Best of Chicago 2012: Arts & Culture 

Trap Door Theatre is almost literally a hole in the wall: you reach it through a deep, narrow crevice between two buildings. And… Continue

Steppenwolf Theatre Company's Next Up gives directors and designers from the Northwestern University MFA program a chance to show what they can do. Continue

A retired Chicago public school theater teacher, Mary Bonnett has spent the last several years writing, staging, and producing plays with her company,… Continue

You could see there was something out of whack right from the start. For his debut production as artistic director of Remy Bumppo… Continue

Regular people weren't supposed to understand what happened at Enron. The complicated financial maneuvers that brought the Texas-based energy company down were beyond abstract—they… Continue

Catalonian director Calixto Bieito made his name as a provocateur in opera, where audiences are grateful for provocation because it helps them stay awake.… Continue

Next fall's production of The Magic Flute will mark the end of an era at Chicago Opera Theater. It'll be the last COT… Continue

If you want to see 50-odd (and 50 odd) aspiring comics in one night without paying a cent of admission or fighting your way… Continue

What better time to foment revolution than now? And what better place than on government property? Last September, at the Chicago Park District's Hamlin… Continue

Ladies, here's a way to test that new beau: take him to see Off Off Broadzway's next show. If he can stand the… Continue

There's no better blend of old-timey tradition and cool innovation than Odds N Friends, a cartoony, playful, brilliantly strange variety show staged at the… Continue

A. Laurie Palmer's sculpture, Hole, is seven feet tall and shaped like a funnel cloud, its wide mouth tapering to an almost dainty circular… Continue

John Preus likes to find value in the discarded. Last fall he and artist-carpenter Kevin Reiswig created an eight-by-twelve-foot pub inside a formerly… Continue

How best to digest a good show? Try a scoop of fresh, creamy gelato and a walk by the lake after a visit to… Continue

In 2011 a private collector of exotic animals went mad and turned his charges loose on a little town in Ohio. He was then… Continue

This "paean to death" looks formidable on paper, with its big names (Rembrandt, Goya) and extensive inventory of objects (nearly 1,000, all from… Continue

Latham Zearfoss started Chances Dances in 2005 to produce monthly LGBTQ dance parties, but over the years its scope has expanded. In 2008… Continue

The cloverleaf design Bertrand Goldberg used for Prentice Women's Hospital was groundbreaking back in 1975, when the distinctive concrete structure went up on Northwestern… Continue

We're all living in a museum here. A world-class repository of great architecture forms the mostly ignored backdrop for our daily routines. We all… Continue

Built with a direct tax on citizens and known as the People's Palace, the Chicago Cultural Center opened in 1897 with a dual… Continue

Adapted from a novel by Chicagoan Sam Greenlee, The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973) stands as one of the most unlikely… Continue

As 16-millimeter prints become harder to obtain, public libraries across the country have been ditching celluloid in favor of DVD projection, despite its vastly… Continue

Also a prime contender for best sibilant name, this monthly series joins the Silent Film Society of Chicago's long-running Silent Summer Film Festival… Continue

"Jesus Christ, is that Michael Shannon?" I blurted out recently while watching Groundhog Day (1993)—specifically the scene in which Bill Murray delights a… Continue

Film preservation is a cultural cause whose time has come, especially since there are already so many historic films whose time has gone. Launched… Continue

"That place has rats," Reader staff writer Kevin Warwick once told me when I asked him about the Logan. Once known as the… Continue

Committed to overlooked genre cinema from other countries, this local collective debuted with a bang last December by presenting the Chicago premiere of… Continue

I'll never forget the time Jim Trainor introduced a screening of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) at the Chopin Theatre. An accomplished animator… Continue

After the legendary Japanese actress Hideko Takamine died in December 2010, Doc Films programmer Edo Choi and local video artist Kyle… Continue

With next to no publicity, AMC's River East 21 multiplex regularly screens mainstream hits from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—which, oddly, makes it one… Continue

In an age where we do so much of our reading online, the Read/Write Library is a fine tribute to the book as… Continue

Richard Cahan and Michael Williams's CityFiles Press has so far published two gorgeous hardcover photo collections that delve into Chicago history: Edgar… Continue

Sadly, the Oak Park Public Library's first mascot gerbil, Ramona Nibbles, passed away in March after having served honorably for over two… Continue

Having interviewed Gillian Flynn when her first book, Sharp Objects, came out in 2006, and then reviewed her second, Dark Places, when… Continue