Myrna Salazar was in Houston the day I talked to her by phone, with a lot to worry about. She has family in Puerto Rico—including her mother, whom, she said, she was trying to get off the hurricane-devastated island. She was also less than a week away from opening a brand-new theater festival. “We are very new, this has been moving quite rapidly—and I’m scared!” Salazar says of the festival from her room in Houston....

On Monday, March 16, I walked into a theater for the last time in 2020. It was at Theater Wit for their production of Mike Lew‘s Teenage Dick, a Richard III-meets-high-school-angst dark comedy-drama. The show was supposed to have a regular run but then . . . well, you know. Theaters can’t ignore budget restrictions. Yet if they think too small and safe, they won’t necessarily win back the live audiences they need who have become more comfortable seeing shows online....

Kiichiro Sato/AP Photos What’s next for Chuy? Mick and Ben prognosticate on Tuesday. Having finally got it right with our recent electoral prognostications, Mick Dumke and I are ready to take our Carnac the Magnificent act to the next level when we show up for our First Tuesdays extravaganza at the Hideout. Or, as the Notorious B.I.G. once put it: “I love it when you call me big poppa—throw your hands in the air, if you’se a true player ....

Social worker Jonathan Foiles has written about Chicago’s fractured mental health system before. In a January 2018 report for Belt Magazine on the current state of the city’s mental health, he included an intimate story about a client named Anthony who’d lost his son to gun violence on the city’s west side. Using Anthony as an example, Foiles addressed the inadequacy of the city’s mental health system in treating similar clients....

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. Older strips are archived here.

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, May 5, 2016. The mysterious disappearance of a medical student in Hyde Park The mystery surrounding the recent disappearance of 28-year-old medical student Ambrose Monye in Hyde Park has left his family worried and confused. Officials say they have no leads in the case. Monye, who’s less than six weeks away from graduation, was last seen on April 22 walking toward the John Crerar Library on the University of Chicago campus....

TBS has ordered a comedy pilot from Chicagoan and The Chi and Master of None writer Lena Waithe. Twenties will be about a queer black girl named Hattie and her two straight best friends, and Waithe previously described it as “my Master of None about life in my 20s, set in LA.” “I always wanted to tell a story where a queer black woman was the protagonist and I’m so grateful to TBS for giving me a platform to tell this story,” Waithe said in a statement....

We came, we saw, we ate. And ate some more. Sixteen of Chicago’s best chefs—from restaurants such as Topolobampo, Dos Urban Cantina, and Analogue—prepared 16 incredible dishes at last week’s Key Ingredient Cook-Off at Venue One in the West Loop. Each one contained one of four chosen ingredients: chorizo, plantains, achiote seeds, and tomatillo. Attendees and our panel of experts tried them all—in between plenty of beer and cocktails—and voted on their favorites....

Given the canonization of saxophonist, composer, and musical revolutionary Ornette Coleman, it’s pretty astonishing that two recordings he made for the prestigious Impulse label could’ve remained out of print for more than four decades. Thankfully, last month reissue imprint Real Gone Music collected those albums, Ornette at 12 and Crisis (recorded live in 1968 and 1969, respectively), on a single CD—the first time either has been available in the format. While neither is considered an essential entry in his vast catalog, they’re both excellent, and they chronicle an important transitory period in his career....

When I first heard the term “dungeon synth,” I imagined a style of dance music you’d hear in a subterranean goth club, but it’s actually a dark hybrid of neoclassical music, ambient, and black metal, heavily influenced by medieval lore and fantasy literature. What it lacks in grooves, it often makes up for in atmosphere and imagination—both of which are special strengths of Vetus Sepulcrum. The brainchild of Dutch musician Maurice de Jong, aka Mories, who’s so prolific you could fill an entire record collection with releases from his various projects (Gnaw Their Tongues, Seirom, Aderlating), Vetus Sepulacrum infuses its enormous blackened soundscapes with lush textures and a profound sense of majesty....

Q: I’m an 18-year-old female. I’m cisgender and bisexual. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my cisgender bisexual boyfriend for about a year. I’m currently struggling with a lot of internalized biphobia and other hang-ups about my boyfriend’s sexuality. I don’t know if I’m projecting my own issues onto him or if I’m just being bigoted towards bi men, but either way, I feel truly awful about it. But when I think about the fact that he’s bi and is attracted to men, I become jealous and fearful that he will leave me for a man or that he would rather be with a man....

ARTIST: Paloma ChavezSHOW: Sleater-Kinney and Lizzo at Riviera Theatre on Tue 2/17MORE INFO: palomachavez.com

With closed theaters, movies played on my small TV, and the lukewarm reaction of the summer’s releases, I was itching to watch something with others. And lucky for me, the drive-in was back. I hope it’s here to stay. By September, I’d seen friends post about their “new” drive-in experiences of watching family-friendly favorites with kids way too young to have ever remembered when pulling up to a lot with a huge screen and cars packed full of folks was a thing....

French director Mia Hansen-Løve is one of the most ambitious filmmakers working today, trading in themes that are nearly universal yet difficult to articulate. Goodbye First Love (2011) isn’t about the loss of innocence so much as how one feels losing his innocence. Employing a rich, subtle cinematic language, one rooted in jump cuts and confident, sweeping camera movements, Hansen-Løve renders almost palpable the sensation of time slipping away. Her fourth feature, Eden, does this in the service of yet another complicated emotion—the longing for transcendence....

You don’t have to read much into what I’ve written for the Listener since December to conclude that my condition during the past three months of the pandemic has been . . . let’s say “suboptimal.” I’ve reviewed a cosmic metal epic that predicts the fall of the human species, set up an ostensible music poll that was actually about the choice between default hopelessness and forced optimism, and speculated about a 1970s recording of a carousel band organ so spectacularly decrepit that I couldn’t help comparing it to my brain....

Summer is gone, but it hasn’t quite taken music festivals with it. This weekend, hip-hop and EDM stars descend on Toyota Park for the three-day Freaky Deaky—a production of React Presents, who’ve also booked the two-day Reaction New Year’s Eve at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. And early next year, the folks at Lincoln Hall and Schubas bring back Tomorrow Never Knows for its 13th iteration. The festival kicks off Wednesday, January 11, and takes over Schubas, Lincoln Hall, Metro, and the Hideout for five days....

Donald Trump may be the best thing that ever happened to Rahm Emanuel. This year Emanuel has been able to style himself as a champion of immigrants and a tough-talking defender of liberal values and his city’s pride thanks to Trump and his petty obsession with Chicago. Meanwhile Chicago’s stature continues to grow as a glistening global city. The Obama Presidential Center will be constructed in Jackson Park, and a kickoff summit of global activists and leaders was held this fall....

In 1984, opening a blues lounge in Logan Square made little business sense. The neighborhood was (and still is) predominantly Hispanic, had a moderate gang problem, and was decidedly far-flung in relation to Chicago’s other blues hubs on the south and north sides. “People already had some preexisting judgment about Logan Square if you go back 30 years ago,” Tony Mangiullo says. “The idea of a blues club here was absolutely crazy....

When I first heard the music of Saskatchewan cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum, who’ve been performing folk music together as Kacy & Clayton since they were children, I found it a bit too polished; it summoned the spirit of Judy Collins more than Anne Briggs. But something about the duo’s third album, last year’s Strange Country (New West), transformed my initial opinion. There was an earnestness to the songs; it was clear the duo weren’t trying to pretend to be OG folkies, and that self-awareness came through when Anderson sang lyrics such as “Because everything I’m doing has already been done,” in “If You Ask How I’m Keeping....

I’ve enthusiastically awaited two mixtapes that are finally out this week. Yesterday Save Money rapper Towkio dropped his debut .Wav Theory (I’ll have more on that for his release party at Metro next month), and tomorrow former footwork producer and bop progenitor DJ Nate will release IamLilFlexxii. Between those full-lengths I’m also carving out some time to take in more of Pleasure Palace, an EP that local duo BoneLang put out Monday....