Illinois news

• Fire sale

  23-03-2023 20:07 via chicagoreader.com
  
  What does material success look like to young people in 2023? Is it possible to attain the lifestyle they see in 80s TV shows? Is that something to aspire to? A talented Neo-Futurist troupe takes on capitalism, parents’ expectations, their own hopes and dreams, and whether it’s even possible to just get by in this […]
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• The ladies who sing from the back

  23-03-2023 19:05 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The 2013 film 20 Feet From Stardom tells the stories of background singers who’ve supported stars such as the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Ray Charles, and Donna Summer. The movie, which won the best documentary Oscar the following year, focuses mostly on singers based in Los Angeles and to a lesser degree New York, among them […]
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• The pain of history

  23-03-2023 18:55 via chicagoreader.com
  
  I cannot recommend this play without caveats. At least to Black people.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad play. As a matter of fact, it’s a very good play. It’s clever, well-written, timely, and it makes good use of unusual devices. The quality of the play is not the problem.  The problem […]
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• Interactive inclusivity

  23-03-2023 18:15 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Filament Theatre’s Think Fast, Jordan Chase!, written by Sonia Goldberg and directed by Jamal Howard, is full of plot twists which weave in and out of schoolyard and fantasy. Addressing difficult social scenarios that kids encounter, it opens with a plucky Jordan (Christabel Donkor) and her majestic bestie Mahari (Joolz Stroop) on the playground. Relations […]
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• Improvisers Mats Gustafsson and Joachim Nordwall make blockbuster-worthy music on a new collaborative album

  23-03-2023 18:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Free improvisers, experimental musicians, and foley artists differ in their methods, but practitioners of all three arts can unite around their attraction to sounds that’ll raise your hackles. This collaboration between improvisational woodwinds player Mats Gustafsson and electronic musician Joachim Nordwall (of the Skull Defekts and the iDealist) could soundtrack a bookshelf full of straight-to-video […]
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• Beckettian summit

  23-03-2023 17:53 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Dame Peggy Ashcroft considered the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s notoriously difficult Happy Days a “summit part,” one of those roles, like Hamlet or King Lear, that tests an actor’s mettle and proves her alpha status in the pack. (Ashcroft played Winnie in a 1975 production at the Old Vic Theatre in London.) Chicago […]
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• Utopia for two

  23-03-2023 17:31 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Promethean Theatre’s world premiere of local playwright Trina Kakacek’s two-act dramedy, directed by Anna C. Bahow, is a unique and meaty thought experiment that would benefit from some cleanup and a tighter approach. Between Ida (a winning and scene-stealing Cameron Feagin) and Vivian (Kali Skatchke)—the lone inhabitants of Progress, Ida’s vision of matriarchal utopia rooted […]
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• The Harper Theater is putting up a fight

  23-03-2023 16:41 via chicagoreader.com
  
  It’s an impressive venue, but can it survive the COVID-19 fallout and seismic shifts in movie-viewing preferences?
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• With elegant dumplings and meaty mountains of rice, Helmand channels the cradle of Afghan culture

  23-03-2023 16:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  You have to be fast to eat the seekh kabob at Helmand. “If it gets cold it’s going to be like rubber,” says Wahid Tanha, the owner and chef of this new Afghan restaurant in Albany Park. No matter what else comes to the table, “the first thing you have to do is eat it […]
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• Ash Dye, music scene photographer

  23-03-2023 15:48 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In 2013, photographer Ash Dye moved to Chicago from Athens, Ohio, where she’d first become involved in an underground music scene. Within a few months of arriving here, Dye landed an internship at the Empty Bottle, which she used to launch an interview series called Empty Exchange; in 2014, she became a bartender at the […]
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• Bed to crime to bed

  23-03-2023 14:53 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Directors have two jobs: to help the audience understand what the play is about and to stage it so the audience can see it. Director Fred Anzevino has failed at both here. The Threepenny Opera is, like most Bertolt Brecht works, a critique of respectability: its antihero Macheath is a charming criminal, while its villains […]
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• Woven tales

  23-03-2023 14:41 via chicagoreader.com
  Hajja Souad’s story, eight decades of life lived, is woven into a narrative of resilience, hope, and the changing tides in Palestine during her long lifetime. Brought to life in the U.S. premiere of The Shroud Maker at Chicago Dramatists by International Voices Project in collaboration with Intercultural Music, Ahmed Masoud’s play about a burial […]
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• This Week In Black History March 22-28, 2023

  23-03-2023 14:39
  
   MARCH 221492—Alonzo Pietro sets sail with Christopher Columbus as he begins his famous journey to find a new trade route to China, but accidentally “discovers” the Americas. Pietro was one of Columbus’ navigators. He was known as “il Negro”—The Black.March 231916—Marcus Garvey arrives in the United States from Jamaica. He would go on to build the largest Black nationalist and self-help organization in world history—the Universal Negro I
  
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• Edra Soto’s Graft project comes to the Hyde Park Art Center

  23-03-2023 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  “Prolific” understates the artworks artist Edra Soto has contributed to the cultural scene, radiating from Chicago and stretching to New York, California, Brazil, and beyond. Born in Puerto Rico, Soto treats her roots as a blueprint, building expansive bodies of work upon the boundless inspiration she finds within them.  Over the course of the previous […]
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• Algiers bring the sounds of Atlanta’s strident past and joyous present to Sleeping Village

  23-03-2023 12:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The cover imagery on Algiers’s new album, Shook, can be interpreted as empowering or forsaken. A black wolf with feral or fawning eyes—you decide—stands in profile with its head lowered, a chain dangling from its mouth. I like to think that the wolf isn’t genuflecting but rather holding the tools of its oppressor between its […]
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• Soft Sheen Founder Hair Care Products Founder Dies at 98

  23-03-2023 01:13
  The Soft Sheen Products co-founder was a devoted advocate of Chicago’s African-American community.
  By Tacuma R. Roeback
  Edward G. Gardner, who died Monday at his Chicago home, co-founded one of history’s most enduring Black hair care brands. Yet, Gardner would also cement his legacy as a devoted advocate of Chicago’s African-American community. 
  Gardner and his wife Bettiann created what would become Soft Sheen Products out of their West Chesterfield home on Chicago’
  
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• Pioneering Businessman and Civic Leader Edward G. Gardner Passes Away at 98

  23-03-2023 01:13
  The Soft Sheen Products co-founder was a devoted advocate of Chicago’s African-American community.
  By Tacuma R. Roeback
  Edward G. Gardner, who died Monday at his Chicago home, co-founded one of history’s most enduring Black hair care brands. Yet, Gardner would also cement his legacy as a devoted advocate of Chicago’s African-American community. 
  Gardner and his wife Bettiann created what would become Soft Sheen Products out of their West Chesterfield home on Chicago’
  
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