Illinois news

• Mothers of the revolution

  04-05-2023 18:23 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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 rolling world premiere program. But it’s hard to imagine a more apt setting for Burton’s choreopoem in celebration of the women in the Black Panther Party […]
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• At a loss for words

  04-05-2023 17:55 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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 its most frustrating obstruction. AstonRep Theatre Company’s The Language Archive, a comic-drama written by Julia Cho and directed by Dana Anderson, plays on this ironic tension through […]
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• Showfolk follies

  04-05-2023 17:42 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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, or a novel is about a tortured novelist, or a singer crows about how hard life is on the road, I check out pretty quickly. So […]
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• Timely Twain

  04-05-2023 17:17 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The dramaturgy displays alone for Mercury Theater Chicago’s Big River, based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taught me more about Mark Twain’s 1830s-set, biting antislavery novel than I learned from studying the book in junior high, high school, undergrad, and grad school combined. First off, the musical (music and lyrics by Roger Miller, book by […]
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• Mariko Kallister knows the way of soba

  04-05-2023 17:09 via chicagoreader.com
  
  "Soba connects people. I invite people to the performance table and they share the moment to smell ingredients and taste the freshly made noodles together.”
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• Big-box problems

  04-05-2023 17:05 via chicagoreader.com
  
  If verisimilitude and timeliness were all it took to create a great play, Ken Green’s world premiere comedy-drama about working in big-box retail would be a home run. Its dialogue captures every cliche and bit of doublespeak in the corporate human resources dictionary, not to mention every grouse and plaint ever uttered in a workplace—and […]
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• Promise the moon

  04-05-2023 16:51 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Environmental peril is the norm. News streams whisper about the climate crisis, relentlessly broadcasting the planet’s daunting existential threat. However, nothing seems to change. Kids, born into environmental defeatism, struggle to rekindle hope as the world yells out in pain. So Theatre L’Acadie’s If This Is The End, written by Melanie Coffey and directed by […]
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• Storefront Star Wars

  04-05-2023 16:18 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Pay no attention to the show’s baggy, forgettable, mildly pompous title. This smart, tightly written play is at once a very funny satire of the Star Wars saga—and Star Wars fans—a heartfelt homage, and fabulous fan fiction. Set not so long ago in a galaxy not so far away (OK, the setting is contemporary Hollywood), […]
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• Chicago’s Jay iLLA on Staying True Amid National Spotlight

  04-05-2023 16:00
  
  This Chicago DJ speaks about his recent honor from Rémy Martin and what his city gave to Hip-Hop.   
  For any dude who got hooked on Hip-hop in the 1980s or 90s, the love affair probably began with a song, moment or an epiphany. 
  For Chicago’s Jay iLLA, it was a combination of things. That one time he heard Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” in ‘94 or A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, artists who wielded the sort of sonic sorcery that capt
  
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• Hazel Jane Plante reimagines the memoir

  04-05-2023 15:39 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Imagine, if you will, the art of building one’s life as an act of literal construction. Adding new stories atop one another, year after year, until one day you find yourself amongst the clouds; life itself becomes an act of layering, with events well in our past nonetheless creating a foundation upon which we continue […]
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• TikTok Challenge Leaves Teen ‘Unrecognizable’ With Burns On 75% Of His Body

  04-05-2023 14:00
  
  A 16-year-old teen in North Carolina is “unrecognizable” after participating in an alleged TikTok challenge that left burns on the majority of his body.Mason Dark, 16, was using a lighter and a can of spray paint to create a torch last month when his mother, Holli Dark, heard a “big boom,” per WRAL. The mother said her son ran out and jumped into a nearby river to alleviate his burns.
  Mason was taken to the UNC Burn Center where he was treated for second and third-degree
  
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• Slayer’s Dave Lombardo goes bonkers on his first-ever solo LP

  04-05-2023 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Dave Lombardo is best known for his work with the legendary Slayer, where he reinvented heavy metal drumming, but he did much more than drive that thrash powerhouse—his resumé feels practically endless. By the time Slayer dropped their fifth album, 1990’s Seasons in the Abyss, it had become clear that Lombardo was more than just […]
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• 1 Killed, 4 Injured In Shooting At Atlanta Medical Building

  04-05-2023 04:18
  
  One person was killed and four others were injured in a shooting at Northside Hospital Medical in Midtown Atlanta on Wednesday (May 3), CNN reports.During a press conference on Wednesday, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum identified the deceased victim as a 39-year-old woman. The four others who were shot, all of which are women, were transported to a hospital where at least three of them are in critical condition.The suspected shooter, 24-year-old Deion Patterson, is still at large followin
  
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• This Week In Black History May 3-9, 2023

  04-05-2023 02:30
  
  James Brown, “The Godfather of Soul”
   May 3
  1845—Macon B. Allen passes the Massachusetts bar thus becoming the first African American lawyer to pass a state bar and the first Black person permitted to practice law in the United States.  Allen was born in Indiana but after the Civil War he moved to South Carolina where he was elected a judge in 1873.
  1933—Singer James Brown, known as “The Godfather of Soul” for his game-changing style in funk, soul an
  
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