Performing Arts Search
Cakepot
Through 2/03: Fri MidnightImprov/Sketch
Blood Dolphin and Kind Sirs, a pair of two-person improv groups, perform music and relationship based improv scenes. $6-$12
On Loss
Through 2/3: Fri 9 PMTheater & Performance
Mark Chrisler's eight vignettes look at how people express themselves when dealing with loss. The characters—including Auguste Rodin; Laszlo Toth, who vandalized Michelangelo's Pieta in 1972; and an elderly woman suffering from a painful rectal condition—narrate their experiences almost compulsively, for better and worse. This Found Objects Theatre Group production is rough—actually, a little more than rough—around the edges, and the constant talk gets tiresome. But the writing and thoughtful blocking help save the show from its conceit. Two highlights: Brian Nemtusak as a bitter ex, using figurine horses to reenact the whodunit at the center of his failed relationship, and the show's framing device, in which Carl (a charming H.B. Ward) participates in a panel on loss with an older, more sorrowful version of himself (Chris Bower). Part of Rhinofest. –Asher Klein $12-$15 or pay what you can
Winter Tap Jamboree
Through 2/3: Thu 10 AM, Fri 7:30 PM
773-281-1825Dance
Performing at the Chicago Human Rhythm Project's tap festival are Bam!, the Afro-Haitian Tamboula Ethnic Dance Company, and more. $15-$25
The Seldoms
Sat 2/4, 7, 8:15, and 9:30 PMDance
Carrie Hanson of the Seldoms creates a four-ring circus in This Is Not a Dance Concert, satirizing audiences and performers but giving both a little love, too. The new, hour-long piece consists of four separate segments of dance and often very funny text (cobbled together from Yelp reviews, the casting call for Spider-Man, dancers' own stories, and other sources), which are performed simultaneously at four locations in the Harris Theater—two lobbies, the seating area of the auditorium, and backstage. Maria Pinto's harlequin-like costumes are sexy patchworks of sequins, fake fur, chiffon, and leather, and musicians at each site play Tim Daisy's score live. Divided into four groups of about 50 people each, audience members are guided from station to station until they've completed the full circuit. Then they're rounded up to join the ensemble onstage for a coda that draws everybody into a tight, warm, slightly somber circle. —Laura Molzahn $20-$100
Long Gone Lonesome
Through 2/4: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 5 and 9 PMTheater & Performance
The last show the National Theatre of Scotland brought to Chicago was Black Watch, a based-on-fact account of an elite British army unit deployed to Iraq in 2004. With a cast of 11 men, that show was so big and physical—so full of marching and fighting, dancing and dying—that they performed it at the Broadway Armory, in a space you could use for equestrian training.
This time around the NTS (working again under the auspices of Chicago Shakespeare Theater's great World Stages program) has sent us a piece small enough to slide into the Hideout in Wicker Park.
Long Gone Lonesome "could not be more different" from Black Watch, says Scottish writer and musician Duncan McLean. "This is me and my band." Normally that four-piece band, Lone Star Swing, plays western swing music. But here they're offering their portrait of Thomas Fraser, a Shetland fisherman who died in 1978. "Bizarrely," says McLean, who wrote the show, Fraser "became obsessed with country music and the blues—Jimmy Rodgers, Big Bill Broonzy, Hank Snow. I say 'bizarrely' because there was no one else within 500 miles listening to this kind of stuff."
Fraser learned guitar and taped himself on a reel-to-reel machine. But intense shyness prevented him taking it any further than that. His grandson, Karl Simpson, discovered the tapes nearly a quarter-century later and started releasing them on CD. As a result, the world is becoming aware of a man McLean calls "the most significant British country music performer there's ever been." —Tony Adler
$25-$35
A Brown Bear, a Moon, and a Caterpillar
Sat 1/4, 1 PMTheater & Performance
Nova Scotia's Mermaid Theatre presents three short plays based on the books of Eric Carle. $10.50-$15.50
1 University Pkwy.
Suburbs South
708-235-2222Uncle Dad Is Ripshit, You Guys
Sat 2/4, 9 PMTheater & Performance
Ian Belknap performs solo. Part of Rhinofest. $12-$15, or pay what you can
Garfunkel and Oates
Through 2/4: Fri and Sat 8 and 10:30 PMStand-Up
Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci. $25
Brian Scott McFadden
Tue-Thu 8:30 PM, Fri 8:30 and 10:30 PM, Sat 7, 9 and 11:15 PMStand-Up
$25.00 plus two-drink minimum
Mexicans, Jews, and Muppets
Through 2/4: Fri-Sat 8 PM, also 2/11, 8 PMImprov/Sketch
A topical sketch show by Butch LaRue. $15
Charlie Murphy
Through 2/4: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 and 10:15 PM, Sat 7 and 9:15 PMStand-Up
Chicago Improv hosts stand-up comic Charlie Murphy, the writer and actor formerly known as "Eddie Murphy's brother," whose most recent DVD is Charlie Murphy: I Will Not Apologize. —Joey Jachowski and Sam Worley
$32Pancho y Papaya: A Clown Tragedy
Through 2/4: Saturday midnightImprov/Sketch
Four clowns partake in the many elements of a theatrical tragedy, from the emotional to the absurd. $6-$12
The Sweet Goddess Project
Through 2/4: Fri-Sat 8 PMDance
Three women dance to a DJ in this excavation of house music. $12-$15
10 Arts Circle Dr.
Evanston
847-491-3147The Semi-Conscious Memoirs of a Negligent Native
Fri 2/5, 7 PMTheater & Performance
Kohl Miner performs a series of monologues about life and men. Part of Rhinofest. $12-$15, or pay what you can
