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.
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.
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...
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:
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.
Bring Your Own Theater – Creating with the Community
Photo: Best Of BYOT (L-R) Lisa VanAusdall, Vinny Greco, Laura Rupert, Rachel Silvert By Abigail Trabue Bring Your Own Theater (BYOT) is a small group of artists that every month put a show together, comprised of strangers. For 24 hours anyone—artists, construction worker, CEOs, bus drivers, full-time stay-at-home parents—anyone who’s interested...
Off-Broadway Hit THE BARDY BUNCH is Headed to Chicago
THE BARDY BUNCH: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady, a musical parody by Stephen Garvey that gained cult status during its Off-Broadway run in 2014, is coming to Chicago, beginning a limited engagement September 15th at the Mercury Theater in Chicago’s Southport neighborhood. A mash-up of Shakespeare and...
THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW is Life Purging its Imperfections
Men with big dreams, women fighting for visibility and love at the same time, while ignorance and bigotry divide people; though this sounds like the ingredients to contemporary mayhem, its roots are found in a play set in the 1960s.
CHIMERICA—a Story for Today, Tomorrow, and Generations to Come
The relationship between America and China is complicated, and in a political season where China’s economic power is a constant talking point, Timeline’s production of CHIMERICA seems as timely as it is mentally exhausting.
Albany Park Theatre Project’s FEAST Makes Television Debut
Albany Park Theatre Project makes its television debut with their production of FEAST on WTTW.