A Naperville stabbing left a teacher dead and two seriously injured, new theaters are coming to Chicago, and other news. more ›

What do you get when you take Harlem Renaissance literature and adapt it to a one-man stage performance? Well, here's your chance to find out. more ›

A classic tome of alcoholic refreshment inspires six tales of tippling in this new theater piece from BoyGirlBoyGirl. more ›

Trekkies rejoice! The Klingon adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is returning to Chicago this year. more ›

After seeing a Chicago play, legendary photographer Art Shay shares his recollections of race relations in suburban Chicago in 1959, with photos not seen in years. more ›

More accurately, it's More Than 30 Beers For A Few Hours, but that doesn't sound as catchy. more ›

A fundraiser for Step Up women's Network. The Neo-Futurists tackle Purple Rain. Green City Market's "Meet the Market" series hits Nightwood. more ›

Today's listings include a birthday celebration at Pastoral, beer and sliders at Sheffield's and a preview of a play based on a Bette Midler movie. more ›

In today's listings: A sci-fi classic at the Portage Theater. Letter writing at the Hideout. more ›

Today's listings include the Chicago Short Comedy Video and Film Festival, Jackalope Theatre's Living Newspapers Festival and a drunk trolley to the Captain Morgan Club. more ›

In today's listings: 5Rabbit beer comes to Fountainhead, swedish fuzz-rock masters Truckfighters at Reggie's and thee Superman story set in the future at Links Hall. more ›

The Neo-Futurists re-visit one of the moments of KISS' history the band would rather forget. more ›

The TBS and Just For Laughs comedy festival is still a relatively new annual event, but it continues to grow in scope, helping reaffirm Chicago's place as a world class center of comedy. The full line-up is extensive and impressive but there are a few can't miss acts hitting town. more ›

Last night, for the second time in the past week, our eyes and attention were diverted from the big screen during a movie we paid to see by someone unashamedly using their cell phone. Although we resisted a nearly overpowering urge to ask the person who felt so compelled to text or twitter or update their Facebook page with (one imagines) a fetal review of Midnight in Paris that they couldn't even wait until the movie finished exactly where they acquired a mobile device with what was obviously an eight-digit candlepower display, we can't help but get a little Andy Rooney on the subject now. more ›

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Today in "Pencil This In:" labor discussions, beer pairings, a pub marks its first anniversary and Chuck guests on a talk show tonight. more ›

The British Royla National Theatre's production of Frankenstein, directed by Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle, has played to sold out houses in London since its February premiere and is set to end its run next month. The production stars Benedict Cumberbatch (captivating in BBC's recent Sherlock that was part of PBS' Masterpiece series) and Trainspotting's Jonny Lee MIller, fresh off a run on Dexter as primary antagonist Jordan Chase. Miller and Cumberbatch alternate between playing Victor Frankenstein and the Creature in this production, giving the production a different dynamic every night between the two prinicpals. more ›

Jayson Brooks, lead singer of local soul/funk rock project JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound, is no stranger to theater - Brooks was previously an actor and has been acclaimed for his performance as Coalhouse Walker in Porchlight Theatre's production of Ragtime. So it’s only fitting that he and his backup band have been cast in Bailiwick Chicago’s adaptation of Passing Strange, a Tony Award-winning rock & roll musical. more ›

When we heard Chicago Delle Arte was performing another installment of The Literati, we hurried on over to the first performance we could make. The thing is, although we do love reading and books and those sorts of intelligent things, we also have social lives and jobs and stuff, so it’s hard to read everything we should. And when it comes to all those frou-frou classics, if we didn’t read it in a college humanities class, then we probably never will. That’s why The Literarti is a great idea. Three actors of the acting group Chicago Delle Arte have taken 25 works of literature and adapted them into 10 to 25 minute plays. With the roll of a die, audience members select the five different works the trio will perform throughout the show. Audience members have a one in 3,125 chance of seeing the same show twice. And although the actors have 7.5 hours of material locked and loaded, each audience only sees about 90 minutes of it. more ›

The ne plus ultra of metatextual bad movie celebration, "It Came from the Neo-Futurarium" has brought us nine solid years of gleefully cheap laughs. Running every summer, each week the Neos take the screenplay of a terrible movie (such The Cross and the Switchblade) and do a glorified staged reading, adding dollar-store props. Each script is performed with the sort of reverence more often reserved for the works of Shakespeare, in the steadfast conviction that truly rotten cinema is hilarious enough without the need for snark. more ›

When Alan Arkin moved to Chicago in the late 50's it wasn't part of a quest to learn cutting-edge improvisational theater techniques. It was strictly a way to put food on the table. He recently released his memoir and we were lucky enough to field a few questions to Mr. Arkin about his time in Chicago, the nature of improv, and the difficulties of film-making. more ›

Comedy is apparently a booming market again in Chicago. Last week came the news that The Lakeshore Theatre was being turned into a traditional comedy club by legendary Los Angeles comedy club, the Laugh Factory. Today comes news that the Second City has plans to renovate the space formerly occupied by Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding into a 280-seat theater for comedy-cabarets and stand-up performances. more ›

Don’t try to contain the Tupperware Lady from Alabama—Dixie Longate, the fast-talking, booze addicted, mother of three has plenty to say when she returns to Chicago this March as part of a 20-city national tour. more ›

"They have said that if we go back, we have to face the KGB and it will be five to fifteen years in prison," Natalia Kolyada, a co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre, told the Tribune. That is not a quote from a play. This is really happening. more ›

In the same way the names behind True Grit - Cohen! Bridges! Damon! - had movie-lovers drooling before the first take, Steppenwolf’s production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was set up to be this season’s smash-hit - Albee! Morton! Letts! - before the first rehearsal. And thanks to what the LA Times calls “the great Albee-Steppenwolf Thaw of 2010” (more on that later), the production lives up to the hype. And more. more ›

Allow us this opinion about "It's a Wonderful Life" for a moment, will you? For the longest time we found James Stewart's George Bailey to be not so much of a selfless family man as he was a milquetoast pussy who sacrificed his dreams to the point where he wound up being suicidal. It's really two-plus hours of depressing movie that we've made more palatable in recent years by sneaking a flask into the Music Box and hissing at the screen every time Lionel Barrymore ("Happy New Year to you... in jail!") is in scene, or catcalling whenever Donna Reed — the hottest old maid we've ever seen — graces the story. more ›

Back in June, a group of musicians, artists and puppeteers staged a shadow puppet show at Three Brothers Arts Garage. The centerpiece of the show was a mesmerizing performance of "Jabberwocky," Lewis Carrol's classic poem of nonsense that added such words as "galumphing," "uffish" and "chortle" to the English language canon. The complete spectacle was brought to life in arresting visuals and the haunting narration of Sally Timms. more ›

As the snow gently fell to earth this morning, we here at Chicagoist couldn't help but feel the holiday spirit slowly overtake us, despite the already tiresome barrage of commercials, harried last-minute shoppers and bell-ringers invading our space on the way to the our offices. For a moment we remembered what we love best about the season; gathering around the table with friends and enjoying the blessings that have been bestowed upon us. Tiny Tim from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol truly had the spirit of the season in mind when he spoke the famous line, "God bless us, everyone." more ›

With the city's food media and assorted foochebaggery on pins and needles for next week's release of the Chicago Michelin Guide, the Tribune's "Chicago Live" series at the Chicago Theatre, produced in conjunction with the Second City, will focus on all things food in next week's installment. more ›

David Sedaris first caught the public's attention with his famed appearance on National Public Radio in 1992 reading his hilarious essay, The Santaland Diaries. He quickly ascended to fame with his tales of growing up in a, shall we say, eccentric family environment, with books like Me Talk Pretty One Day and Holidays on Ice. It is really no surprise to us that he would decide pen yet another holiday themed comedy being that he has done two already. This time around he recruited his, shall we say, completely wacked-out sister, Amy Sedaris of Strangers with Candy fame, to collaborate on this particular piece, The Book of Liz. more ›