In the first days of the COVID-19 shutdown, many theaters scrambled to find archival production videos of high enough quality to warrant public streaming—either for free or for a (relatively) low suggested donation. As the months have dragged on with stages remaining dark, more companies are creating brand-new content for the online stage. Some of it speaks directly to the weird-and-scary-as-hell moment in which we’re living. And some of it provides a little respite from that hell—or at least gives us a theatrical handbag to enjoy on the ride down....

Arts educator, singer, actress, and entrepreneur Sulie Harand passed away peacefully in her sleep on Saturday, August 6, four days after her 97th birthday. Sulie, born August 2, 1919, was cofounder of Harand Camp of the Theatre Arts, a summer camp devoted to offering youngsters experience in musical theatre, grounded in the traditional summer-camp experience of sports, arts and crafts, and social activities—”fun in the sun,” but also behind the footlights....

When minimalist composer Julius Eastman died of cardiac arrest in a Buffalo hospital in 1990, the 49-year-old had been homeless for most of a decade. His obituary in the Village Voice wouldn’t appear till eight months later. He’d lost most of his possessions (probably including his scores) when he lost his apartment, and no commercial recordings of his pieces existed. It became nearly impossible for musicians to play his work, or for listeners to hear it....

Strange Angels According to the Harris Theater‘s website, there are still tickets to see performance artist-singer-musician Laurie Anderson play with the classical group Kronos Quartet tonight. If you can swing it, I’d suggest going, since it’s due to be a pretty great performance. Coincidentally, it’s also a couple weeks before Major League Baseball’s opening day. So in honor of the forthcoming MLB season and the performance tonight, today’s 12 O’Clock Track is one of the all-time best baseball songs: “Babydoll,” off of Anderson’s 1989 album Strange Angels....

The earth didn’t rumble when a new Italian restaurant opened in Logan Square in mid-April. Saba Italian Kitchen & Bar barely said hello through the usual channels (Twitter, Instagram, etc) as it took over a corner spot on Milwaukee across from the Harding Tavern and De Noche Mexicana/Cafe con Leche and next to Red Star Liquors and the Walk In, the latest outpost joining the others in the growing mini empire belonging to homeboy Esam Hani and his One of a Kind Hospitality....

The joke goes that someone could win the caption-a-cartoon contest in the New Yorker every week by going with “Christ, what an asshole.” That sentiment captures the Sherlock Holmes in Charles Marowitz’s 1984 play, Sherlock’s Last Case, now in a stylish and witty revival at suburban First Folio under Janice L. Blixt’s direction. Kevin McKillip’s Holmes is an insufferable prat, prone to verbally abusing his Scottish housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson (Belinda Bremner), and casually putting down Dr....

On every recording it seems like singer Sam Amidon eagerly shares new insights, knowledge, and experiences he’s gained since his last work. Throughout his career he’s consistently stretched the boundaries of folk music to the breaking point. Much of his repertoire is based upon or borrows from artifacts in the public domain—expertly gleaning universal truths conveyed through oral transmission and folk song—but everything he does feels explicitly alive and charged by the world around him....

Robert Marovich grew up Catholic, and he didn’t encounter gospel music for the first time till he was in his early 20s. It was January 1984, and he was earning a degree in American studies at Notre Dame University. “I was flipping through the dial on the radio, and I happened upon a Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer radio broadcast on a Sunday evening,” he says. “It just blew me away.” That south-side Chicago church, founded in 1959 and still active today, has a famous choir called the Mighty Warriors....

In a year of sorry national spectacles, none seems more bitter or pointless than the feud that broke out last month between the Trump administration and the family of Sergeant La David Johnson, one of four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger during an ambush by Islamist militants. The president’s clumsy handling of a condolence call to Johnson’s widow, the unprincipled disclosure of his words to the media by U.S. congresswoman Frederica Wilson, the false charges leveled against Wilson by White House chief of staff John Kelly, the congresswoman’s gratuitous accusation of racism as a factor in the administration’s actions—no one emerged unsullied from the conflict, in which Johnson’s sacrifice for his country was steadily obscured by bickering over who had dishonored his memory....

Maps to the Stars No fewer than 61 international features make their Chicago debuts this month as part of the European Union Film Festival at Gene Siskel Film Center; our searchable roundup of week one is here, and we’ll be reviewing more titles from the fest in subsequent weeks. We’ve also got new reviews of: Chappie, the latest SF actioner from South African writer-director Neil Blomkamp (District 9); Encounters: Experimental Film and Video From Croatia, which surveys the last half century of experimental work in the Balkan nation; The Hand That Feeds, a documentary about a Manhattan pizza place trying to unionize, part of the Music Box’s new Tuesday-night series of recent documentaries; Kung-Fu Elliot, a Canadian documentary about an amateur filmmaker who wants to be the next Chuck Norris; The Lazarus Effect, a horror flick from the folks who gave you the Paranormal Activity cycle; Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s tinseltown horror movie; Road Hard, starring stand-up comedian Adam Carolla as a fictionalized version of himself; The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a sequel to the hit Anglo-Indian geezer rom-com; and Unfinished Business, with Vince Vaughn as a small-business owner trying to close a big deal with no help from his witless subordinates Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson....

The Back Room Deal features radio personality and longtime Reader political writer Ben Joravsky arguing local Chicago politics with Reader staff writer Maya Dukmasova. With sharp wit and stinging analysis, Joravsky and Dukmasova cut through the smoky haze of the elections to offer you a glimpse of the current Chicago races—ward-level and, of course, mayoral. Will these historic elections be determined in back-room deals, like so many in Chicago’s past? Let Ben and Maya talk you through it....

The New York Times may have finally settled the debate over when it’s OK to use anonymous sources. Times policy: only when the source has a good enough reason.

The word “preservation” implies something kept under glass, unable to breathe if not simply dead—but the members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band swing so hard that “rejuvenation” would be a better way to describe their sound. Named for the Preservation Hall in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the PHJB assembled its original lineup in the early 1960s from older jazz musicians such as Sweet Emma Barrett (for whom Cannonball Adderley named his song “Sweet Emma”), George Lewis, De De and Billie Pierce, and Willie and Percy Humphrey....

The nonprofit, artist-run network Tiger Strikes Asteroid has five locations across the U.S. in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Greenville, South Carolina. Their network of artists is vast, as they work to promote emerging, mid-career, and established creatives. “It feels like the first time,” a new show at Mana Contemporary in Pilsen, grazes the surface of the artists involved in the community. Mirroring this type of tension is Greenville TSA founder April Dauscha‘s video and physical pieces, Sash, 2020 and Ancestral Interaction (sash), 2021....

Blues and jazz have been intertwined since the beginning, and this collaboration between two Chicago institutions shows the power of their convergence. Jazz guitarist George Freeman, 92, is part of a familial dynasty that includes his late brother, tenor saxophonist Von; harmonica player Billy Branch, 67, is one of the most lyrical musicians on the city’s blues scene. You can hear them both on Freeman’s latest album, George the Bomb! (Southport), which dropped in April and features Branch on three cuts, including the title track....

The offbeat accessory is Flair’s specialty. The recently opened Logan Square store’s inventory is dominated by pins featuring figures from Prince to Audre Lorde and patches with generally woke sentiments such as “Fuck the patriarchy” and “We will outlive them.”

Nashville metal trio Yautja are a great example of how the old adage “less is more” doesn’t always apply. For ten years now, these three dudes—whose band name is also the species name of the fictional extraterrestrial hunters in the Predator franchise—have been throwing everything into their maximalist music, and getting better and better results. Every song Yautja creates is likely to contain a dizzying mix of bombastic sludge, furious hardcore, brutal grind, and nauseating noise rock....

To my fellow queer folks who live in the overlap of reality and drag: Our time has come. “I started doing drag back in 2015 when there were very few opportunities for up-and-coming performers to try things out. Over the course of four years, the landscape of drag in Chicago has changed so much, allowing for a lot more upward mobility and community building,” the performer says. “[Chicago Is a Drag Festival] is so special to me because I have the opportunity to give a platform to the thing I stan the most: Chicago drag!...

From the Heathers to the Plastics, teenage girls and their cliques have proved to be a sturdy source of pop culture anthropology. And beauty pageants have also been fertile ground for satirical treatment, from Michael Ritchie‘s 1975 film Smile to Little Miss Sunshine. (And let’s not forget Annoyance Theatre’s long-running 1990s hit, The Miss Vagina Pageant, created by Faith and Joey Soloway.) Ericka’s kinder to the other girls than Paulina (admittedly a low bar to clear)....

It’s not uncommon for newbies to leave Trap Door wondering what just hit them. Since founding the 45-seat Bucktown company over 25 years ago, Beata Pilch has specialized in “obscure” works by eastern European playwrights, many of them raucously absurdist and—at least initially, sometimes—emotionally and intellectually confounding. Whether it’s David Lovejoy in Mark Brownell’s fabulously queer Monsieur D’Eon Is a Woman or the repurposed Greek mythology of Elizabeth Egloff’s The Swan, Trap Door productions tend to leave audiences thinking and, perhaps, slightly stunned....