2,444 stories from chicagoreader.com
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that Theater Wit's local premiere of 2019's The Whistleblower by Itamar Moses is opening in the midst of the WGA strike. Certainly Eli (Ben F…
To say that Heidi Schreck's 2017 Pulitizer-and-Tony-nominated play What the Constitution Means to Me hits differently in a post-Roe v. Wade world is a huge understatement. TimeLine's current…
Lee Breuer's 1983 reimagining of Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus as a Black Pentecostal church service (featuring music by Bob Telson) didn't make it to Chicago until 1990. But that local pre…
Silent Marvin is living in a silent world that is just as monotonous as ours. The daily grind of shuffling papers at his office job and flipping channels at night leaves him unsatisfied. Whe…
The Puritans in New England lived fearful, close-minded, claustrophobic lives. Disdainful of all other Christian sects (especially Catholics and Quakers) and of the Native Americans who they…
PaweÅ‚ ÅšwiÄ…tek directs the U.S. premiere of Dorota MasÅ‚owska's arch 70s-era murder mystery/comedy of manners (translated by Soren Gauger). Rumors fly wild in the streets of War…
Expertly written, exquisitely performed, steamy, and hilarious, The October Storm at the Raven Theatre offers a warm slice of south-side Chicago life in the 1960s. Joshua Allen's play, the s…
Mother's Day weekend provided the perfect time to open this irreverent, boisterous look at three women's journey from two blue lines on a pee stick to graduation day. Running at Mercury Thea…
You don't have to be a sucker for love-hate romances among the literati to fall in love with Rehana Lew Mirza's Hatefuck, but it helps. Then again, Lew Mirza's play, now in its local premier…
All of the world is a stage, and Will Wilhelm knows it. Their new production at About Face (cocreated and directed by Erin Murray), Gender Play, or what you Will, is the perfect platform for…
Free Street produces some of the most powerful youth-made performances in the city and their current production, WASTED, continues that 50-plus-year legacy. The FST's Youth Ensemble brings b…
Imagine if Harper, the Valium-addicted Mormon wife in Angels in America who imagines herself in Antarctica, actually met famous explorer Ernest Shackleton through some rift in the time-space…
Step into the Aztec Empire during the 16th century, on the eve of a new millennium. City Lit's world-premiere musical Aztec Human Sacrifice (written by Kingsley Day and Philip LaZebnik) tell…
Last 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…
A Bronzeville six-flat frames the sometimes melodramatic but compelling story in Tina Fakhrid-Deen's Dandelions, now in a world premiere at MPAACT under the direction of Lauren Wells-Mann. O…
What can you say in ten minutes? If the ten examples in the Gift's triumphant return production of its long-running series are any indication, anything and everything. Ten 2023 Through 5…
Back in 2012, playwright and solo artist Dael Orlandersmith performed Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men at the Goodman's Owen Theatre. In a series of monologues drawn from interviews with several…
I first saw Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland's autobiographical From the Mississippi Delta over 30 years ago in the old Goodman studio theater space. Though it's been revived many times since, I …
This double bill of plays from two very different theater companies (Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble and CIRCA-Pintig), working in two very different styles"one abstract, movement-based, very s…
Dory, or "Rascal," as she is known to her family, is a six-year-old with a lively imagination, which includes her not-quite-a-monster best friend, Mary. Her older siblings, exasperated by he…
Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, but is only getting its Chicago premiere now courtesy of Definition Theatre. After seeing Tyrone Phillips's staging at the cozy …
After five people (including a nine-year-old child) were murdered in a mass shooting in Texas last week, Governor Greg Abbott tweeted, "I've announced a $50K reward for info on the criminal …
India Nicole Burton's Panther Women: An Army for the Liberation has already played at Cleveland Public Theatre and Indianapolis's Phoenix Theatre as part of the National New Play Network's r…
Romantic comedies depend on miscommunication. It's why we love them. It's comforting to see that everyone stumbles over their words. Our greatest tool for self-expression often mutates into …
I'm generally not a huge fan of material wherein creative folk in any discipline"theater, film, publishing, music"turn to their own profession for inspiration. If a movie is about filmmaking…
