From March 27-April 14, Victory Gardens is releasing Coval's one man expo: L-Vis LIVE! based on his new collection of poetry. more ›

Whether you're in a relationship or not, here are a few events leading up to Valentine's Day you might want to keep your eye on. 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 ›

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 ›

Kill Hannah frontman Mat Devine chatted with Do312 last week about his experiences as a cast member of the Broadway disaster-in-the-making Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. It's notable for being one of the few positive things we've read about the production since professional theatre critics got tired of waiting fo the show to finish previews and filed a torrent of scathing reviews last week. 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 ›

When Mistakes Were Made opened here last year, we wouldn't have predicted it'd be heading for The Big Apple. Sure, Michael Shannon is an Oscar nominee, and his stage presence is absolutely riveting, but we figured that an extended play that consists almost entirely of a single character talking on the phone would be a bit of hard sell for the New York stage. Luckily, we were wrong. more ›

Roger Ebert has taken to Twitter with a vengeance, not only covering movie-related stuff but also wading into the deep waters of Trib shenanigans and politics (check out this zinger about the Anita Hill/Mrs. Clarence Thomas flap). His tweets are just about as entertaining as 140 characters can be. more ›

In the summer of 1816, guests of Lord Byron were challenged to write the scariest ghost story possible - Mary Shelley’s entry in this contest became the classic horror novel, Frankenstein, and the events leading up its creation became playwright Emily Dendinger’s Hideous Progeny. Before we go any further, a declaration of our ignorance: We (I) have never read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” nor are we too familiar with Lord Byron’s poetry. The bibliophiles and literary scholars among you will likely pick up a few references we missed, but prior knowledge isn’t required to understand the play. In fact, the show is almost overly-simplified, constraining the potential displayed in the more interesting and poetic moments. more ›

You may have seen the Rock of Ages advertisements splashed all over town and despite their ofttimes gaudy presence we’re here to tell you now: Go forth. Buy Tickets. It Will Be Worth It. Trust us - we’ve seen it twice in on Broadway and to this we can attest: It Will Melt Your Face Off. more ›

Not sure how we missed this one but apparently the musical Hope: Das Obama Musical debuted in Germany back in January. It looks amazing and all we can, er, hope is that one of the theater companies in town see fit to bring this Barack and roll (see what we did there?) event to town. The Atlantic has more. more ›

We know this weekend is all about sunshine, beer and barbeques, but if you're looking to mix things up a bit, try one of these on for size. more ›

Mark Twain's autobiography apparently reveals several juicy and candid details about his life. But very few people have read it. He asked that it not be published until a century after he died. The 100th anniversary of Twain's death just passed in April, so the University of California, Berkley is removing the manuscript from their vault and is publishing the first volume of the trilogy this November. The Independent reports that Twain left 5,000 unedited pages, and more than half of edited trilogy will be new material that has never been published. more ›

We were entirely unfamiliar with the story of Hephaestus before checking out Lookingglass Theatre's adaptation at Goodman's Owen Theatre, and we suspect the several audience members under the age of ten didn't either - which didn't stop any of us from having a swell time. more ›

We don't know what possesses the Griffin folk to stage scripts with such enormous casts - this production has 27 actors - but we're always excited for a show with a big female contingent. In fact, Kris Vire notes that the company has "engaged so many of the city’s talented young actresses that you begin to wonder how any other theater has a show running right now." more ›

New Leaf Theatre's Curse Of The Starving Class is more of a slow-burn than an explosion, its charged performances and palpable pathos are riveting. If you like that sort of thing. more ›

Earlier this week, we perused the newly-announced nominees for 2010 Tony Awards, and realized something disturbing. This is the first time in at least 13 years that we (I) haven't seen a single nominated show. The good news is, most of those shows are still running. As most Tony-eligible shows are open-ended runs, tangible praise is important for business (although the Best Original Score nomination for new musical Enron is not nearly enough to keep it afloat). more ›

Based on the 1951 John Van Druten play I Am A Camera and its subsequent novel adaptation ("Goodbye to Berlin" by Christopher Isherwood), Cabaret is set in 1931 Berlin during the Nazi ascent to power. American writer Cliff Bradshaw has come to Berlin in hopes of finding inspiration for his novel, and instead (or in addition) finds Brit Sally Bowles, the headliner at the Kit Kat Club. A seedy, local cabaret, the Kit Kat Club serves as a metaphor for Berlin itself: one moment the biggest bacchanal in town, closed off from reality - the next, crumbling under the weight of political pressure (to put it mildly). more ›

We'll admit it. There are several pieces of classic literature with which we're familiar only because they were adapted into musicals. There are many more with which we're entirely unfamiliar due to our relatively stringent undergraduate guidelines on avoiding classes whose reading lists included books over 300 pages. Lucky for us, The Literati, presented by new-to-our-radar troupe Chicago dell'Arte, has distilled twenty-five of the world's most masterful masterpieces into short, hilarious adaptations/bastardizations, and is ready to perform any five of them at the roll of a die. Striking the right balance between clever and ridiculous, the show is both surprisingly educational and consistently entertaining. more ›

We haven't caught Billy Elliot yet, but it's been on our list ever since Ben Brantley, our favorite New York Times curmudgeon, declared it was actually good. The Chicago production - starring no less than four Billys, opened to rave reviews earlier this month. more ›

Endgame takes place in a post-apocalyptic world (or perhaps in the mind of Hamm, the crotchety would-be King of this microcosmic, bizarre realm), in a nonspecific, dank, grey room with towering walls and two teeny, barred windows reachable only by ladder. Surrounded by a dark void (in the form of an empty orchestra pit between audience and stage), the setting could be a fortress, a prison, a mental hospital, an exceptionally depressing nursing home, or, well, nowhere. As with practically everything else in the play, the metaphors are endless, and making a specific decision is neither required nor desirable. Beckett certainly makes you think - but there is a looming danger of overthinking. Be careful, or your brain will explode. more ›

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Currently in its Chicago premiere (courtesy of Sideshow Theatre Company), Medea With Child assumes you already know the Greek myth of Medea, or at least the Euripides play. If you don't, here's the Cliff Notes version: Medea's husband Jason, with whom she has two children, leaves her for a younger woman (Glauce, daughter of King Creon). As revenge, Medea sends Glauce a poisoned dress and coronet. Creon dies trying to save her, and she dies anyway. Oh, and Medea murders her two children. Greek tragedy is pretty f'ing tragic. We had the pleasure (and pain) of seeing Fiona Shaw in The Abbey Theater's Broadway production of Medea about seven years ago, and it was possibly the most gut-wrenching piece of theatre we've ever seen (literally - one cast member threw up on stage after discovering Medea's heinous act). It would be unfair to compare the two productions directly, but we do have a reason for bringing it up: the original Medea is horrific, dramatic, fascinating and, language aside, modern. Medea With Child recasts Medea as Media, a tribal witch of unspecified ethnic background alienated in a white-washed world, and focuses on the media's influence over the public's perception of, reaction to and implication in heinous crimes, muddling the story and prompting us to ask: Why not just write a brand new play? more ›

If you read our theatre reviews with any regularity, you know that we're not big fans of shows that rely on "stuff." However, when the main characters in a play are puppets, the game changes. Redmoon Theatre's The Cabinet is necessarily just as much about the stuff as the story - and it's beautiful. Contained almost entirely in a 14 foot tall cabinet - a metaphorical coffin/funhouse/prison and literal insane asylum - the production is an enthralling, meticulously constructed, disturbing ballet of objects that, as we missed Redmoon's original in 2005, is unlike anything we've seen before. more ›

In 17th century France, Pridamant has come to see Alcandre, an illusionist of sorts, in hopes that the necromancer (vocab word of the day!) will be able to find the son he banished years ago. With the help of his forcibly mute, troll-ish assistant Amanuensis, Alcandre conjures visions of Pridamant's son - the son's name is up for debate, in case you're wondering why we haven't named him. As Pridamant watches his son's misadventures (with us watching him watching - hey, we said it was meta), he grows increasingly confused about the kind of person his son has become, and guilty about their estrangement. The majority of the show's content is in these plays-within-a-play, so it's a good thing they're so much fun. The storylines are deceptively simple (boy falls in love with girl above his station, boy competes with wealthy suitors for her affection, maid meddles on girl's behalf for selfish reasons disguised as altruism); the emotions involved are complex. The Illusion's ensemble cast hits the right level of sincerity in its exploration of the script's many unanswerable questions, giving the audience flashes of clarity before turning everything upside down. more ›

We were hoping to use last week's writer Happy Hour meeting as an opportunity to get Tankboy drunk enough gently convince our fellow writers to check out some theatre for us, but apparently they have lots of other things to write about like "news" and "politics." Had we not run out of money for shots been more persuasive, here's what we would've sent them to see: more ›

It's 1986, and "Hey! Dancin!", Chicago's most popular cable-access dance show, is about to tape its last show of the season. Obsessed with two of the show's stars, teenagers Trisha (Catherine Dughi) and Halle (Melissa Nedell) push their way onto the show, determined to hook up with their totally awesome idols. With this plot, Factory Theater’s Hey! Dancin! could easily be a cute one-off joke that fades as quickly as Mia Sara's post-Ferris career - but thanks to the sharp script, committed cast and attention to detail, it's consistently entertaining. more ›

Right around this time last year, we had just learned about World Theatre Day. The almost-50-year-old event will be celebrated once again this Saturday, and for the second year in a row, Chicago is joining the party - and throwing one. more ›