A few minutes walk from Bubba Gump, Shakespeare Theater and the IMAX is this weekend’s Exposition of Sculpture Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) Chicago, bringing around 100 similarly eclectic galleries to Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. Considering the show’s artistic star power and the stacks of bills changing hands, Friday afternoon seemed positively mellow. Visitors seemed more intent on finding that perfect trinket for their living room or personal adornment than investing in the next Picasso.... more ›

Last weekend, we caught Robin McFarquhar: Stage Combat, Text-to-Fight, a lecture about and demonstration of stage combat presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival. Dr. McFarquhar teaches theater movement at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and has worked with the Steppenwolf, Court, and Goodman theaters and on Broadway. He choreographed the combat in the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s current production of "Hamlet," playing through November 18. more ›

Note: This is Part 2 of an occasional series. Part 1 can be found here. Theater companies have been working overtime lately, killing a forest to print their brochures and flooding inboxes with exciting emails—You Just Can’t Miss This Season!, We’ve Got Stuff You Can’t See Anywhere Else!, and Its’ Our Anniversary! Are You Going To Stand Me Up On Our Anniversary?!?! It’s a lot of clutter and noise, but it’s far more interesting than... more ›