly zero teams from Illinois made the men’s NCAA basketball tournament earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean March Madness skipped the state: the Northwestern and DePaul women’s teams both went to the Big Dance. While it was NU’s first appearance in 18 years, the Blue Demons have made playing in the tourney a rite of spring. They haven’t missed an appearance since the 2001-’02 campaign, and haven’t finished the year with a losing record since 1998-’99....

Sherrie Crabb went without pay for a third of the last fiscal year, laid off members of her staff, cut benefits for those who remained, and finally, closed the only homeless youth shelter in southern Illinois, all because the state legislature and governor couldn’t agree on a budget. Family Counseling Center has closed six different office and residential locations, laid off 36 staff members, and cut holiday and personal time off as well as retirement funding, in addition to draining the agency’s reserve funds and shutting down a homeless youth shelter that had been up and running for a little more than a year....

Tekki Lomnicki is a brilliant solo performer and the creator of Tellin’ Tales Theater, which has produced and fostered creative work by people with disabilities for more than 20 years. Lomnicki has a disability that affects her height: she is a little person. She walks with a set of crutches and does her storytelling act mostly from a folding chair. When she’s seated, she stands the crutches up against the chair’s frame; when it’s time to get up, she picks them up again....

The debut album of Mexico’s El Shirota, Tiempos Raros (“Weird Times”), resonates mightily as the world convulses from the effects of America’s racist violence in the midst of a global pandemic. Founded by lead singer and guitarist Ignacio Gomez in 2013, the band went through several lineup changes before settling on their current configuration in 2018: Gomez, guitarist Ruben Anzaldúa, bassist David Lemus, and drummer Gabriel Mendoza. El Shirota’s smart postpunk melange, with its intentional rawness and volatile edge, connects the dots between Nirvana, Weezer, and the sounds of Mexico City’s rock scene from the 90s till today....

Michael Gebert Doug Sohn, pictured in 2006 with a bumper sticker I made Judging by the line outside Paulina Meat Market a few weeks ago, there’s an inexhaustible appetite for Doug Sohn’s encased meats on a bun. So at the end of this month the late Hot Doug’s returns again for the Dog Dayz of Summer, which features Doug’s dogs, beer from Goose Island, and “punk and country bands” on June 27 and 28 at the Goose Island Barrel Warehouse (605 N....

Q: Garbage human here. I’ve had herpes for about 15 years. The first five years, I was in a relationship with a guy who also had it. The last ten years, I haven’t been in a serious relationship. I’ve been a (rare, drunk) one-night-stand type of gal, and I don’t usually tell the guy because, like, everyone has herpes. (I get that one in five isn’t everyone, but if you count HSV-1?...

Tanya Lozano danced in the streets. It was election day and We Got Us, an arm of her organization Healthy Hood, was hosting a “Survival Day” on Chicago’s south side to encourage local residents to vote and look after their health. We Got Us offered hot meals, flu shots, HIV and COVID-19 testing, and boxes of fresh produce, free of charge to those who showed proof of having voted. The Lozano legacy, spearheaded by three generations of unapologetic women activists, has not lost its fire....

Saint Louis-born rapper-singer Smino taps two MCs from his Chicago-based Zero Fatigue collective, Bari and Jay2, for “Z4L,” the best song on his 2018 album, Noir. Jay2 appears at the end, caressing the track’s minimal, sexually suggestive instrumental with his firm flow and supple voice. He needs all of his well-earned self-assurance to handle the clusters of beats and unstable synths employed by Zero Fatigue producer Monte Booker, who also produced the majority of Jay2’s new EP, 4 Tha Wait (Zero Fatigue/Downtown/Interscope)....