Illinois news

• Review: Wicker

  22-10-2026 23:58 via Chicago Reader
  Wicker in wide release in theaters
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• A Strange Loop encompasses metatheatricality, race, theater politics, and Tyler Perry

  23-10-2026 19:02 via Chicago Reader
  A Strange Loop, through 11/22, About Face Theatre and Raven Theatre at Raven Theatre
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• The Winter’s Tale kicks off an experiment in repertory at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

  23-10-2026 18:05 via Chicago Reader
  
  The Winter's Tale, through 12/12 (running in repertory with A Midsummer Night's Dream beginning 11/11), Chicago Shakespeare Theater
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• Mud Row digs into the tangled roots of one family’s history

  23-10-2026 17:50 via Chicago Reader
  
  Mud Row, through 11/15, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theater Wit
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• Review: Wildwood

  23-10-2026 16:43 via Chicago Reader
  Wildwood in wide release in theaters
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• Heavens to Betsy prove the timelessness of their righteous fury on the new Baby’s Gone

  23-10-2026 15:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Heavens to Betsy Sat 11/14 and Sun 11/15 at Empty Bottle
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• Chicago artist Fraxiom shows there’s still plenty of life in hyperpop

  23-10-2026 15:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Fraxiom Fri 11/13 at Schubas
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• Australian producer Memphis LK makes heavenly club music

  23-10-2026 15:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Memphis LK Sat 11/4 at Schubas
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• The endless possibilities in Lindsay Adams’s art

  23-10-2026 14:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  “Errantry" through 10/31 at Patron
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• First Feature documents the enduring determination of filmmakers

  22-10-2026 19:55 via Chicago Reader
  
  Late one night in 2008, Michigan State University film student Thomas Reilly-King decided to devote all of his energy to writing, directing, and starring in a feature film. The film would have action, romance, and, of course, an original theme song. Resources and experience be damned; to Reilly-King, seeing this project through to completion was […]
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• Crossing the Big Water is a moving, many-voiced love letter

  22-10-2026 18:23 via Chicago Reader
  
  Crossing the Big Water, through 11/22, MPAACT at Greenhouse Theater Center
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• Premonitions Inc. brings sexy to the circus

  22-10-2026 17:56 via Chicago Reader
  
  Premonitions Inc., through 1/15/27, Kermess at the Cambria Hotel Chicago
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• Radical Futures mixes grief and sci-fi

  22-10-2026 17:32 via Chicago Reader
  Radical Futures, through 11/21 at Factory Theater
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• A Dark Wood is a grim dystopian vision that hits close to home

  22-10-2026 17:09 via Chicago Reader
  
  A Dark Wood, through 11/1, Tin Drum Theatre Company at Greenhouse Theater Center
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• This Indigenous horror novel shows the terror of real-life environmental devastation

  22-10-2026 14:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  There’s a climactic scene in Mathilda Zeller’s debut novel, It Looks Like You in the Dark, that’s reminiscent of the treacherous dogsled chase by which Mary Shelley introduces her title character in Frankenstein. In Shelley’s horror classic, the brutal, exoticized setting of the Arctic Ocean mocks the hubris of European men who seek to establish […]
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• The black moon rises again when Piñatta returns to Monday Night Foodball

  22-10-2026 05:44 via Chicago Reader
  
  Margaret Pak is an artist. She uses her brain, her hands, and her human soul to create original, thought-provoking, delicious things. She doesn’t need robot plagiarists to conceive and execute an egg appam with kimchi and chili oil. So I knew it wasn’t her fault when last week’s Monday Night Foodball Instagram post was flagged […]
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• Dani Robles, DIY venue owner, audio engineer, and musician

  22-10-2026 00:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Dani Robles (they/them) teaches private music lessons, works as an audio engineer and a Harper College adjunct instructor, and runs the DIY venue and recording space Ericka’s House out of the home they own in Albany Park. Ericka’s House threw its first show at the end of 2025. Robles studied jazz piano as an undergrad […]
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• You can perceive everything

  21-10-2026 23:06 via Chicago Reader
  
  The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film buff, collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to offer. As part of the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival, I saw Eight Bridges (2026), with director James Benning in attendance. Much like the experimental filmmaker’s earlier films 13 Lakes and Ten […]
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• Chicago band Sleepwalk have put in the work to win over young shoegaze fans

  21-10-2026 20:16 via Chicago Reader
  
  Sleepwalk Thu 11/12 at Sleeping Village
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• Dance Theatre of Harlem returns to the Auditorium after a ten-year hiatus

  20-10-2026 20:43 via Chicago Reader
  
  On October 17, Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) returned to Chicago for the first time in a decade, with a mixed bill featuring artistic director Robert Garland’s Return, George Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, and John Taras’s Firebird. Founded in 1969 by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the company […]
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• Sen Morimoto grounds their new album in sure-handed gentleness

  20-10-2026 19:09 via Chicago Reader
  
  Chicago artist Sen Morimoto perpetually tinkers with and reinvents their sound. No matter what instrument they play—saxophone, guitar, keyboards, drums—they use a measured hand that imbues their music with calm. Even when they use odd meters or erupt into intense outbursts, their songs sound as though they’re meant to soothe. The careening art-rock on their […]
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• Deep listening

  20-10-2026 15:58 via Chicago Reader
  
  In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviews recent work by SAIC alum Hui-Lin Wu, also known as […]
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• Remembering Jimmy Boyce of the Little Boy Blues

  19-10-2026 20:06 via Chicago Reader
  
  When I choose subjects for the Secret History of Chicago Music, I don’t rule out anyone I’ve been lucky enough to call a friend—especially when it comes to making a memorial tribute to a great musician and human being. Secret History was what introduced me to drummer James “Jimmy” Boyce, the heartbeat of famed 1960s […]
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• Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes! goes inside the legendary Organic Theater Company

  19-10-2026 18:53 via Chicago Reader
  
  As a budding theater enthusiast growing up in DuPage County in the 1970s and early 80s, I learned what was going on in Chicago mostly by reading reviews from Glenna Syse, the theater critic for the Sun-Times. (As proud public schoolteachers and union members, my parents didn’t let the Chicago Tribune in our house, relenting […]
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• Review: Sense and Sensibility

  19-10-2026 16:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Sense and Sensibility in wide release in theaters
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• Suzy Sheer make harsh but cuddly electroclash

  19-10-2026 15:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Suzy Sheer Sun 11/8 at Outset
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• Charlie Parr laments modern woes in timeless folk blues

  19-10-2026 15:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  Charlie Parr Fri 11/6 at FitzGerald's
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• Vile Mind scream hardcore truths about the opioid epidemic

  16-10-2026 20:28 via Chicago Reader
  
  Vile Mind Fri 11/6 at Subterranean
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• All the young emo fans are into P.E.E.

  16-10-2026 20:28 via Chicago Reader
  
  P.E.E. Sat 11/7 at Logan Square Auditorium
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• The 32nd Black Harvest Film Festival contributes to the continuum of Black cinema

  16-10-2026 19:00 via Chicago Reader
  
  The 32nd edition of the Black Harvest Film Festival returns to the Siskel Film Center this November. Programmed by Chicago-based artist, curator, cultural worker, and independent scholar jada-amina and coordinated by Nick Leffel, the event showcases more than 75 films—including 60 Chicago premieres—across nine features and ten shorts programs. The festival runs from Friday, November […]
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