Women’s Voices in Storefront Theater

Women’s Voices in Storefront Theater

Are we creating a culture where men working in the arts are encouraged to dream and build things and women working in the arts are encouraged to straighten up the house and make sure the electric bill is paid on time?

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TWISTED KNOTS Delivers Honest Laughs

TWISTED KNOTS Delivers Honest Laughs

Unlike today, the working men of the 60s were not allowed to display vulnerability in their careers or marriage. This play revisits the era of yesterday in a modern setting where men believe they must always excel without fail in every aspect of life, especially career and family. Frank Mormon, a salesman on the brink of a midlife crisis, allows his neurotic superstitions to render him incapable of having the sexiest of New Year’s Eve celebrations with his prostitute for hire, who we quickly discover is his role playing wife. Dale Danner’s TWISTED KNOTS is a simple yet hilarious story, akin to an episodic sitcom, like the good ones I use to watch with my grandfather. The ones that always left the audience with metaphoric lessons of life.

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DISCORD—The Gospel According to Jefferson, Dickens and Tolstoy

DISCORD—The Gospel According to Jefferson, Dickens and Tolstoy

There is quite a bit of harmony in DISCORD, Northlight’ 41st season closer: an intellectual discourse between three historical giants while they dissect theological and philosophical ideas accompanied by a dynamic mixture of highbrow and lowbrow humor.

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Lake Forest Theatre Takes Ambitious First Steps

Lake Forest Theatre Takes Ambitious First Steps

Photo:  Steve Malone, Managing Artistic Director The new Lake Forest Theatre announced its inaugural three-show season, including THE SECRET GARDEN, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, and A CHORUS LINE in the 309-seat John & Nancy Hughes Theatre at the Gorton Community Center, which just underwent a 1.5 million dollar renovation. It’s an ambitious first season...

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Archive of Filmed Chicago-Area Theater Productions Launches

Archive of Filmed Chicago-Area Theater Productions Launches

Through agreements with Chicago Public Library and Actors’ Equity, the Chicago Film Archive of Performance, or C-FAP, announced its permanent home in Chicago Public Library’s Special Collections and Preservation Division.

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Saints Award $125,000 to Chicago Performing Arts Groups

Saints Award $125,000 to Chicago Performing Arts Groups

The Saints, Chicago’s Volunteers for the Performing Arts, have announced $125,000 in grants to 28 performing arts groups in the Chicago metropolitan area for 2016. The grants, ranging in amounts from $1,000 to $7,500, were awarded to theater, dance, and music organizations. Over the last two decades, the Saints have given almost $800,000 to many different performing arts groups.

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NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY Bubbles over with Ideas

NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY Bubbles over with Ideas

NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY is staged exactly where it should be. Wedged behind a tiny door at the end of a dark alleyway, Trap Door Theatre’s space perfectly suits this absurd portrait of drab and depressing life in Poland after World War II. Joanna Iwanicka’s set, a single dull, monochromatic room flanked by electric blue refuse (think Sin City, but five feet away from you) spills ever so slightly into the audience. You’re simultaneously in the room and observing it. A tiny, glowing TV screen sitting downstage center faces the stage, muddling the notion of who is watching whom.

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Emerald City Announces 20th Anniversary Season

Emerald City Announces 20th Anniversary Season

Photo: The 2011 production of JUNIE B. JONES IN JINGLE BELLS, BATMAN SMELLS will be revisited as part of the upcoming season.  Emerald City Theatre has announced its upcoming 2016 – 2017 season, which will include adaptations of ‘DIARY OF A WORM, A SPIDER, AND A FLY’, ‘JUNIE B. JONES IN...

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VIDEO: Jane Lynch’s Jaw-Dropping Anti-Commencement Speech is a Must-See for Artists

VIDEO: Jane Lynch’s Jaw-Dropping Anti-Commencement Speech is a Must-See for Artists

Jane Lynch, native Chicago funnywoman known for Christopher Guest’s films and Glee, delivered an incredibly profound commencement speech at Columbia College Chicago on Saturday, speaking truths about careers, life, and art that fly in the face of the typical advice often bestowed on new graduates. “See belief systems for what they are—soul killers, and crushers of the creative spirit,” Lynch says, along with “goals plus nothing to achieve equals peace” and “giving back—don’t do it.” Watch the full speech, full of too many great nuggets of wisdom to list, below:

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In ‘DISENCHANTED!’, Princesses Take Charge of Their Own Stories

In ‘DISENCHANTED!’, Princesses Take Charge of Their Own Stories

The Broadway in Chicago presentation of the musical revue DISENCHANTED! offers a 90-minute spoof of the classic fairy tale princesses, as made famous to most audiences by Walt Disney. With music, lyrics, and book by Dennis T. Giacino and direction by Christopher Bond, DISENCHANTED! provides some fun. That said, the satire stays surface-level—it’s more of a gentle poking than a true skewering of the gender stereotypes deeply embedded within Disney’s tales. DISENCHANTED! presents itself as a pro-feminist musical comedy, but despite some clever moments, the material doesn’t quite reach the level of sophisticated satire.

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