With schools in Illinois closed for the remainder of the current school year, families may be scrambling to find enrichment activities for the quarantine to take the place of their usual extracurricular outings. Several theater companies have either created new family-oriented material or stepped up their existing online roster of classes to address the need. But another goal was to find ways to involve the entire family. CCT quickly unveiled the “Play at Home” video contest, which encourages kids and families to create a short (five minutes or less) play involving “a mythical creature of your choice, an evil villain, AND one of your family members....

Former war correspondent Kim Barker got the full-hair-and-makeup treatment for the TV cameras last Saturday in her suite in the Ritz-Carlton in New York City. Barker says she gave 50 TV interviews in her suite last Saturday. Barker understands that when the pieces air, nothing about Afghanistan is likely to make the cut. Even Barker’s appearance in the stories isn’t a sure thing. Tina Fey was giving interviews at the same time, in another suite down the corridor, and which makes better television: Barker talking about Tina Fey or Tina Fey talking about playing a reckless, hard-drinking war correspondent?...

Last August, Emily Blue dropped *69, a glossy, idea-packed EP whose five tunes burst with pulsing electro beats and walloping synth-pop choruses—a small surprise to Gossip Wolf, since she’s best known as the effervescent-voiced singer of catchy local indie-rock band Tara Terra. But a few listens to Blue’s radio-ready solo jams, such as “Microscope” and “Falling in Love,” make it clear that she can translate her razor-sharp hooks into any musical language!...

There’s no other music as unapologetically Mexican as mariachi music. Designated an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2011, the genre has succeeded through the centuries and across borders—a shining example of its power, particularly in times of conflict. In the United States, mariachi’s history as a sign of resistance and cultural pride stretches back at least to the dawn of the Chicano movement in the 1960s. In Chicago and other U....

ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: Soul Summit DJs with the Impala Sound Champions at Double Door on Sat 12/17 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

A front-page story in Friday’s Tribune about Rahm Emanuel’s fall from political grace makes a small, serious mistake. Staff columnists, on the other hand, are paid to speak for themselves and should be held personally accountable for what they say. When they aren’t it’s usually because their own names carry less weight than their papers’. As for guest writers, the views of a Columbia professor would carry almost no weight at all in a Chicago story on our mayor’s tribulations....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Jack Murphy, “Beatles PhD.” “The kids were not happy at first. They couldn’t believe we were going to spend a whole year on this one band that they’d either never heard of or only knew from a Target commercial or something. I’d ask, “Do you know what city or country the Beatles are from?...

Q: I’m wondering if you can help me with some dream interpretation. If it helps for context, I’m a single 29-year-old gay man. For just about as long as I can remember, I’ve been having mildly unsatisfying sex dreams in that the dreams never seem to lead to sex itself. My dream partners range from people I work with to people from high school to celebrities I’ll never get the chance to meet....