Recommended, Chicago Reader

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty: It’s complicated

J.R. Jones — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Terence Nance explodes a moment in time with An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. by J.R. Jones Bursting with creative energy, this 2012 romantic fantasy by New York artist Terence Nance dances around a single moment in time even as it traces a relationship over years. A few months after falling for the charming Namik Minter, Nance created the short film How Would You Feel?, which revisits again and again the day she telephoned him to cancel a date and he realized their romance would never work out.…

About Face stages The Pride—just in time for Pride

Albert Williams — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:00:00 -0500

Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Pride juxtaposes gay couples in London 50 years apart. by Albert Williams Alexi Kaye Campbell's drama The Pride begins and ends with parallel images of two men onstage together. Oliver and Philip are handsome Londoners in their late 20s or early 30s, palpably attracted to each other but unable to consummate the feeling.…

Hedwig Dances joins forces with Cuban group DanzAbierta

Laura Molzahn — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Hedwig Dances joins forces with the Cuban group DanzAbierta. by Laura Molzahn Gazing at ripped bodies is the raison d'etre of dance. Or is it?…

Country music's little white myth

Noah Berlatsky — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The new book Hidden in the Mix details African-American contributions to country music. by Noah Berlatsky Country music is white music. Its performers are white; its repertoire is white; its audience is white.…

Hubbard Street's got talent

Laura Molzahn — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago showcases the next big thing at Danc(e)volve: New Works Festival. by Laura Molzahn It takes confidence to take your time—and you can't beat confidence for sex appeal. Robyn Mineko Williams, who began choreographing a dozen years ago, is one of five past or present Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performers selected to make pieces for its second annual Danc(e)volve: New Works Festival.…

Berberian Sound Studio: Eerie on the ears

J.R. Jones — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Toby Jones is an audio engineer trapped inside the creepy Berberian Sound Studio. by J.R. Jones In the whole history of horror and suspense drama, there's never been a more promising line than "Did you hear that?" Sound leaves too much to the imagination, which is where fear takes hold.…

Dirty Wars zeroes in on Obama's assassins

J.R. Jones — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

In Dirty Wars, muckraking journalist Jeremy Scahill exposes the president's assassination squad. by J.R. Jones The flood of theatrical documentaries about the war on terror—Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Why We Fight (2005), The Ground Truth (2006), No End in Sight (2007), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Standard Operating Procedure (2008)—has slowed to a trickle since President Obama took office, which makes this uncompromising exposé from reporter Jeremy Scahill even more important. Best known for his book about Blackwater, Scahill turns his attention here to the little-known Joint Special Operations Command, which answers directly to the president and, the film asserts, is licensed to kill anyone, anytime.…

Michael Palascak's quarterback comedy

Drew Hunt — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Chicago ex-pat Michael Palascak finds humor in the everyday. by Drew Hunt Of all the Chicago stand-up comics who've emigrated to the coasts in recent years, Michael Palascak has yet to achieve the sort of mainstream success of someone like Hannibal Buress or John Mulaney. It doesn't have anything to do with his material.…

Links Hall's new Midwest Nexus Program holds a down-home gathering

Laura Molzahn — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Synapse Arts' Rachel Damon cuts a bold swath in a new work. by Laura Molzahn Rachel Damon plows the prairie in her delicately rendered, often dark new 30-minute sextet, Swath. In the so-called "bread suit" section, dancers attempt to paste hunks of bread onto a woman, for reasons that are unclear.…

Two plays from Organic Theater Company explore the personal costs of freedom

Zac Thompson — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Two plays from Organic Theater Company explore the personal costs of freedom. by Zac Thompson Albert Camus finished his first draft of Caligula in 1938, when he was just 25—"the age when one doubts everything except oneself," as he later put it. The tragedy's central character is a young man of about the same age who nevertheless doubts nothing: Caligula, the sister-shtupping, friend-killing, self-deifying Roman emperor whose brief, autocratic reign (AD 37-41) stands out for its capriciousness and cruelty.…

A killer stalks The Shining Girls through time

Janet Potter — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Chicago throughout the 20th century is the setting for Lauren Beukes's creepy novel, The Shining Girls. by Janet Potter When you give a sociopath the ability to time travel, nobody wins. But that's what novelist Lauren Beukes does in The Shining Girls, the atmospheric, mind-bending, creepy tale of a time-traveling serial killer and his extraordinary victims, woven through the history of 20th-century Chicago.…

Growing up girl in The Miss Neo Pageant

Marissa Oberlander — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The Miss Neo Pageant is a thoughtful look at a loaded word: feminist. by Marissa Oberlander Growing up girl these days means sometimes you're up, and sometimes you're crying alone eating hot chocolate mix. We're taught to shatter glass ceilings, but there are daily struggles that can feel more pressing.…

American Mary, sculptor with a scalpel

J.R. Jones — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The Canadian horror import American Mary spoofs the body-modification cult. by J.R. Jones Female filmmakers are marginalized in every genre, but horror is a particularly male domain. Tod Browning, James Whale, Val Lewton, George Romero, John Carpenter—from the silent era onward, men have shaped the horror movie, often around the sound of a woman screaming.…

Paradise: Love: Beach boys, white women, and the deep blue sea

Ben Sachs — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Ulrich Seidl's career-topping "Paradise" trilogy screens at Gene Siskel Film Center. by Ben Sachs The art of Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl (Import Export) often feels closer to still photography than to cinema. He'll regularly stage an entire scene in a single, static shot, characters and objects arranged in a tableau.…

Fin de siecle Chicago for dummies

Jerome Ludwig — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

A new edition of Chicago by Day and Night is a guidebook to fin de siecle Chicago. by Jerome Ludwig "Chicago has been called, in its time, the wickedest city in the world, and somehow or other (in exactly what manner it matters not) the impression has gone abroad that it is really a very wicked place indeed." And yet: "It is possible for a perfectly moral person, one used to all the refinement and peace of the most law-abiding and self-respecting of communities, to spend any length of time in Chicago without being contaminated by the evil that may be found easily enough if sought.…

Chicago Dance Crash commandeers The Cotton Mouth Club

Laura Molzahn — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Chicago Dance Crash commandeers The Cotton Mouth Club. by Laura Molzahn Edging closer to musical theater with The Cotton Mouth Club, Chicago Dance Crash nevertheless remains edgy. The barroom setting and lack of dialogue bring to mind Twyla Tharp's Broadway hit Come Fly Away.…

AfriCOBRA when it was poised to strike

Claudine Isé — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

"AfriCOBRA: Prologue" looks at the prehistory of a famous south-side arts movement. by Claudine Isé "Into the sixties a word was born . . . BLACK."…

Queer histories in the making

Aimee Levitt — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

LGBT luminaries Esther Newton and Holly Hughes speak at the University of Chicago. by Aimee Levitt Esther Newton is a pioneering scholar of gay and lesbian history, but she and her partner, Holly Hughes, also lived it. Newton trained as an anthropologist and made her name with ethnographic studies of drag queens and of Cherry Grove, the village on Fire Island that became America's first queer town.…

It's Gertie Garbage's world

Hannah Gold — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The sixth installment of Garbage World, Eileen Lillian Doyle's anarchic performance festival, is May 25. by Hannah Gold School of the Art Institute graduate Eileen Lillian Doyle (aka Gertie Garbage) started Garbage World in 2009, enlisting friends to help her create a performance festival characterized by "more allowances than limitations," based on personal responsibility and trust. Six cycles in, with versions both here and in Philadelphia, the project has remained consistent—no rules or themes, just fun with freedom.…

Striding Lion rediscovers a German avant-gardist in Dada Gert

Laura Molzahn — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Striding Lion rediscovers a German avant-gardist in Dada Gert. by Laura Molzahn Annie Arnoult Beserra, head of Striding Lion Performance Group, fell in love with Valeska Gert in 2005, when, as a grad school student, she saw recently released archival footage of Gert's dance solos. "She was so raw and riddled and vibrant," Beserra says.…

Portrait of Jason delves inside a hustler's world

J.R. Jones — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Portrait of Jason delves inside a hustler's world. by J.R. Jones A portrait is a delicate transaction: the subject might look at it and, shocked, see not himself but how the artist feels about him. Next week at the Portage, Northwest Chicago Film Society presents one of the most audacious character studies to come out of the American underground cinema, Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason (1967); like many portraits, it's most fascinating as a document of a relationship.…

Rainbow Cuisine earns its stripes

Mike Sula — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Lincoln Square's Rainbow Cuisine recalls the glory days of authentic Thai food. by Mike Sula Just a little over a decade ago on the Chicago board of the food chat site Chowhound, a poster by the name of "foodfirst" (aka food and travel writer Robyn Eckhardt) posted a translation of a Thai language menu from the Lincoln Square restaurant Spoon. It had been passed along to her by slavering local foodlums anxious to get a taste of real Thai food beyond pad thai and crab Rangoon.…

Talkin' 'bout The Unspeakable Act

Drew Hunt — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

A brother and sister wrestle with incestuous feelings in Dan Sallitt's The Unspeakable Act. by Drew Hunt Movies that deal with incest are often couched in melodrama, dealing with hidden transgressions and shattered family roles. But The Unspeakable Act, which makes its Chicago premiere this week at Gene Siskel Film Center, is different.…

Disability is the elephant in the room in Ganesh Versus the Third Reich

Tony Adler — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Disability is the elephant in the room in Ganesh Versus the Third Reich. by Tony Adler Suppose I told you that Australia's Back to Back Theatre works with "intellectually disabled" actors? What would you expect from one of their shows?…

Jackie Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis walk into a brasserie . . .

Aimee Levitt — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Dreaming in French and French Lessons author Alice Kaplan speaks at the Blackstone branch library. by Aimee Levitt One of the strangest side effects of studying a foreign language is the desire not just to immerse yourself in a new culture but to become a part of it, indistinguishable from a native speaker. Few writers have chronicled this phenomenon better than Alice Kaplan, in her 1993 memoir French Lessons and last year's Dreaming in French, a triptych of portraits of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis, each of whom spent a year in Paris in her early 20s.…