Posts

Set in contemporary America and based in part on real-life events, Gustavo Ott’s play, the winner of the 2016 Hispanic Playwriting Competition of Chicago, doesn’t have a single protagonist. Instead, Ott has crafted a one-act, performed in Spanish with English overtitles, with an ensemble of more or less equally important characters—a cop, a lawyer, a school-bus driver, an immigrant from Lebanon, another from Mexico, a pair of rebellious teens—who are all survivors of violence....

The Hideout has hired art-pop mastermind and Sooper Records co-owner Sen Morimoto as its new talent buyer. He replaces Sullivan Davis, who began training him last week. “The Hideout’s got such a great legacy, and people really love what it’s about and stands for, and I hope I can maintain that reputation,” Morimoto says. He appeared on the radar of Hideout co-owners Tim and Katie Tuten early this month, and they quickly hired him....

Like millions of Americans, I’ve felt sadness and heartache (and plenty of other emotions) since the lethal coup attempt at the Capitol on January 6. Not only has the Trump administration let the COVID-19 pandemic rampage through the country (at the time of this writing it was killing more than 4,000 Americans per day), but it’s also turned a blind eye to the surge of white supremacist activity that it’s enabled for years....

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, at least 130,000 people left Puerto Rico to live elsewhere. Yet in February 2018, Puerto Rican musicians Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo del Valle, aka experimental dream-pop duo Buscabulla (“Troublemaker” in English), returned to the island after nearly a decade in New York City. During those years, they’d become known for their music, which layers minimalist, electro-tropical grooves with high-pitched, ethereal vocals, but despite this success Berrios felt “incomplete” in New York....

Hadiya Pendleton was killed more than three years ago, and her murder has become emblematic of Chicago’s plague of violence; Pendleton, a 15-year-old King College Prep student, was shot in the back in Kenwood park a week after she’d traveled to perform at events surrounding Obama’s second inauguration, and her death reverberated throughout the country. Pendleton would’ve turned 19 tomorrow, and that evening her life will be honored as part of the second-annual Wear Orange Party for Peace, a free barbecue and concert at Harold Washington Playlot Park....

It’s been 65 years since the New Yorker‘s A.J. Liebling dubbed Chicago the Second City, a “not-quite metropolis.” As it’s now reached retirement age, the notion ought to be collecting its gold watch and hitting the links and one day in the very near future gumming down its last spoonful of pudding before dying in obscurity. But alas, Chicago’s also-ran self-image persists: the city as subordinate, generally lacking, suffering by comparison....

I schedule an appointment to play with bunnies hoping it takes the ease off existing during a pandemic. Marley, a black lop-eared bunny at Cuddle Bunny, hops around and evades my pets to nuzzle his playmate Moo. Marley licks his head as Moo burrows into his chest. I nudge my girlfriend and say, “That one’s you.” “Enclosures were not our initial plan, but they help keep people socially distant and rabbits contained,” says Burdick about the three fenced play pens that separate the bunnies for customers to play with....

In 2016 Gossip Wolf noted the formation of visionary local drone-song duo Mending, aka crystal-voiced singer Kate Adams and sound artist Joshua Dumas. This past August, Mending began releasing a four-hour, 40-song cycle called We Gathered at Wakerobin Hollow, whose graceful, narratively compelling music “follows a family and friends across four decades as they spread out from their small hometown until climate instability and authoritarian government draw them home again,” in the words of the band....

Molasses was born from the ashes of influential Dutch band the Devil’s Blood. Founded in 2006 by guitarist and vocalist Selim Lemouchi (“SL”) and fronted by his sister Farida (“the Mouth of Satan”), they took their name from a Watain song but never went full black metal. Instead they made sweeping, elegant, complex, and ethereal heavy psych informed by occult-rock progenitors such as Coven, Black Sabbath, and Roky Erickson and colored by Selim’s satanism and other spiritual beliefs....

If a teenager truly believes he’s the center of the universe, the very core of that world is his bedroom. The bedroom is the teen’s domain, a safe space for self-expression, a place where identities can be explored, constructed, and put on semi-public display. Last year, the Toronto filmmaker and nascent artist decided, with the help of collaborator Joseph Clement, to meticulously reconstruct Ferris’s bedroom. They scoured Craigslist and Ebay, crowdsourced items that were particularly hard to find, borrowed pieces from project supporters, and recreated materials that proved impossible to track down....

Few spoken-word artists working the posthip-hop landscape can match the intensity, precision, and metaphoric power of Philadelphia’s Moor Mother (aka Camae Ayewa); I’ve seen her twice this year, and both times she had total control of the audience by the end of the set. She’s involved with several collaborative projects, and one of the most exciting, Irreversible Entanglements, recently dropped its self-titled debut album, a joint release of Chicago’s International Anthem and New Jersey’s Don Giovanni....

Our grocery store is our coolers,” says Danny Sweis, executive chef of BellyQ, Bill Kim’s Korean-barbecue-oriented Asian fusion spot in the West Loop. “Our seasoning [for family meal] is what we use to season the [menu] dishes with. So instead of throwing salt on something, we may use fish sauce. It’s a good way to get our staff familiar with the flavors that we’re serving.” That doesn’t quite explain the big tub of Froot Loops on the table he’s setting....

Hacksaw Ridge, which opened in wide release last weekend, represents Mel Gibson’s directorial comeback after years in the professional wilderness, following the July 2006 publication of a DUI arrest report that quoted him as saying, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” and the July 2010 leak of a recorded phone call in which he told his then-girlfriend, “You look like a pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of niggers it will be your fault....

Fri 9/2-Mon 9/5: The 27th Annual African Festival of the Arts opens an intercontinental portal at Africa International House in Washington Park (6200 S. Drexel). The festival simulates a traditional African village, subdivided into Nubia (fine art), Kush (wearable art), Songhay (collectibles, natural products, and more arts and crafts), Timbuktu (African fabrics and fashion), and Bank of the Nile (food court), complete with drumming and afro-folk, spiritual demos, handwoven clothing, and more....

You might remember Gossip Wolf shouting out all-ages nonprofit arts center Pure Joy, which is looking for a space to call home. Turns out one of its board members, Jes Skolnik, plays guitar and sings for Chicago punks Split Feet, who release their full-length debut, Shame Parade, on Fri 2/6. This wolf would happily march with a big placard calling this band the bee’s knees—their claustrophobic, spooky sound recalls classic early-80s death rock and postpunk!...

“You either have someone come flush the pills for you or I have to call an ambulance,” my therapist tells me after a recent failed suicide attempt. It is the middle of April and I have been quarantining in a studio apartment alone with two friends down the hall, people whose phone numbers I list as emergency contacts in case things escalate. Outside quarantine, inpatient means time spent in a hospital under the watchful eye of medical staff....

Boogaloo and Graham Starting Friday at Landmark’s Century Centre you can see each of the 87th Academy Award’s nominees for Best Live Action Short Film. The two worst offerings from this year’s nominees suffer from similar issues, most glaringly a surplus of plot unfit for the short-film form. Similar to Butter Lamp (more on that later), the British drama The Phone Call richly—and wisely—explores a single scenario. A woman working in a suicide prevention center (Sally Hawkins) receives her first call of the day....

Timing is everything. Oh Hell Yeah, a new improv double bill consisting of the iO teams Alterboyz and Wet Bus, clearly demonstrates this truism. Alterboyz practices slow, patient improv while Wet Bus speeds through its set with quick wit, rapid physicality shifts, and bold scene initiations. Wet Bus masters the tempo while Alterboyz falls victim to it. Alterboyz’s scenes are full of pregnant pauses, which read as trepidation about the next line or where a scene is headed....

Thirty minutes after I left “About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art” at Wrightwood 659, my husband and I had to take a last-minute flight to Oakland to be with his father, whose health had rapidly declined. We ran home and stuffed the last of our clean clothes into a bag. We booked one-way plane tickets from the back of a cab, breathlessly gunning for Midway in near silence. It was the kind of situation that put art, journalism, criticism, all of my bullshit on the back burner....

It is once again that wonderful time of year, eagerly awaited by Reader staff, when Lay’s releases its experimental potato chip flavors. In past years, Lay’s entrusted the conception of its new flavors to the masses and, last year at least, in a beautiful and touching gesture, even gave them credit on the bags. This year, though, it’s back to dreaming up flavors in-house. I guess that’s not really such a bad thing; based on our taste test, last year’s American regional-based flavors were not very good....