The problem with the 1984 movie Footloose is that it tries so damned hard to be a serious, realistic drama about a rebellious teen fighting against the joy-killing puritanism of a middle American small town that it drains the joy out of the best parts of the movie: the silly, energetic, entertaining dance scenes. The beauty of the 1998 Broadway version of the movie, at least as it has been realized in this Marriott revival, directed by Gary Griffin and choreographed by William Carlos Angulo, is that the most sanctimonious elements in the story have been stripped away, leaving more room for the fun that the show’s hero yearns to bring to the town....

T hey bust out onto the scene like champions, faster and larger than life, feet flying, balls in the air, to Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).” When the colored lights stop strobing and the cheers of the crowd die away, nine teenage girls in red uniforms stand on an Astroturf field in Middle America. They pass a disjointed conversation among themselves as they put themselves through a set routine of warm-ups and drills in unison, a single slap of the hand as it grabs the foot for a quad stretch: They discuss whether Khmer Rouge leaders should be jailed 40 years after the Cambodian genocide, where Cambodia is, whether they have been to Cambodia, how to pronounce “Khmer Rouge,” whether the girl who is an Episcopalian is a bitch, whether it’s OK to use the word “bitch,” snake handling, and how to use a tampon....

“I always, always, always wear a mask! I have three of the same pattern,” says Zoe Hendrix Johnson. She paired her leopard-print face mask with a chartreuse duster coat, sneakers, a flowy skirt, and a cropped polka-dot shirt: “I think that was truly the first day [during the pandemic] that I set my intention on building an outfit,” she explained via e-mail. “And strangely enough, as I was leaving my house, I checked my mail and my masks had been delivered!...

Next Tuesday, thousands of conscientious Cook County Democrats will head to the polls, well informed and ready to vote for nominees for president, senate, and state’s attorney. And then they’ll get to the judges at the bottom of the ballot. At least Democratic voters this election don’t have to worry much about the two appellate seats, or about three of the countywide circuit court seats, because only a single candidate is running for them....

It’s been a tough three years since Susan Henking was installed as president of Shimer College, the tiny Great Books school embedded on high-tech IIT’s Bronzeville campus. On another of Miller’s lists—this one giving equal weight to student cost, debt, loan defaults, and graduation rates—Shimer was ranked the 16th worst out of 20. The magazine has been compiling lists of the best colleges and universities in America since 2005, evaluating schools not on “expense, luxury, and exclusivity” but on what they’re “doing for the country,” as measured by social mobility, research, and public service....

The truth about theaters is that they’re boring. This is not, however, to say that what happens within them is boring; merely that they’re rather blank, expectant, waiting. This waiting assumes added significance at the present moment, as no one can predict when lights will return to Steppenwolf, the Goodman, the Lyric. Like us, some will die. Less than two weeks after temporarily closing on March 14, the venerable Hubbard Street Dance Chicago announced the nearly half-century-old Lou Conte Dance Studio would remain shuttered indefinitely....

The 48 Hour Film Project, self-described as “the oldest and largest timed filmmaking competition in the world,” celebrates its 12th anniversary at the Music Box Theatre this week with premieres of four-to-eight-minute short films that local filmmakers completed—i.e., wrote, shot, edited, and scored—in just two days. The winning short, to be announced at the Best of Chicago screening and award ceremony by a panel of local judges on Thursday, September 15, will go up against other 48HFP shorts from around the world at Filmapalooza 2017 in Seattle, Washington, for a chance at a grand prize and an opportunity to screen at the 2017 Cannes film festival....

Recommended for ages four through ten, Filament Theatre’s production of this one-act by Ramón Esquivel creates a well-balanced environment of both interactive fun and sensitive exploration of challenging themes. Before the show, audience members are given paper star necklaces to color. We play the role of stars, best friends to the moon, Luna, played by a charismatic and warm Deanalis Resto. Luna is the best friend of the story’s central character, Soledad, a child of migrant farm workers, played by bright-eyed and earnest Samantha Nieves on the afternoon I attended....

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. Urgent Care with Joel Kim Booster and Mitra Jouhari What Instagram challenge we’re hoping to get tagged in today #SeeAShotTakeAShot What we’re doing that we thought would come on more like day 27 at least...

When the late, great Logan Square loncheria Cafe Marianao mysteriously shut down and the property went on the market in the summer of 2016, it was like the unexplained disappearance of a loved one: shocking, brutal, and offering no closure. For decades, stoic countermen at the Milwaukee Avenue sandwich shop plied a steady but disordered scrum of adherents with cafe con leche and Cubano, steak, and medianoche sandwiches. And suddenly, without warning, it was all over....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

W After considering 38 cities, including Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., the society settled on the former home of its current executive director, Rick Fosbrink, where it plans to rent space in the Smithsonian-affiliated Heinz History Center while gearing up to eventually build its own museum, the National Center for Theatre History. For decades, the society got along with a single staff member—executive director Richard Sklenar—a minuscule budget, and a lot of volunteer help from its members....

Filmmakers frequently present a world that is lush and extravagant, but they can be equally adept at capturing the hardships and difficulties of life. Currently showing on Filmstruck are a series of films that humanize those experiencing hard times. We’ve selected five to highlight: Greed Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 silent classic is more famous for its original eight-hour version than for this cut that MGM carved out of it (though apparently there were several prerelease versions, which Stroheim screened privately for separate groups)....

On December 12, 2015, stand-up comedians Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito got married onstage at the Hideout. The pair met at an open mike at Cole’s Bar that Esposito was hosting; they moved to LA together two years later. Season one of the autobiographical show Take My Wife, airing on NBC’s comedy-streaming app Seeso, follows the couple during the time between their move and their engagement as they try to balance their relationship and careers....

There’s a video of Young Jean Lee performing her 2011 play We’re Gonna Die on Vimeo. It’s an exercise in minimalism and mortality: a single person with a mic backed up by a band—part stand-up, part rock concert, part TED talk, and part campfire confession—relaying a series of humiliating, horrifying, gory, and mundane incidents-in-the-life-of, and Lee is brilliant: eyes dry, voice wry, bangs on her face, feet on the ground, and a pocket full of tunes that worm their way into your ear....

This week’s been front-loaded with local hip-hop releases—I.L Will‘s Tattz & Flattz 2, MoBo the Great‘s Fuck the Public, and Dlow‘s Unexpected Statement. As I scrambled to listen, or at least sample, all these projects I nearly missed Sick La Familia, which south-side rapper AceSo released yesterday. The MC frequently collaborates with local producer C-Sick, whose sharply grandiose, twinkling beats appear throughout Sick La Familia. C-Sick worked his magic on the mixtape’s title song, spinning muted sirens and brooding bass into a turn-up track that’s both unnerving and thrilling, and AceSo furthers the tune’s menacing rush with a poised and barbed performance....

Beloved and influential Swedish progressive metal band Opeth play Chicago for the first time in nearly three years in support of a new album, last fall’s In Cauda Venenum (“Poison in the Tail”), released in English and Swedish versions. The band, established in 1989, have traditionally recorded only in English, so it’s fascinating to hear how the mother tongue of front man Mikael Åkerfeldt interacts with their intricate sound; when he sings in Swedish (a language I do not know at all), he seems to fold his vocals in among the keyboard sweeps with a homey, organic assurance....

On a Saturday afternoon in January, a handful of mostly middle-aged men and women gathered in a conference room on the tenth floor of the red-steel-framed skyscraper at 60 E. Van Buren. Participants in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8, they’d come to the headquarters of the Chicago Housing Authority for a long-awaited meeting with CEO Eugene Jones Jr. In addition to Jones’s blessing, they expected to get a check for $850 to file paperwork to officially become a 501(c)3 nonprofit: the National Housing Residents Association....

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. The Cuomo brothers, night and day What we’re cooking: v