The title of writer/director Mark Pracht’s second installment to his Four-Color Trilogy, a series about the comic books publishing industry, could easily be mistaken for one of the real-wo…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:37PM“If the Internet taught me anything,” says Logan, a shaggy-haired, newly-out incoming college freshman played by Ben Ballmer, “it was that gay people are awesome.” He’s blessed in …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:17AMRemote work, for those fortunate enough to enjoy it, has killed off many aspects of professional life that were long overdue to be put down: Agonizing commutes. $18 cafeteria salads. Ramblin…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:37AMLast year, speaking to a BBC reporter about the Singapore government repealing Section 377A, a colonialist-era holdover that criminalized gay sex, local LGBTQ+ historian Isaac Tng paraphrase…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:45PMThe phrase “white spaces” evokes quite a few strong images. Kohl’s. The LDS Church. Late-night talk show desks. Bar Harbor, Maine. And, for too many comics, improv clubs. It’s no sec…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:54AMOriginally developed by the Philadelphia-based Pig Iron Theatre Company in 2015, this queer adventure drag alt-comedy feels both like a natural fit for Hell in a Handbag Productions and a re…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:23PMAsk any middle-aged person about their first romantic breakup, and there’s a good chance they’ll laugh. Ask about their first friend breakup, on the other hand: no laughter. Director Eri…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:30PMLike many of the American musical theater greats, Cabaret is one of those shows that can suffer from style-creep, wherein an unwritten but generally agreed-upon aesthetic tradition grows int…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:00AMThere are two Christmas pantomimes based upon 19th-century fables currently playing on Chicago stages, and unless Mary Zimmerman has been up to some dramatic retooling, it’s safe to assume…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:19PMFrank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic film is packed frame-by-frame with small moments of storytelling perfection, and as I get older, there’s one that just guts me like a fish. Exhausted…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:34PMThe surrealist, sometimes anarchic style of British playwright Caryl Churchill’s prose invites a lot of directorial interpretation and creativity from the theater artists who’ve been dra…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:58PMComedian, author, and volunteer ambulance driver Chris Gethard may be a fully Boylan-blooded New Jerseyan, but he’s not shy about the extent to which his improv and stand-up DNA has […] …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:40AMOrganizational consulting is like a cube of lard: it looks like a sweet bite of white chocolate but sits heavy in the stomach. Stupid people are to be avoided, like […] The post Sci-fi hea…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:12PMIn the 20 years since Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’s gently irreverent and thoroughly catchy musical premiered, it’s become such a beloved staple among professional and amateur companies…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:54PMThere are a lot of substantive and weighty criticisms to be levied at the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise and its global juggernaut influence over drag culture. Then there are petty ones, lik…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 09:18AMA good play, suggests Tony Kushner in his 1995 anthology Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue, “should be overstuffed.” Memorably comparing well-constructed theater to lasa…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:46PMA solo show about the man behind Bull Moose stands alone. By the time I had the opportunity to see Derek Evans’s 75-minute solo biographical lecture enactment,…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:45PMElaine Carlson delivers a biting title performance for Promethean Theatre. To get an idea of just how convoluted the legal and moral attitudes toward sex work ar…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:05PMA woman chemist helps wives dispatch their plutocratic husbands. In 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum wrote an article for Wired magazine titl…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:30PMMPAACT's campus drama pushes some hot buttons, but casts an ugly pall. Playwright and MPAACT founding member Shepsu Aakhu was inspired to write this campus sexua…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:15PMPolitical prisoners swallow their pride (and maybe some poison) in Rivendell's world premiere. The gulags in Meghan Brown's world-premiere dystopian fable, The T…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:50PMA brutal homophobic assault tests the love between two women in Diana Son's drama. To be queer and in love in a 90s play is a pitiable fate. At best, characters …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:25PMCall him “bone dry” if you must, but don't call him “alt.” The laid-back, unassuming, eminently cool aesthetic of Pilsen's Thalia Hall is such a harmonio…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:50PMBlank Theatre Company shows off some chops in this Rupert Holmes musical. One of the easier riddles to solve in Rupert Holmes's 1985 musical comedy is why so few…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:40PMThe unconventional family structures of 19th-century mining camps widen the lens for LGBTQ history. Neither Tom Selleck nor Steve Guttenberg nor Ted Danson have …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:00PMScott Bradley's solo show for About Face creates an important document of queer life. Living out and proud in a coastal queer mecca full of historic gayborhoods,…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:50PMThe songs are strong, but the story needs work in this new musical about depression. In David Gosz and Leo Fotos's clinically subtitled new show, Tru: A Musical …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 01:00PMPart hangout, part celebration, part theater of the mind, live podcast recordings are a performance medium all their own. Sometime next month, Action Boyz podca…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 04:15PMA ghost-town saloon sets the stage for this zombie-spaghetti western hybrid. Open up any horror auteur's toolbox, and you'll likely see some recurring devices: t…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMHell in a Handbag's spoof of Mrs. Garrett and 21 Jump Street is far from a drag. As luck would have it, the most expedient way to describe vanguard camp comic an…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMixing the Bard up with the Gunpowder Plot doesn't help Bill Cain's play ignite dramatically. The setup to Bill Cain's revisionist Shakespearean fairy tale is th…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AM