Illinois news

• In Motion: Praize Productions Inc. fosters sisterhood and community through dance

  17-05-2023 22:54 via chicagoreader.com
  
  As a young, rising Chicago dancer, Enneréssa LaNette envisioned herself leading an arts organization of her own. So in 2010, when she was 25 years old, she founded Prazie Productions Inc. (PPI) on the city’s south side. “I always knew that eventually I would be a professional artist and start an organization where we can […]
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• ’Inmates are extremely manipulative‘

  17-05-2023 21:10 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Content note: This story contains descriptions of deaths in prisons, including suicide. On July 16, 2010, at 11 PM, Jeremy started sweating. He walked to the health-care unit inside the Lawrence Correctional Center, a medium-security men’s prison in southeast Illinois, where he was serving a 14-year sentence. The facility sits about 90 minutes from Terre […]
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• WASTED explores “Chicago’s grimiest history” to a house and disco beat

  17-05-2023 21:07 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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 bold ballroom and house aesthetics to the environment’s trashiest issue: waste.  WASTEDThrough 5/20: Thu-Fri 7 PM, Sat 3 PM; 1419 W. Blackhawk, freestreet.org and eventbrite.com, sliding scale $5-$25 […]
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• In Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon, renegade lovers are on the lam

  17-05-2023 20:45 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Actor, writer, composer, musician, lyricist, visual artist, short film director, and stop-motion animator Matthew C. Yee is no still water. But he does run deep. Yee is currently playing the lead male in Lookingglass Theatre’s Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon, a country-and-western musical about an Asian American couple on the lam from the law. He also […]
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• Chicago Reader Volume 52, No. 16

  17-05-2023 20:44 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Chicago Reader Volume 52, Number 13. April 6, 2023
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• Don’t stop believing

  17-05-2023 20:25 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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 continuum. Only instead of being a neglected housewife, she’s an aspiring avant-garde composer looking for a big break. Shackleton Loves Me Through 6/1: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri […]
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• Defying fate

  17-05-2023 19:56 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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) tells the tale of The Chosen One (Freddy Mauricio), destined for sacrifice to ensure the sun’s rise. Defying fate, he flees with Princess (Marcela Ossa […]
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• Queer Singapore stories

  17-05-2023 19:45 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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 paraphrased the gay community’s mixed response to the news as follows: “It’s like a nice, hot cup of coffee,” he says, “that got left on the table.” It’s a […]
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• Bronzeville blues

  17-05-2023 19:33 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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. Opening with a litany of the greats associated with the neighborhood (Sam Cooke, Ida B. Wells), the show soon moves into the lives of everyday people caught up […]
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• A perfect Ten

  17-05-2023 19:21 via chicagoreader.com
  
  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 5/22: Mon and Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Filament Theatre, 4041 N. Milwaukee, thegifttheatre.org, $10 A mother agonizes over getting her eight-year-old an iPhone. […]
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• Chicago metal explorers Yakuza return with Sutra, their first album in more than a decade

  17-05-2023 19:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Has it really been more than a decade since Yakuza released an album? Yes it has, and I’m probably not the only Chicago metal fan who feels old about it. When the avant-garde metal outfit first sidled onto the local scene in 1999, they threw down a gauntlet: clarinet and saxophone weren’t often thought of […]
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• The father, the son, and the archivist

  17-05-2023 18:43 via chicagoreader.com
  
  There’s a nicely curated selection of Art Shay’s photography up through May 27 at Gallery Victor. It includes a lot of familiar images—Marlon Brando kissing his dog, Hugh Hefner with typewriter and playmates in his bedroom office, and, of course, Simone de Beauvoir’s bare bum. Iconic photos of entertainers, athletes, and politicians share the wall […]
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• Drag for life

  17-05-2023 17:59 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Drag, in all of its glorious forms, has been a locus of revolt throughout the decades. In 2023, we are in a time when the very concept of “dressing in the mode not of one’s ‘essential sex’” is in the bull’s-eye of crypto-fascist Republican lawmakers in many states.  That’s why it seems like winning when […]
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• Czarina Mirani, founder and editor of 5 Magazine

  17-05-2023 17:41 via chicagoreader.com
  
  In 2005, Czarina Mirani launched 5 Magazine to spread the word about the house-music scene she loves so much. Along with managing editor Terry Matthew and a pool of contributors, Mirani has published indispensable documentation of Chicago’s house history, including interviews with key players such as Frankie Knuckles, Paul Johnson, and Phuture’s DJ Pierre. Whenever […]
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• Shawnee Dez lives the dream she’s been waiting for

  17-05-2023 17:18 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Thom Yorke’s soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria is as stark, haunting, and unpredictable as the film itself. On the track “Has Ended,” reverberant drums and bass meld with a meditative tanpura drone and Yorke’s compressed voice, which drifts into the music layered two or three times over. His words are barely distinguishable, […]
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• Brandon Johnson’s Inaugural Speech: Memorable Moments

  17-05-2023 16:00
  
  By now, you may have heard that Brandon Johnson took everybody to church and beyond with his inauguration address on Monday. Before a sold-out crowd at Credit Union 1 Arena, Johnson demonstrated that he was indeed the son of a preacher.
  He displayed raw emotion, humor, reverence and passion during his 40-minute speech. He also included a few verses from the Good Book.
  Here are some of the more memorable moments from Johnson’s speech (in no particular order):
  Praise for Lori Lightfoot
  The n
  
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• Ethereal revelations

  17-05-2023 15:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  The first thing I noticed when I walked into Roots & Culture recently, on one of the better weather days in Chicago, was the smell of earthly incense wafting through the air. I stood in the entrance for awhile to take in the smell, but also to give myself a moment to realign my thoughts […]
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• Illinois Congressman Jonathan Jackson and Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski Call on USDA to Combat Food Deserts

  17-05-2023 14:30
  
  On Tuesday, Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) and Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) issued a joint letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack to express their deep concern about the rising amount of food deserts in both urban and rural districts in Illinois. Approximately 3.3 million Illinoisans, or roughly one in four residents in the state, live in a food desert.
  Congressman Jackson underscored:  “It’s a stark paradox that Illinois, boasting some
  
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• Visions for empathy

  17-05-2023 14:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  As a young child, Joshua James Amberson purposefully blurred his vision. He believed haziness suggested the otherworldly; it provided an escape from reality, such as the realities of growing up working class in rural Washington. Issues of class recur throughout his multifaceted collection Staring Contest: Essays about Eyes, as the adult Amberson, underemployed and uninsured, […]
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• The Carr Report: You’re paying high prices for your vices!

  17-05-2023 13:00
  
  Getty Images Stock Photo
  The word “vice” is generally used to define behavior or habits that are immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, depraved, taboo, or degrading.  I’m not going to be that sinister.  I’m using the word vice to imply something we do or something we spend money on that we know is foolish, doesn’t make any sense, and is detrimental to our health, wealth, and overall well-being. We admonish our children from doing it. We warn others about the da
  
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• Los Angeles electronic artist Mareux soaks in gloomy romanticism on the new Lovers From the Past

  17-05-2023 13:00 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Mareux is the project of Los Angeles producer and vocalist Aryan Ashtiani, whose music incorporates postpunk, goth, and the European electronic styles he heard via Polish MTV during his summers in Iran as a youth. Mareux’s 2013 debut, the four-song EP Decade, is full of sun-flecked synth-pop that mixes bouncy moods with its wistfulness, but […]
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• No Charges For Security Guard Who Fatally Shot Alleged Walgreens Shoplifter

  17-05-2023 12:30
  
  Photo: Getty Images
  The security guard who shot and killed Banko Brown, a 24-year-old transgender man suspected of shoplifting at a Walgreens in San Francisco, won’t face charges.
  On Monday (May 15), the San Francisco DA’s office released surveillance video of the moments surrounding Brown’s death amid their decision to not pursue charges, per CNN.
  “Based on the criminal investigation, review of evidence, and evaluation of the case, we have determined that there is insuff
  
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• The 13+ Best Adult Cam Sites with Live Cam Girls of 2023

  17-05-2023 07:09 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Why get off watching a video when you can watch a cam girl live? Here are the best sex cam sites with free and paid options.
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• Soul artist and freshly minted Chicagoan K.Raydio drops a gorgeous, generous new EP

  17-05-2023 00:52 via chicagoreader.com
  
  Ever since singer, producer, and songwriter Krysta Rayford, aka K.Raydio, moved to Chicago from Minneapolis in summer 2022, Gossip Wolf has been on the alert for every bit of her soulful music. She has an endlessly alluring voice, a keen melodic sense, and a knack for beats that combine classic R&B and soul from the […]
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• Crust Fund Pizza presents School Pizza Night at the next Monday Night Foodball

  17-05-2023 00:52 via chicagoreader.com
  
  There’s been a startling discovery in the field of pizza research: lunch ladies invented the prototype for the Detroit-style pizza. Most people give credit for this monumental achievement to Gus Guerra of Buddy’s Rendezvous Pizzeria on Six Mile and Conant Street in the Motor City, but thanks to recently unearthed historical documents, we now know […]
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