Chicago Reader print issue of January 25, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 8)

Winter Theater & Arts FREE AND FREAKY SINCE 1971 | JANUARY 25, 2024

THIS WEEK

C H I C AG O R E A D E R | JA N UA RY 2 5, 2 024 | VO LU M E 5 3 , N U M B E R 8

TO CONTACT ANY READER EMPLOYEE, EMAIL: (FIRST INITIAL)(LAST NAME) @CHICAGOREADER.COM

IN THIS ISSUE

LETTERS

04 Readers Respond A correction and your thoughts 04 Editor’s Note Yes, Andrew, the world is a scary place.

08 Sula | Book roundup New (and gently used) Chicago food books you should know

16 Feminist collective The debut exhibition of the Paglees, a feminist collective of artists of South Asian origin 17 Comic Rhonda Wheatley helps viewers glimpse alternative realms of time.

18 Craft Work An all-female art studio opens up shop at Navy Pier.

NEWS & POLITICS

THEATER

CITY LIFE

06 Sculpture Explore the rock carvings along Chicago’s shoreline.

FOOD & DRINK

20 Preview picks Our critics suggest upcoming winter treats in comedy, dance, opera, and theater.

26 Pop-punk play premiere The Understudy premieres a play inspired

by Avril Lavigne.

FILM

28 Repertory screenings Looking ahead at the Chicago Film Society’s winter calendar 30 Film festival preview The Architecture & Design Film Festival builds a bridge between Chicago and the world.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

10 Reproductive rights Illinois attorney general agrees not to enforce a law targeting fake abortion clinics.

ARTS & CULTURE

14 Cardoza | Community art Prison and Neighborhood Arts/ Education Project’s grand opening

36 City of Win Rapper Rufus Sims transcends the legacy of his drug kingpin father.

38 Chicagoans of Note Kyle LaValley, Ramova Theatre programming and creative director 40 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including R.A.P. Ferreira, Lovesliescrushing, Armand Hammer, and Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble 44 Early Warnings Upcoming shows to have on your radar 44 Gossip Wolf Emo trio Routine Fuss celebrate a high-energy new EP, dance party Gyrate brings Black diasporic sounds to Wicker Park, and more.

CLASSIFIEDS 22 Dance preview Chicago Shakespeare turns Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 album into a dance-theater piece.

24 Stand-up A night in the life of Wes McGehee

46 Jobs 47 Matches 47 Auditions 47 Adult Services 32 Caporale | Bang whose gong? How to soundtrack an orgy

CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR SAVANNAH HUGUELEY ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF THEATER & DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD TARYN ALLEN CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS KERRY CARDOZA NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY ASSOCIATE EDITOR & BRANDED CONTENT SPECIALIST JAMIE LUDWIG DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN) STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS ANN SCHOLHAMER CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER DIANE PASCAL VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CHASITY COOPER MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY MARKETING ASSOCIATE MAJA STACHNIK MEMBERSHIP MANAGER MICHAEL THOMPSON GRANTS MANAGER JOEY MANDEVILLE OFFICE MANAGER AND CIRCULATION DIRECTOR SANDRA KLEIN VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY SALES TEAM VANESSA FLEMING, WILL ROGERS DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER ADVERTISING ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM CLASSIFIEDS: CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM

THIS WEEK’S COVER Photograph of Loom II (2014), a ceramic work by Aoki Katsuyo 青木克世. Courtesy Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics via the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). This work is on display as part of “Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan,” on view at the AIC through June 3.

“Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan” Through 6/3: Mon, Fri-Sun, 11 AM-5 PM, Thu, 11 AM-8 PM, closed Tue-Wed; Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.; suggested general museum admission $32, seniors 65+, students, and 14 to 17-year-olds $26, free to AIC members, children 13 and under, LINK and WIC cardholders, and Illinois educators (see AIC website for information about free days and other discounts); artic.edu.

2 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

Comprehensive arts and culture news and reviews, deeply researched coverage of civic affairs, and unique voices from every part of Chicago.

The nonprofit Chicago Reader needs your support!

Donate any amount, or just $5 per month to become a member today.

Your support helps us continue to publish the journalism Chicagoans love in print and online, absolutely free with no paywalls and no log-ins.

Please make a gift today to support the Reader!

NATIONAL ADVERTISING VOICE MEDIA GROUP 1-888-278-9866 VMGADVERTISING.COM JOE LARKIN AND SUE BELAIR ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com 312-392-2970 READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM, INC. CHAIRPERSON EILEEN RHODES TREASURER REESE MARCUSSON SECRETARY TORRENCE GARDNER DIRECTORS MONIQUE BRINKMAN-HILL, JULIETTE BUFORD, DANIEL DEVER, MATT DOUBLEDAY, JAKE MIKVA, ROBERT REITER, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD STEED ----------------------------------------------------------------

READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED BIWEEKLY BY THE READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM 2930 S. MICHIGAN, SUITE 102 CHICAGO, IL 60616

312-392-2934, CHICAGOREADER.COM

COPYRIGHT © 2024 CHICAGO READER PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®

AN OPERA BY TERENCE BL ANCHARD

LIBRET TO BY MICHAEL CRISTOFER

Fight with pride.

January 27 - February 11 Sung in English with English titles.

Starring Reginald Smith, Jr. and Justin Austin Enrique Mazzola, conductor

SECURE YOUR SEATS TODAY.

lyricopera.org/champion

Lyric’s 2023/24 Season is sponsored by Invesco QQQ and Julie & Roger Baskes.

Lyric Opera of Chicago thanks its Official Airline, American Airlines, and acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Champion is commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.

Originally commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, co-commissioned by Jazz St. Louis. A co-production of Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Metropolitan Opera.

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 3

Reader Letters

m EDITOR’S NOTE

Re: “Lukewarm welcome” by Katie Prout, originally published in the March 3, 2022 issue (Volume 51, Number 11) and recently recirculated online Katie’s writing is always exceptional! I admire her examination of the reality that Chicagoans face when dealing with the services theoretically meant to “help” them. —Grace (hunkbitch), via Instagram Thank you for covering this! Chicago can and should do better. Our winters are always brutal—we should be prepared to help those who need it most! —Zoë (whenbaresattack), via Instagram Homeless people deserve dignity and resources too. It’s an experience, a condition, not a moral failing to be unhoused.

—Aoife Sen (quail.egg.enjoyer), via Instagram Re: “rat hole” talk in the ether based on the Roscoe Village sidewalk anomaly The Chicago Reader was ahead of its time . . . if only we had known the rat-based happenings that would come to Chicago so soon. [Ed. note: post accompanied with photos of our October 19, 2023 “Ratter” issue] —Carmilla (@draculavoice), via X Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader linkedin.com search chicago-reader The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

A

few weeks ago several of us read a commentary piece published in one of our daily newspapers on public safety and crime. It was written by a self-titled “retired journalist” who I have decided not to name here because I’m trying to prevent this very writing from disintegrating into a 2024 version of the late Atlanta poet Deacon Lunchbox’s tremendous and passionate response to the writer Lewis Grizzard (which I first saw this watching a PBS art and performance show titled Alive From Off Center that aired in 1991).

Lunchbox didn’t care for Grizzard’s politics or writing, and his piece on the television show includes a callout that I honor in the top reads of all time due to its directness and volume.

“Lewis Grizzard, I’m calling you out! I read your column and it made me puke,” Lunchbox began. “You’re a knee-jerk, myopic, supercilious, half-baked, neo-closeted white supremacist,” he continued, and continued, for several more minutes. I cherish this moment in time captured by poet Bob Holman and his fellow filmmakers and remember it when I’m responding in my head to, well, some people’s opinions.

In reality, I’m not interested in calling one person out (though we all know that it can feel really good to do so, I prefer to shout my diatribes directly at people I have an issue with, in front of them, audience or no audience, rather than spin around on newsprint). In reality, whenever there is an opinion column or letter to the editor that we all read and think, “Please spare us from your inner thoughts,” there are many readers that read, take in, agree, and believe. I write this for them (maybe you?): We live in a city.

Cities are filled with people.

People don’t know how to process all of their emotions and sometimes turn to anger or fear, which can lead to violence. We have all been witness to (and some of us have participated in) such anger, fear, and violence.

Is it worse now than it used to be? When I was a kid in the early 80s, Wicker Park was not a place that I was encouraged to hang out in as there were some stories of weird gang activity and drug users on benches. My grandmother’s advice to me for riding the bus back then:

sitting next to a guy who had a large dagger out (yes, like a Game of Thrones-style dagger) that he was slowly polishing with a cloth. He said, unprovoked, to Z, “Hey, you remind me of my aunt.” She nodded and then thankfully her stop came up and she left. And that was it.

Unsettling, but almost old-timey as the weirdness of public interaction can sometimes be.

At least the guy wasn’t stabbing anyone.

Is it more dangerous now? My knees are completely shot, in the way that many people in my section of the Generation X arena also experience, and I know that there’s no way I’m running away from something if it comes my way. But is life more dangerous?

Maybe for me and my knees.

When I was young, and could run, I still got assaulted by a stranger. I was in my twenties, walking by Is downtown safe or not? FABRIZIO GRILLO/PEXELS myself on Halsted. I’ve walked on that part that people are out to get you and an actual of that street many times since. A decade or group of people out to get you. Unfortunately, more ago, they tore down an entire church and the only way to tell the difference is to put replaced it with midrange townhomes, and I yourself in a position where you are traveling can still see the night, the gun, him telling me through the world over and over again and to shut the fuck up. But no one has gotten hurt there, as far as I can tell from police records, in surrounded by people you don’t know.

We gain poetry, soul, and solace this way several years. Is life more dangerous? Should too. That’s why many of us take a chance and we all just crawl around the city in a homage to the late great William Pope.L, staggering from stay in cities.

As someone assigned female at birth, “safe zone” to “safe zone”?

Or perhaps we can keep working hard for there are many terrible moments that I have experienced because of stupid and misguided justice and equity, and balance that with being men on public transportation. I’ve also been a the sort of people who shout loudly and strive crime victim several times. But I’m a survivor. to be kind. Your safe neighborhood is the actuTaking self-defense classes, learning deep al site of my violation, so let’s cut the difference listening techniques, and continuing to look and be as loving as possible. Let’s hope the fear for the details as I travel through the city, and and anger doesn’t happen for anyone else. v around all these people . . . all of this helps.

Is it more dangerous these days in Chica—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief go? My friend Z rode the Red Line last week, m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com “Don’t let them TOUCH YOU!” On the other hand, I regularly hung out downtown by myself, wandered Clark Street, fell asleep in the movie theater that used to be by the Newberry Library (what was it called?), and otherwise did nothing in Grant Park. Would just sit there and stare at people. I’m not saying I did all of this with absolutely no fear, but there’s a difference between having an idea in your head

CORRECTIONS In “Palestinian Americans in Chicago speak out against atrocities in Gaza,” published in the January 11, 2024 issue (Volume 53, Number seven), the printed version of the 4 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

story contained a quote from a person present at the event that expressed an accusation using a phrase that has historically been considered an anti-Semitic

trope. For the online version of the article published at chicagoreader.com, we have removed the remark. The Reader regrets the errors.

Paid Sponsored Content

At the California Clipper, everyone is welcome

The newly relaunched Humboldt Park lounge champions community, inclusivity, and fair labor practices wide shutdowns and supply chain issues while revamping the bar over the next year and a half.

Since the 1820s, Chicago’s pubs and taverns have provided a place between home and work where people from all walks of life could gather over a drink, share the news of the day, preserve traditions, and build community. One hundred years after Chicago was officially incorporated, the Caporusso family opened the Clipper Tavern in Humboldt Park in 1937. The bar—now named the California Clipper—has remained beloved ever since, weathering the passage of time, population shifts, and changes in ownership while serving up delicious cocktails, live entertainment, and good times.

They also rented four housing units above the bar to staffers at affordable rates, aligning their goals of enriching the neighborhood and supporting their team while combating gentrification. “People need to be able to live and work in the community they want to live and work in,” the Clipper’s owner says. “If you want to live upstairs, and you watch over your community and take care of your community, and then come downstairs and take care of the community again, I think that’s a healthy thing to do. It creates a vibrancy in the community.”

In May 2020, the Clipper was closed amid the COVID-19 lockdown, leaving its future in jeopardy. The thought of losing the iconic gem forever didn’t sit well with the owner of local hospitality company, Orbit Group. The pandemic had exacerbated challenges facing many Chicago neighborhoods, including economic disparity and gentrification, while deepening societal issues such as isolation, loneliness, and distrust. If losing treasured local spaces poured salt on the wound, reviving them had the potential to make things better. With that, he purchased the Clipper with a mission to honor its original spirit and uplift the surrounding community—starting with the intersection of California and Augusta where the bar is located.

“I looked at [those] four corners as an opportunity to kind of recreate how community was constructed before the Internet age and social-media age, where if people needed to talk to each other they needed to be in close proximity to each other,” the new owner says. “I don’t look at that as being a drinking establishment. I don’t look at that as alcohol. I look at it as just being together and congregating and exchanging. So that’s why, when I brought it back, I wanted to make sure that it was not viewed solely as a cocktail lounge. It’s a safe space for all—everybody is welcome.”

At the Clipper, living up to those standards starts at home. The hospitality sector experienced steep layoffs and unemployment for long stretches of 2020-2021, and thousands of local service industry professionals returned to work without stable income or health care, even as the pandemic raged on. The Clipper’s new owners were committed to fair labor practices from day one.

They supported the national One Fair Wage movement, and paid their staff monthly salaries that matched their average pre-pandemic earnings as they navigated city-

The Clipper reopened in February 2022 with some exciting updates: a world-class sound system, a new drink menu centering on classic cocktails (including highballs served from their very own highball machine), and an intimate lounge in the back dubbed the Lil Clip, which is available for private events. Further connecting the bar’s new era with its storied past—and delighting longtime neighbors—the sign outside the door was restored to its original mid century glory.

The Clipper has made up for lost time as regulars and newcomers have enthusiastically flocked to the bar. All the while, the staff has taken steps to make it more inclusive than ever, with community-driven events and curated entertainment that firmly embraces local talent and diversity. Last fall, they hosted drag shows, a pig roast, and a chat with 26th Ward alderperson Jessie Fuentes, as well as live bands and DJs specializing in noise, neo-soul, R&B, blues, indie rock, and much more.

Photos courtesy of the California Clipper

The Clipper was temporarily closed for the first two weeks of 2024 so it could be refreshed with a new coat of paint, updated bathrooms, and refurbished floors. It officially relaunched on January 20 with a winter calendar that includes open jams, record release shows, trivia nights, a documentary film screening, and monthly residencies from Chicago house legend Gene Hunt and rising star DJ Nanoos, who is known for her fusions of footwork and Dominican merengue. So, next time you’re out and about, make sure to stop by the Clipper to see what’s new, cherish community, and be a part of what makes Chicago great.

This sponsored content is paid for by the California Clipper

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 5

LAKEFRONT ANONYMOUS: CHICAGO’S UNKNOWN ART GALLERY

WINTER THEATER & ARTS CITY LIFE

The art in Chicago’s limestone Chicago is home to 6,000 unique pieces of art. And no, they aren’t inside of a museum.

By S. NICOLE LANE

S

ome of the world’s most famous statues and buildings use the same particularly soft material. The Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt, the Venus of Willendorf in the Natural History Museum of Austria, and even the entire facade of the Pentagon are made of limestone.

The sedimentary rock is malleable—as far as rocks go—and is popular with artists who work in sculpture.

Stone sculpture is the oldest form of artistic expression. From small statues to busts to monuments, the technique of sculpting can be traced back thousands of years. Historians and archeologists know about much of humanity thanks to uncovered stonework.

Here in Chicago, we have our own stone carvings. No, they aren’t located in the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures or at the Art Institute of Chicago. They are beneath our feet, warming our toes after a cold plunge in Lake Michigan, underneath where we lay out a beach towel, or possibly something you’ve biked past on your way to work.

Chicago is home to one of, if not the largest collection of outsider art. Along the six miles of limestone shoreline that shapes Lake Michigan, people have been carving.

William Swislow first learned about the lakeshore carvings from Aron Packer, a local art dealer who stumbled upon them in the late 1980s. Packer had a photo exhibition of the carvings at the Chicago Cultural Center in 1992.

“There’s very, very little that’s been written about them or even acknowledged over the years, with a couple of exceptions, Aaron’s show being one of them,” says Swislow.

Swislow was already interested in outsider and folk art, serving on the boards of Intuit:

6 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art and the Society for Commercial Archeology. To Swislow, the rock carvings are a perfect example of vernacular art.

“Most of the carvings are by people who certainly weren’t artists. And I’m sure they didn’t consider what they were doing making art,” he says.

The disappearing carvings By the mid-90s, Swislow started getting serious about looking for carvings—around the time they started disappearing.

In 1996, the Army Corps of Engineers, as part of their Shoreline Protection Project, began to destroy and reconstruct six miles of Chicago shoreline to reduce erosion. Much of the lakefront that we see—with the flat concrete slabs or rocks piled up, making it impossible to traverse—are some of the measures that have been taken to protect the shoreline.

by Aron Packer and William Swislow Hardcover, 160 pp., $40, interestingideas.com

Who are the artists along the shoreline?

Many rocks have a signature or autograph.

Calumet Park, on the far south side right before the Indiana border, has a rock with over a thousand names; a rock at Foster Beach has 40 to 60 names carved into it.

Swislow has tracked down a handful of people who have done carvings. “At Rainbow Beach, I talked to someone who made four or five carvings in the 1960s,” says Swislow.

“He told me that the lifeguards there had a hammer and chisel that they would pass around.”

The Promontory Point Conservancy even sponsored a few carvings and workshops with artists where mosaics were created.

Roman Villarreal, an outsider artist from the far south side who carved a famous mermaid that’s at Oakwood Beach, agreed to do a workshop with the Conservancy. Swislow and his daughter participated and made new carv-

A carving of Monty and Rose, the piping plover couple of Montrose Beach WILLIAM SWISLOW

“It was only when I realized that many of the carvings had already been destroyed that I realized maybe someone should really try to systematically document them,” says Swislow.

Around 2013, Swislow became more conscientious about photographing them. He told himself he would walk the entire length of the old shoreline and photograph every carving he saw.

In total, there are more than 6,000 carvings.

Swislow estimates that there were probably 4,000 to 5,000 more before the Army Corps projects.

In 2021, Swislow published Lakefront Anonymous: Chicago’s Unknown Art Gallery, a 160page book detailing the thousands of carvings by unknown artists.

Of course, every summer, more carvings are added, so Swislow hosts walking tours where he shows viewers the art in the rocks.

ings, contributing to the shoreline’s legacy.

At Foster Beach, some replicate actual Mayan ruin carvings of Mayan deities. Swislow saw the artist carving them in 1995, but at the time he didn’t think to talk to him. “That’s the only carver in the wild I ever saw,” he says.

Many carvers were just regular beachgoers, spending their days in the sun, chiseling away at the ground beneath them.

Want to see a carving? Here’s where to go.

The most accessible carvings, Swislow suggests, are at Foster Beach, where roughly 100 carvings can be found on the north and south ends. The north end is an easier walk. South of Foster includes a longer stretch of stones that goes all the way to Montrose Beach.

“South of La Rabida [Children’s] Hospital in the lake, in the water, there’s probably the most impressive carving that’s left, but you

gotta wade out through a few feet of water. It’s slippery to see it, but it’s this amazing carving that has 12 separate panels. And they’re dated from the 1940s to 1952. It’s just incredible,” Swislow says.

Calumet Beach is also accessible. Swislow says interested viewers should travel to the south end, near the Coast Guard station, where there is a high density of artwork due to the sailors who were stationed there and the fishermen who worked the shoreline.

Promontory Point is another highlight.

“It’s a little more challenging, especially for people with limited mobility, because you kind of have to climb up and down the rocks to see everything,” Swislow says.

For those seeking something sexier, there’s the Playboy bunny at Promontory Point and a spread-eagle woman at Pebble Beach.

Pebble Beach is currently at risk of redevelopment. South-side locals want to save it, and moreover, they want to save the carvings from being covered by concrete slabs or slope stone walls.

Why save the carvings?

“They are a legacy that people over the last 100 years have left for us,” Swislow says. “It’s kind of their way of leaving a little trace of their identity behind.”

Swislow says he cannot find any other city, in terms of modern carvings, that has what we have on the Chicago shoreline.

“It’s an anonymous collective, a social history of life on the lake,” he says. “When you put it all together, it’s a large-scale art environment and it is, as far as I know, unique in the world.”

French photographer Brassaï photographed Parisian rock carvings in his book Graffiti and wrote that carvings are a type of vandalism that are done out of survival instinct by those who cannot erect a pyramid or a cathedral.

“The moments are rare when one senses the pulse of life beating with such intense emotion that it calls for a stone, a wall, or the bark of some tree to be forever inscribed,” he wrote.

While they may not be the Venus de Milo or the Valley of Wonders, they are the heartbeats of thousands of Chicagoans who lived, and still live, along our shoreline. They may not be able to build a monument, but they can pick up a hammer and chisel, and in the most raw and human form, they can create.

The full article is available at chicagoreader. com. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

ANTIGONE FEB 2 – 25

By Sophocles

Translated by Nicholas Rudall Directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent 5535 S Ellis Ave Free Garage Parking Student/Group Rates (773) 753-4472 CourtTheatre.org Sponsored by

SAVANNAH E. BOWMAN, “THE SISTER’S”, OIL & ACRYLIC ON 16X20 CANVAS PAPER

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 7

TK caption TK CREDIT

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food.

WINTER THEATER & ARTS BOOK PREVIEWS

New (and gently used) Chicago food books you should know Seven upcoming and newish volumes on wine talk, beer hikes, cult eats, Boka, and more.

By MIKE SULA

M

y increasingly unmanageable hoarding impulses began with books—especially cookbooks—though my burrow eventually became cluttered with fossils, mugs, and stacks of magazines and old Readers. Still, the hardbacks and paperbacks continue to hit the doorstep, as they did in September when I last rounded up notable local food books. Here are a couple new ones on the horizon and a few more you might have missed last fall.

Wine Convo Generator: Mix and Match Witty Phrases to Sound like a Sommelier, Chasity Cooper (Chronicle Books), March 12 The Reader’s resident oenophile, Cooper (aka director of marketing and strategic communications), is a prolific wine writer, educator, and certified sommelier. But she still knows how difficult it is for neophytes to find the right words to talk about what they’re tasting.

“In the beginning of my wine journey, it was definitely challenging to describe what I was experiencing in the glass,” she says. “But the more I kept tasting, the more I was able to find the words—even if it wasn’t in the format of a sommelier or wine director. If a wine’s aroma or flavor profile reminded me of Tropical Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Warheads, or even peach cobbler, I would name that instead of trying to

8 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

overcompensate for what I thought I should be saying. Now, after learning about wine formally, I’ll admit that it is cool to be able to use ‘proper’ terminology. But as a wine professional, it is also my responsibility to help break those barriers to entry for wine lovers at any level.”

To that end, Cooper’s publishing this flipbook filled with 152,000 randomized tasting notes and phrases that allow readers to casually identify words that articulate what they taste and feel when they’re drinking a glass . . . or four.

“I like to think of this project as an opportunity for people to step out of their comfort zones when it comes to wine, and not to be afraid of saying the wrong thing,” she says. “I also want people to be empowered and encouraged to have these notes as something they can reference and discuss with friends and family members while they share wine together.”

Beer Hiking Chicago: The Tastiest Way to Discover the Windy City, Jessica Sedgwick and Dan Ochwat (Helvetiq), May 7 This Chicago advertising couple was (ahem) tapped to write the local entry in this

Swiss-published series. They present 30 city and regional bucolic perambulations terminating in suds, from the “easy” 1.3-mile West Ridge Nature Park stroll to Half Acre Beer Co., to the “strenuous” 1.8-mile slog through Warren Dunes State Park to Greenbush Brewing Co.

The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food, Andrew Friedman (Mariner Books), October 17, 2023 The prolific food writer and host of the Andrew Talks to Chefs podcast traces the creation— Michael Pollan–style—of a single dish served at Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark’s late Avondale restaurant, Wherewithall. Starting with the farmers who supplied the elements of dryaged strip loin, tomato, and sorrel, up to the line cooks who plated the finished dish and the server who walked it to the table. It’s a sweeping look at restaurant culture and food systems through the microcosm of a single dish.

Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat, Christina Ward (Process), September 26, 2023 Ward is the Milwaukee-based editor at “forbidden” books publisher Feral House, and her own third title is a deep dive into how fringe spiritual movements shaped the modern American diet—with recipes. The book’s purview spans U.S. history, but of special note to Chicagoans are the accounts of the restrictive diets and food-based cures of the neo-Zoroastrian Mazdaznan sect (yet, with a sugary doughnut recipe), and the food sovereignty efforts of the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam, with recipes for Moor Salad, and bean pie and bean soup, respectively.

Bon Vivant, Issue 5: Pizza, Hugh Amano, editor (A Sterling Bay Production), November 2023 It’s another fetching print travel culinary journal from the cookbook author and Sterling Bay

WINTER THEATER & ARTS

corporate chef focusing on some of the undercelebrated pizzas and pizzaiolos of Chicago, LA, Montreal, Vermont, Boston, and Rhode Island, with not even a glance at New York.

With shout-outs to local heroes like John Carruthers, Billy Zureikat, Derrick Tung, and the late Burt Katz, it also includes detailed recipes for Neapolitan, tavern-style, and a hybridized cast iron skillet pizza. Amano’s publishing schedule doesn’t always align with these book roundups, but he hints that the sixth issue, set to publish around Memorial Day, will “involve the mountains . . . and a fair share of cannabis.”

and America’s Test Kitchen digital editor (and former Trib food writer) Kevin Pang. Now cohosts of the video series Hunger Pangs, their generational divide was bridged through food,

A Very Chinese Cookbook: 100 Recipes From China and Not China (But Still Really Chinese), Kevin Pang and Jeffrey Pang (America’s Test Kitchen), October 24, 2023 Lifelong father–son discord is reconciled in this bright and cheerful collaboration between viral YouTube cooking sensation Jeffrey Pang

and consecrated (and exhaustively tested) by the esteemed New England–based home cooking brand with recipes like char siu–style spareribs, Shanghai soup dumplings, zha jiang mian, and ong choy with fermented bean curd.

Boka: the Cookbook, Kevin Boehm, Rob Katz, and Lee Wolen (Boka Restaurant Group), July 27, 2023 Of the handful of food books that escaped my web last year, this was the most surprising.

Self-published by the Boka Restaurant Group juggernaut on the occasion of its fine dining flagship’s 20th birthday, this hefty coffee table tome barely made a ripple in the food media splash pool. Lee Wolen’s composed plates leap from the page with photography by Huge Galdones and include, importantly, the chef’s signature stuffed chicken with asparagus, morels, and dill—a dish I still dream about decades after he debuted it pre-Boka as the hot

shit chef at the Lobby at the Peninsula. The 75 recipes also include a handful from the great pastry chef Meg Galus. I would’ve been just as happy to see some of the enduring drinks that were created over the years behind Lincoln Park’s only serious cocktail bar. v

m msula@chicagoreader.com

Intriguing, Enjoyable, Enlightening Join us for the Winter/Spring season of Adult Education Classes.

Embark on a journey through the ancient trade routes of Eurasia. Solve mysteries alongside the great lady detectives of literature. Explore the musical landscape of Chicago R&B. Learn how a black square changed the art world forever. And much, much more. Classes start February 7.

Browse In-Person and Virtual classes and register online at newberry.org/adult-education or scan the QR code.

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 9

NEWS & POLITICS REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

(Don’t) be deceived Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul agreed to toss out a law that would’ve cracked down on “deceptive practices” by fake abortion clinics.

By MAIA MCDONALD

W

hen the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2024, it ushered in another year of reproductive rights being stripped away since the fall of Roe v. Wade.

In Illinois, the latest legal decision to impact reproductive health care involves so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), organizations (typically affiliated with national religious groups opposed to contraception) that pose as medical clinics to dissuade pregnant people from considering abortion and other pro-choice options, often through deceptive means.

In a shocking about-face, Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul’s office announced an agreement last month with anti-abortion advocates that the state will not enforce legislation that would have cracked down on deceptive practices by these fake abortion clinics. It was a surprising move for the attorney general, who’d helped introduce such legislation himself earlier in 2023. As a result, many Illinois abortion advocates say they’ll need to work even harder to protect residents seeking reproductive health care.

The agreement followed a legal battle brought by anti-abortion advocacy groups the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, Pro-Life Action League, and Rockford Family Initiative, alongisde CPCs Relevant Pregnancy Options Center in Highland and W o m e n ’s H e l p Services (which runs Johnsburg’s 1st Way Life Center and Focus Women’s Center in McHenry). Together, they collectively sought to challenge the effects of Senate Bill 1909, an amendment to the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, which Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into

law in late July. They argued the law, which would have prohibited CPCs from engaging in deceptive practices and subjected them to hefty fines of up to $50,000 for each violation, limited their right to free speech.

Iain D. Johnston, a federal judge appointed by former president Donald Trump, temporarily blocked the newly enacted measure soon after it became law and issued a permanent injunction against the state in December, ending Illinois’s ability to penalize CPCs through the act.

Peter Breen, a former Republican state lawmaker currently serving as the executive vice president and head of litigation at the Thomas More Society, an anti-abortion legal advocacy group that represents several Illinois CPCs, wrote in a statement that the agreement is “a win for pro-life ministries and free speech.”

Though Illinois residents can still file complaints against these fake clinics through the attorney general’s website, abortion advocates like Lisa Battisfore, president and treasurer of Reproductive Transparency Now, a volunteer-led organization in Chicago that seeks to educate the public about CPCs, believe it isn’t enough.

Battisfore says she and other reproductive rights advocates felt “blindsided” by Raoul’s agreement, which she believes will give CPCs license to continue endangering the health of

Many residents—including medical professionals— are unable to identify CPCs, and people are often unaware these clinics are in their communities.

10 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

Illinoisans for the sake of “political points.”

“There is a lack of understanding that antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers are not just a part of the anti-abortion movement—they

Crisis pregnancy center pamphlets COLLAGE BY JAMES HOSKING

are the anti-abortion movement,” Battisfore says. “Crisis pregnancy centers have been a key strategic pillar for anti-abortion advocates for decades. This is all unfolding exactly the way they planned.”

Sometimes known as anti-abortion centers, pregnancy resource centers, pregnancy care centers, limited services pregnancy centers, or fake clinics, these facilities often pose as real medical clinics despite many not having the proper licenses to provide expansive reproductive health care. Many typically only offer ultrasounds or other limited services, like counseling, performed by volunteers.

Their goals, instead, focus on convincing people who come across them not to get abortions, and they overwhelmingly target vulnerable populations, including people of color, low-income communities, and students, Battisfore says.

She believes protecting the public from fake clinics is a neglected issue, one that’s pushed aside because it’s more “nuanced” and “complicated” than other, more straightforward abortion access issues.

Before Democratic lawmakers introduced

Senate Bill 1909 on Raoul’s behalf, Battisfore says she attempted to get the attorney general’s office to issue a consumer alert, much like ones issued in California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

California attorney general Rob Bonta, for example, issued a consumer alert—which many state attorneys general release to warn the public about potential scams or frauds— for the state’s CPCs in 2022, cautioning residents seeking reproductive health care about the potentially misleading and limited services the centers often provide.

When Raoul instead threw his support behind legislation that would hold CPCs accountable through preexisting law, Battisfore shifted her attention to support that effort, she says.

Raoul, who initially conceived of the legislation last year, says he was inspired to pursue it after encountering firsthand the deceptive practices employed by CPCs while visiting a Planned Parenthood of Illinois health center, according to a press release from March of last year. Raoul claimed to see people stationed outside of the clinic who, despite appearing

NEWS & POLITICS

as though they worked there, tried to steer people away from entering.

“Patients report being misled into going to crisis pregnancy centers—sometimes even receiving exams and ultrasounds—thinking they were visiting another clinic that offers the full range of reproductive care,” Raoul said in the release. “This is an extreme violation of trust and patient privacy that should not occur in our state.”

However, with the state’s decision not to enforce the new law, abortion advocates like Battisfore will have to find new ways to limit the impact of CPCs. Battisfore believes the attorney general should strongly consider a consumer alert. She and other advocates say Illinois can’t underestimate the impact of fake clinics nor the scope of their reach.

CPCs in Illinois provided services valued at nearly $8 million in 2019, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion group. Across the country, these centers provided supplies and services including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, parenting education

Crisis pregnancy center pamphlets COLLAGE BY JAMES HOSKING

al’s decision last month at an unrelated news conference where he said that the state’s existing consumer protection law “will do what’s necessary to keep organizations like the crisis pregnancy centers from providing misinformation [and] disinformation, and allow people to sue under that act.”

When asked why there had been a need for new legislation to address CPCs if they were already covered under existing law, Pritzker said, “It’s a good idea to protect people when they’re seeking health care from having their health care provider lie to them, and so that was the impetus behind it.”

Many pro-abortion supporters in Illinois saw the measure as an opportunity to further enshrine protections for reproductive rights— rights they believe remain at risk by the scores of CPCs that continue to operate in Illinois.

State senator Celina Villanueva, a Democrat from Chicago who filed Senate Bill 1909 in February 2023, detailed some of the deceptive practices used by CPCs in a news release. She stated these centers have opened near existing medical clinics that can provide reproductive health care; used similar names to misdirect patients; and promoted false, inflammatory claims that abortion can cause cancer or infertility.

State representative Terra Costa Howard, who carried the bill in the house, says she and other sponsors were initially confident in its chances (similar laws in Colorado and Connecticut had been successful) and are dis-

appointed in its outcome. Costa Howard, who says she has a CPC in her district, also doesn’t believe the First Amendment should shield groups that jeopardize the health of Illinois residents from being held accountable for dishonesty and misinformation.

“I don’t believe that the First Amendment protects lies, and that’s what’s occurring. If these fake clinics were giving accurate information—that’s one thing,” Costa Howard says. “There is nothing in the bill that required

the fake clinics to provide information about abortion. There’s nothing in the bill that requires them to give that information. You can’t lie about health care.”

Andrea Gallegos, the executive administrator of the reproductive health care provider Alamo Women’s Clinic in Carbondale, says her clinic’s patients are especially at risk of coming into contact with nearby CPCs amid the proximity to neighboring states where abortion is illegal.

Gallegos accuses CPCs of “fearmongering, meant to make people feel like they do not have a choice. It’s meant to kind of shame patients about abortion care. It’s devastating that they have been allowed to exist in the way that they do and [trick] people into thinking . . . that they are a medical facility when they’re not.” She adds, “I think it definitely affects reproductive health care.”

The Crisis Pregnancy Center Map project, led by Andrea Swartzendruber, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics

“I don’t believe that the First Amendment protects lies, and that’s what’s occurring.” programs, baby diapers, wipes, formula, clothing, and more to nearly one million new patients in 2022, the institute claims.

“It speaks to how powerful these antiabortion groups are, and that even in a state like Illinois, they were able to scare the attorney general away from defending his own legislation,” Battisfore says.

Raoul said in a December statement that the agreement with anti-abortion advocates who levied the suit against the state “in no way affects my ongoing work protecting women’s rights to access the full range of reproductive health services.” He concluded, “I will not waver in my efforts to ensure that Illinois remains an oasis of reproductive freedom in the middle of our nation.”

Pritzker responded to the attorney gener-

Demonstrators with Reproductive Transparency Now march against crisis pregnancy centers in Chicago on July 17, 2023. AL NOWAKOWSKI

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 11

PLAY WITH

PURPOSE

NEWS & POLITICS ®

Learn how every play helps at www.IllinoisLottery.com

ILLINOIS DREAM FUND The Crisis Pregnancy Center Map has identified 97 fake clinics in Illinois since 2018. AL NOWAKOWSKI Game odds available at Illinoislottery.com

continued from p. 11

Reduce Taxes, Build Wealth & Eliminate Interest Payments!

CREATE YOUR OWN BANK • Earn Uninterrupted Compound Interest and Dividends!

• Eliminate All Debt, in 9 Years or Less Including Mortgage(s) and Student Loan(s) !

• Enjoy Tax-Favored Growth and Distribution of Money!

• Access to Cash Value Prior to Age 59-1/2, Without Penalty!

• Reposition Your Tax-Deferred and Taxable Assets to Tax-Free!

• Self-Finance Purchases!

GET EDUCATED EMPOWERED & EQUIPPED TO WIN!

30 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 1260, Chicago, IL 60606 ERIC K. WILLIAMS TOP OF THE TABLE

312.724.7755

www.ERI.global

12 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

at the University of Georgia, has identified 97 fake clinics in Illinois since the project started in 2018, with more than a dozen in the greater Chicago area alone.

Swartzendruber believes that, despite the outcome of last year’s case, states and policymakers should figure out ways to regulate how CPCs operate, especially as many attempt to increase the medical services they offer. Many residents—including medical professionals—are unable to identify CPCs, and people are often unaware these centers are in their communities. Swartzendruber and others say education and awareness are becoming increasingly important to combat these issues.

“Major medical organizations agree that crisis pregnancy centers pose risks to both individual health and to public health. Some attorneys general have put out consumer warnings in different states, but there hasn’t been a ton of viable ways to regulate them,” Swartzendruber says. “I would encourage policymakers, state and local health departments, and medical professionals [and] public health professionals to find ways to make sure that people are aware of what crisis pregnancy centers are, and where they are in their local communities.”

Costa Howard says she and other members of the Illinois General Assembly who’d previously supported Senate Bill 1909 are working to find ways to address the negative impacts of CPCs, though they’ll also “have to make sure that we

have somebody who’s in place who’s actually going to enforce the laws that we pass.”

Outside last year’s focus on crisis pregnancy centers, Raoul’s office says it will continue to fight to maintain reproductive rights in Illinois. It’s currently defending the state’s Reproductive Health Act, which guarantees access to reproductive health care, against a similar legal challenge, according to Drew Hill, the attorney general’s deputy press secretary.

Battisfore sees CPCs as a neglected issue in the realm of reproductive health care—one she believes needs more focus and attention, and one made more difficult due to its complexities. Supporting pro-abortion groups and using direct action and community outreach to educate people most targeted by the fake clinics will help “protect them from being harmed before the harm occurs.”

Another potential solution she thinks could work: reframing centers as medical facilities instead of religious groups protected by free speech mandates.

“It’s time to start treating crisis pregnancy centers like health care facilities,” Battisfore says. “They are performing medical services.

They’re performing health care services without being regulated, so it’s time to regulate them as businesses that are performing the services that they provide. If they are as honest as they claim to be, they should not have a problem with that.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

BLUES@ LOGAN CENTER

Experimental Blues: Nat Myers Fri, Feb 9 • 7:30–9pm • Performance Penthouse

Tickets: $10 General / $5 Students, Seniors, Children 12 & under / Seating limited; get tickets early!

Our Experimental Blues concerts continue with Nat Myers, a Korean-American blues poet raised on hardcore and hip hop. An inherently restless spirit, begrudgingly pushed into music by his music-loving Korean mother and Black father, Myers ultimately found his rhythm in the poetics of itinerant musicians of the 1930s and 1940s. This poetry sharpened his musical interest, especially in the Blues. In this Experimental Blues concert, experience the way Myers draws from a variety of stylistic strains and historical threads to weave a complex epic about life in America.

logancenter.uchicago.edu/blues boxoffice@uchicago.edu 773.702.ARTS (2787) @loganUChicago

Logan Center for the Arts 915 E 60th St • Chicago • Free parking The Logan Center’s Blues programming is made possible with the generous support of The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation and friends of the Logan Center in partnership with WDCB Public Radio and the Muddy Waters MOJO Museum. Above: Nat Myers. Photo: Jim Herrington

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 13

WINTER THEATER & ARTS COMMUNITY ART

Walls turned sideways are bridges The Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project opens a gallery and community space of their own.

“IT AIN’T THAT FUNNY” R Through 3/2: Thu-Sat, noon-5 PM or by appointment, contactpnap@gmail. com, Walls Turned Sideways, 2717 W. Madison, p-nap.org

By KERRY CARDOZA

A

fter more than a decade of hosting art exhibitions and programming throughout the city, this month the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) finally opens a gallery and community space of their own. On Saturday, January 27, Walls Turned Sideways will have its grand opening, with an art show featuring work by Arkee Chaney and artists from Stateville Correctional Center. Walls Turned Sideways will be a home base for the organization, with space to make, show, and sell art, and for the community to gather and access resources.

“It’s an experiment,” says Sarah Ross, one of PNAP’s directors of art and exhibitions. “It just felt like it was time to have a little bit of a home.”

PNAP, a visual arts and education project that brings together teachers and incarcerated students, began in 2011, with two classes held at Stateville in Crest Hill. It carries on the work of the activist, artist, and educator Dr. Margaret Burroughs, who died in 2010, and who taught at Stateville for many years.

Today, PNAP offers more than a dozen noncredit classes for incarcerated students per

“When I was in there painting . . . prison didn’t exist, nothing existed but that painting that I was doing.” year and also runs a policy think tank and a degree program in addition to hosting art shows and other programming.

Walls Turned Sideways was a long time in the making. Ross says the idea for a neighbor-

14 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

Comics by Arkee Chaney will be on view at Walls Turned Sideways’s inaugural show. COURTESY PNAP

hood space dates back to the organization’s formation, hence its title. But it wasn’t until December 2022 that PNAP signed the lease on the space they’re in now, at 2717 W. Madison in Garfield Park—around the corner from the iconic mural of Fred Hampton. PNAP has spent the last year building out the approximately 3,000-square-foot location, doing everything from sealing the floors to adding bathrooms and offices.

Finding a space on the west side was purposeful. For one thing, the area has one of the highest rates of returning citizens, or people reentering society after incarceration.

PNAP staff also spent a few years researching and interviewing community organizations doing like-minded work to learn what sort of resources were needed and where, and the west side emerged as the best option. “I mean, I don’t think that there’s enough of anything anywhere for people,” Ross says. There are no galleries that focus primarily on incarceration.

And while there are some organizations on the west side focused on reentry work, such as the

Safer Foundation, none are doing the sort of grassroots work that PNAP does.

“Being self-declared abolitionists I think attracts a lot of folks to this, would attract a lot of folks here for help,” says Pablo Mendoza, a PNAP staffer who has been spearheading Walls Turned Sideways.

Their research led them to Walls Turned Sideways’s focus areas: political education, community care, and art and exhibitions.

“We want to start slow and kind of see what’s needed,” Ross says. But there’s no shortage of potential ideas, from teaching screen printing and printmaking to screening films to doing reentry work like helping people with resumes. “Basically, the premise was to have a space because space is necessary for folks to congregate,” Mendoza says. “We’re trying to coordinate folks coming here to give some updates and how to be involved in different political education.”

PNAP is also interested in offering a place to heal or to get support if you or a loved one has been impacted by incarceration. “Those

conversations are important. And that’s kind of what we’re trying to have here, where people can actually come in here and conversate about that and not be targeted [or experience] additional trauma just because you know or have a loved one that’s incarcerated,” Mendoza says. “Usually when you’re in spaces like that, you don’t want to talk to people about it . . . so you just suffer in silence. And we’re hoping to end that right here as well.”

The art component of PNAP is also an outlet for healing. “Art is—I’m learning—a good connector to or a good release for stresses or traumas that have been inflicted upon us,” Mendoza says. “Trauma is . . . stored in a place in the brain where it has no access to language. So providing our folks to do some of the healing, just to create some art and get lost a little bit, which is some of what I did on the inside, that was beautiful. . . . When I was in there painting . . . prison didn’t exist, nothing existed but that painting that I was doing.”

So it’s fitting that the inaugural exhibition at Walls Turned Sideways, “It Ain’t That Funny,” will feature the comics of current and formerly incarcerated artists. Featured artist Arkee Chaney was incarcerated for over 30 years, under Illinois’s “three strikes” law, until his life sentence was commuted by Governor J.B. Pritzker in 2020. While in prison, Chaney rediscovered his childhood passion for art, taking classes under Dr. Burroughs. “He’s an artist’s artist, he paints every day,” Ross says.

“He puts paint on canvas every single day.”

In addition to painting and making ceramics, Chaney also creates comics, which were frequently published in the prison newspaper Stateville Speaks. Selections from those comics will be on display, as will work created by artists who took a class with PNAP teacher Damon Locks.

“Just having a home base feels like, you know, let’s just see if this works,” Ross says.

“Maybe it won’t be worth it in five years.

Maybe there’ll be flourishing things everywhere and it won’t be needed and that would be awesome. But in the meantime, we’ll try to see what’s possible here.” v

m kcardoza@chicagoreader.com

C H I C AG O S H A K E S P E A R E T H E AT E R

C H I C AG O S H A K E S P E A R E T H E AT E R

Power, greed, ambition. Win at all costs. music & lyrics by

Sufjan Stevens based on the album Illinois

story by

Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury

directed & choreographed by

Justin Peck

written by

William Shakespeare directed by

Edward Hall starring

Katy Sullivan

BEGINS FEB 2 • TICKETS: CHICAGOSHAKES.COM RICHARD III LEAD SPONSOR

Carl and Marilynn Thoma

RICHARD III SPONSORS

Michael Charles Litt

BEGINS JAN 28 • TICKETS: CHICAGOSHAKES.COM ILLINOISE PRODUCTION SPONSOR

Limited Engagement Begins March 27

ChoirOfMan.com TICKETS FROM $35 773-935-6100

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 15

WINTER THEATER & ARTS FEMINIST COLLECTIVE

“THE PAGLEES: BETWEEN REASON AND MADNESS” R Through 4/27: Thu-Sat, 11 AM-6 PM, South Asia Institute, 1925 S. Michigan, saichicago.org/exhibition, $10 general admission, $5 for students with valid ID, free admission on Fridays

brocade fabric, Maharaj transforms them into kaleidoscopic portraits of great individuality.

Most of the images depict women posed alone, but several show a group, or a pair in an embrace like sisters. Over two-thirds of the women who took part in indentureship were The Paglees’s South Asia Institute exhibition reclaims the narrative of unmarried or widowed, likely seeing the propthe “unruly woman” for immigrant women of color. osition as a way to expand their options beyond the patriarchal practices that discriminated

By WENDY WEI against them at home. Ironically, in escaping one society, they entered another that imposed he Paglees’s eponymous group and dispersed demographic—immigrant a Western gaze on them, seeing them as meek, show at the South Asia Institute women of color. The extensive use of fiber art subservient, and sexualized—despite all evi(SAI) explores the thin line is a natural conduit through which to grasp dence to the contrary as they toiled in agricul“between reason and madness” the global reach of female labor from the In- tural labor and struck out as entrepreneurs.

While pervasive stereotypes of South Asian that women of the South Asian dian subcontinent and its driver, the lucrative cultures as patriarchal and sexist are explored global diaspora traverse today, traversed yes- cotton textile industry.

In a handful of photo-based paintings and here, the Paglees also shine a mirror back terday, and will traverse tomorrow.

Paglee is the feminine form of “mad, crazy collages taken from her series Bhumi’s Daugh- on the West. Fawzia Khan’s Veil (2019) does person” in several South Asian languages. ter (2022) and Lambi Kahani (Long Story) not shy away from scrutinizing the West’s perception of the Sitting somewhere between an affectionate brown female nickname and a derogatory slur, the term capbody. Under an tures the stigma women all over experience ornate, golden bed when they step out of the gender norms and c o v e r i n g, K h a n roles imposed on them. This spirit of rebellion places the form of is the inspiration for the feminist collective a woman, based the Paglees, formed in 2020 by artists with on the body cast South Asian origins living across the U.S. of a friend. One “The Paglees: Between Reason and Madness” can easily make is the group’s inaugural exhibition. The seven out the shapes “Paglees” featured are Fawzia Khan, Indrani of the woman’s Nayar-Gall, Monica Jahan Bose, Nirmal Raja, legs splayed open Pallavi Sharma, Renluka Maharaj, and Shelly while she lies on Bahl. her back , arms Through a rich mix of textiles, works on re s t i n g b y h e r paper, photography, video, and mixed media side. Whether installations, the Paglees dive into the heavishe was receiving ness of private, individual female suffering a gynecological and the corresponding need for (and joy in) The Paglees center the experience of South Asian women. SOUTH ASIA INSTITUTE exam, giving public-facing collective feminine power.

The exhibition unfolds on the first floor (2022), Renluka Maharaj re-presents archival birth, or preparing for intercourse, her only of the SAI’s spacious Motor Row building. black-and-white photos of Indo-Caribbean connection to the world past the veil is a Vibrant fabric-based pieces in all stages women in the West Indies, where she traces hole—painstakingly embroidered with red of weaving and unraveling draw a striking her own ancestry to Trinidad and Tobago. The and orange embellishments—over where her contrast to the soaring, stark atrium of the women in these colonial records were likely vagina would be. The veil is screen printed former automobile showroom. To the left, coerced into indentured servitude, as the Brit- with orbs of full sentences, “Marry women of three panels of unwrapped saris grandly ish sought to replace plantation labor after your choice, or two, or three, or four” spliced by cruder excerpts, “Stone her to death,” “Beat cascade from ceiling to floor. To the right, a slavery was abolished in the UK in 1833.

Taken by colonial British and French them.” Khan selected verses from various row of rippled orange tapestry delicately spills over the top edge of the white room dividers. photographers, the original 19th- and 20th- Abrahamic religious texts—the Torah, the Further down the hall, wads of stuffed cloth century photos depict women in stiff poses Quran, and the New Testament, reminding burst out of marble-like container boxes holding stoic gazes. Their identities were not viewers that the culture of controlling across from which, in the center of it all, a recorded. The British stamped these images women’s bodies is not relegated to one region shining gold covering drapes ominously over with general labels like “Coolie Woman” or or religion. It brings to mind protest posters a reclined human form. There’s nothing beige “Coolie Belle”; the French mass-produced for the January 22 March for Life gathering in their likenesses as advertisements for tourism Washington, D.C. about these fabrics.

While some works depict women of colThe show is powerful because it centers the to the region. By fusing these images with the oppressions impacting a doubly marginalized complex patterns of silk saris and intricate or’s struggles as experienced privately and

From margin to center

T

16 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

individually, others celebrate their joy and collective power. Beyond being a microcosm for the colonial history of international trade, the craft of weaving also draws parallels to the woven work of community organizing. Nirmal Raja transforms the light and breezy silk sari into a heavy tangle in Entangled (2015). In The Weight of Our Past (2021), Raja’s photo series depicts the burden of preserving cultural heritage carried on the backs of individual women as they migrate. As we see her strain, exhausted, carrying alone the weighted bundle across typical American landscapes—over thickets, across a beach, and around a picnic table—it is a comfort to know that in sisterhood, she is not alone. Monica Jahan Bose’s Floating/Drowning (2016) and decade-long collaborative project Storytelling with Saris has connected thousands of women. Throughout the exhibition, delicate threads hold up memory installations or dreamscapes, but it is the works created when threads are bound together that project might—such as the tight, black braid that binds around a column, which recalls the biblical strength of Samson that was strong enough to bring down a temple.

It may be easy to focus on the theme of universal sisterhood and miss what is also very much an exhibition highlighting differences in the female experience. This exhibition is sorely needed because it never loses focus of its central demographic: immigrant women from the Global South. Shelly Bahl’s interactive, speculative community Sisters of Shakti (2021-present) exposes the dangers of centering white feminism, especially the ways in which it betrays women of color. Three blown up and framed AI-generated images advertise trios of white women assuming postures drawn from South Asian religious practices, such as anjali mudra—a greeting hand gesture that means “offering.” From afar, they are a familiar face for yoga and wellness retreats on social media, but close-up, their expressions are anything but serene. One strains in meditation, mouth curved in a deep frown. Another stares eyes open, smirking threateningly at the viewer. “Come to your Sisters!” reads the invitation above her head. But in whose reality is this sisterhood situated? To which kinds of experiences are they reacting?

In a world where white feminism is often extrapolated out to apply to all women, the Paglees spin this logic around and place the experience of South Asian women as the touchstone through which viewers draw connections to other contexts. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

WINTER THEATER & ARTS

Learn more about the exhibition at students.colum.edu/deps/glass-curtain-gallery. COCO PICARD

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 17

WINTER THEATER & ARTS CRAFT WORK

Women’s LIVE Art Studio aims to inspire An all-female art community at Navy Pier opens a window into the creative process.

By REEMA SALEH

A

new artist community is showcasing women artists at work at Navy Pier. At the Women’s LIVE Artist Studio (WLAS), vibrant cityscape paintings hang on the walls alongside portraits and abstract pieces. Prints, jewelry, and clothing racks fill the insides. Sometimes the art spills out of the kiosk as children flock there to paint, draw, or play on the stuffed couches.

For cofounders Dana Todd Pope and Martha A. Wade, watching the creative process is as important as the finished piece. Each day, an artist draws, paints, or stitches live. When people pass through, it pops open a window into the creative process for artists and nonartists alike.

“We are a public art space more so than the average art gallery. A lot of people feel uncomfortable going into those spaces and feel like they’re not educated enough to appreciate it, or they’re afraid to put their foot in their mouth,” Todd Pope said.

At WLAS, people come to watch the creative process in action. For newer artists, live painting and crafting can be vulnerable, but Todd

WOMEN’S LIVE ART STUDIO R Sun-Thu 11 AM-8 PM, Fri-Sat 11 AM-9 PM, Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand, womensliveartiststudio.com

Pope and Wade think it makes them stronger as artists. Sometimes that means watching someone paint live and asking them questions about what they’re working on. Sometimes that means showing people the tools and perspectives that shape their work.

“It’s really important to educate people about art and let them know it’s not a scary space. Art is for everybody. It’s supposed to capture what’s going on in this time and space now or what a better future might look like,” Todd Pope said. “I hate when people feel like

18 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

they can’t enter these s p a c e s. B u t w h e n you’re at the pier, everybody feels like they belong at the pier.”

A self-taught painter from the south side, Todd Pope is best known for her children’s series, painting Black children’s joy and representing their narratives through art since 2007. “The owner of the gallery that I was with said to think about your voice as an artist. I went home, and I was watching all these news reports about children committing crimes on the south side. I didn’t experience that every day, so I started painting happy, jovial children,” she said.

Working in the arts scene for the past ten years, Wade’s art blends the fantastical and the mundane into wood paintings and collages. As the daughter of artist Eugene “Eda” Wade—one of the pioneers of the 1960s Mural Movement in Chicago—she brought her artistic impulses to curating. “I went to business school because I was afraid of the starving artist stereotype,” Wade said. “Now I feel like I’m a conduit. I like to connect different people and bring other artists along on the journey.”

Three years ago, Navy Pier started a program called the Neighborhood Artisan Market, giving community organizations free tables to host pop-ups during the weekends.

Soon after, they began inviting artists to come in and launch live art programs for Black History and Women’s History Month. After Todd Pope went through Sunshine Enterprises’s Community Business Academy in 2019, they also got some down-payment assistance for the space that houses them today.

Both are mothers, artists, and entrepreneurs. Together, they took their artistic passions to entrepreneurship, leaving their pop-up tables for a permanent kiosk at Navy Pier. Whether it’s thousand-dollar fine art paintings or ten-dollar prints, they try to stock

WLAS cofounder Dana Todd Pope COURTESY WLAS something for everyone.

“This is a space for women who have a full plate at home to not continue to keep the art they make in a corner at home but bring it to us, so we can give them that platform and support because we understand what it is to have a whole life,” Todd Pope said.

For Wade, building a strong support network is the key to not being a starving artist who tries to do it all on your own. “I think the misconception about women in charge is that we will be just like men. When women are in charge, we’re like a circle. Helping each other out is real,” she said.

When artist Candace Hunter joined the community, she began hosting art workshops there. For Hunter, having these pieces up in the space fosters necessary conversations for young people.

“Very little art is taught in public schools in Chicago anymore . . . if a school isn’t taking them to the Art Institute or the Museum of Contemporary Art, where is it that they see it?” Hunter said. “Imagine stumbling upon women who look like them, who are sitting out and making art, and then it becomes something that’s available to them.”

Gretchen Jankowski is a printmaking professor at Governors State University and another member of their community. She started working with them because she hopes that putting art in nontraditional spaces can open doors for new artists and conversations.

“Museums are really intimidating to people.

When you can put it in a space that is the norm for everyone or something that most people are going to do, it feels like it’s something that you can be a part of,” Jankowski said. “Navy Pier is such a great space for that type of accessibility, allowing people to see that you can do this, too.”

Since starting the community, the WLAS has raised money to take emerging artists to renowned art events, like Miami’s SCOPE Art Show and Venice’s Biennale. They hope to bring Chicago’s women artists and artists of color to the forefront and better represent their work on the global stage.

“Black artists and other artists of color are being validated now in ways they hadn’t been before. If you’re never in a position to sell your work for real money, then you’re always making this next thing to sell it for this little amount of money,” Hunter said. “But now, this art is in the higher stratosphere of the art market. That means that whole families can live better, and then bring more people in.”

As their community grows, they want to spread this approach to other galleries. But they also hope that people leave inspired to make art of their own.

“Sometimes people are just excited to meet an artist. Like they hadn’t met the artist before and they want to pick your brain. They want to know which piece you did, so they can talk to you about your process,” Wade said. “I’ve talked to people who say, ‘It makes me want to go home and create something.’ I want people to be inspired.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

MUSIC MUSIC 2 3 // 22 44 SSEEAASSOONN 23

MUSIC TO ACCOMPANY A DEPARTURE

Photo by Brian Feinzimer.

LOS ANGELES MASTER CHORALE / PETER SELLARS February 9, 2024 / 7:30PM “The chorus is pristine in sound and purposeful in motion.”

— The New Yorker

312.334.7777 | harristheaterchicago.org | 205 East Randolph Street Irving Harris Foundation, Joan W. Harris HTP Mainstage Sponsor

Patricia A. Kenney and Gregory J. O’Leary 20th Anniversary Season Sponsor

Engagement Presenting Sponsor

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 19

WINTER THEATER & ARTS

A

s anyone who has lived in Chicago for a minute knows, we don’t stop doing things just because the temperature falls below freezing. And as anyone who has been following the multiple crises for live performance companies knows, it’s more important than ever to rep your love for our local scene by getting out to shows. Here are some of the most promising onstage options for the months ahead. (A longer version of this list is available online at chicagoreader.com.)

DANCE (Irene Hsiao) The LookOut series at Steppenwolf LookOut launches a full eight weeks of performances featuring Chicago’s independent dance artists and movement makers in Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater with The Chronicles of Fabulous Freddie: That Love, an autobiographical amalgamation of dance, soundscape, projections, spoken word, and wearable design by Frederick “Fabulous Freddie” Leroy.

This work is “a healing practice, claiming myself whole through embodying my masculine and feminine energies as a Black gay artist,” says Leroy, a native of Chicago’s south side who began breaking into the after-school program at Alternatives as an Uplift Community High School student and later began exploring the feminine vocabulary of voguing with friends. “It’s a heroic story for anyone who feels they’re not accepted in society—it’s so hard to find sacred spaces to be yourself.”

Offering refuge for dance artists searching for spaces to create and express themselves is at the heart of LookOut’s upcoming season.

“We try to serve as many people in the community as possible, from emerging artists to more established folks, to give them the space and time to develop their work and have a professional showing,” says LookOut associate producer Lauren Steinberg. Following work around, the dance festival created by Kara Brody and Amanda Maraist as curatorial residents for LookOut’s 2023 spring season, feedback from audience members indicated enthusiasm for Steppenwolf’s platform and a need within the dance community to find space to rehearse and present work. “We took that feedback to heart and saw how the community showed up for work around,” says Steinberg, who founded LookOut’s curatorial residency program. “We wanted to focus on dance and movement to give [audiences] a broad range of folks who have made works in progress that they’re trying to show—new work, old work. We got so many inquiries from dancers that we thought, ‘Why not? Let’s go

20 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

PREVIEW PICKS

Warming up with live performance Winter treats in dance, opera, and theater

By IRENE HSIAO, DEANNA ISAACS, AND KERRY REID all in!’ We don’t curate the series—if you reach out to us and you have a cool idea, we will try to make it happen. We want everyone at some point to pass through Steppenwolf.”

Performances in the series include works

by Maggie Bridger, Kao Ra Zen and Friends, Anjal Chande, and Benji Hart, as well as a movement and live sound festival, MERGE, curated by Helen Lee, featuring Mitsu Salmon, Hannah Marcus, Kinnari Vora, and Freedom From and Freedom To. “There are all these family connections that I love,” notes Steinberg. “[Musician] Sharon Udoh is in Anjal’s piece and in MERGE—and Kara and Amanda are coming back and performing. It’s cool to see how these artists a l l a l re a d y k n o w each other. It shows how the community is staying together and making work together.” For complete schedule and tickets, see steppenwolf.org/ lookout.

rique Mazzola will conduct. Baritones Justin Austin and Reginald Smith Jr. are cast, respectively, as the fighter in his prime and in old age; soprano Whitney Morrison will portray his mother. Sat 1/27 7:30 PM, Wed 1/31 2 PM, Sat 2/3 7:30 PM, Tue 2/6 and Fri 2/9 7 PM, and Sun 2/11 2 PM; ASL interpretation, audio description, and touch tour Wed 1/31, ASL interpretation Sat 2/3; Lyric Opera, 20 N. Wacker, lyricopera.org, 312-827-5600, $49–$339

THEATER (Kerry Reid) Notes From the Field Anna Deavere Smith, who achieved national renown with her documentary one-woman plays Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (about the uprisings in Crown Heights in 1991 and Los Angeles in 1992, respectively), wrote and originally performed this play about people caught in America’s schoolto-prison pipeline.

OPERA (Deanna Based on interviews Isaacs) with 18 people—inChampion Hannah Marcus in bones fragile, part of MERGE Two years after the in Steppenwolf’s LookOut series WILLIAM FREDERKING cluding civil rights attorney Sherrilyn acclaimed debut of composer Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in Ifill, filmmaker and activist Bree Newsome My Bones on the Lyric Opera stage, his earlier (who took down the Confederate flag from opera, Champion, arrives. Based on the true the South Carolina statehouse grounds), and story of boxing champ Emile Griffith, whose the late Congressman John Lewis—Notes devastating blows in a 1962 match resulted in From the Field gets its local premiere with the death of his opponent and his own ever- a cast of three (Reader People Issue subject lasting regret, it’s a tale of violent bigotry, Shariba Rivers, Mildred Marie Langford, and both racial and sexual: Griffith’s opponent had Adhana Reid) under the direction of Mikael enraged the closeted fighter with a taunt about Burke. 1/31-2/24, TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. his sexuality. This “opera in jazz” has a libretto Wellington, 773-281-8463, timeline theatre.

by Michael Cristofer (author of the play Man com, $35–$67 in the Ring about Griffith, which premiered at Court Theatre in 2016) and choreography by Judy’s Life’s Work Camille A. Brown; Lyric music director En- Former Chicago playwright Loy Webb (The

Light), who has been writing for television in LA the past few years, comes home with this play about siblings Xavier, an ex-boxer, and Charli, a premed student, who have to decide what to do with their late mother’s groundbreaking medical notes while dealing with their own unresolved childhood traumas.

Michelle Renee Bester directs for Definition Theatre. 2/2-2/25, Definition Theatre, 1160 E. 55th Street, definitiontheatre.org, $15–$25 a home what howls (or the house what was ravine) Steppenwolf for Young Adults presents Matthew Paul Olmos’s poetic and mythic drama about youth activists fighting against displacement and injustice. The world premiere, directed by Laura Alcalá Baker, features a stellar cast, including Charín Álvarez, Leslie Sophia Pérez, Isabel Quintero, and Eddie Torres. 2/7-3/2, Steppenwolf Ensemble Theater, 1646 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf. org, $20–$30 ($5 for high school students, $15 for college students)

Matchbox Magic Flute Mary Zimmerman returns to the Goodman with this “world-premiere-in-miniature adaptation” of Mozart’s beloved opera for the company’s smaller Owen Theatre space.

Theatrical artists and opera performers come together to offer an intimate take on the tale of Prince Tamino’s journey to save Princess Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, with the help of the titular musical instrument. It’s geared as a family-friendly offering, featuring 16 actors and five musicians. 2/10-3/10, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $25–$90 The Smuggler Jackalope Theatre moved out of their longtime home at the Broadway Armory to accommodate the arrival of migrants this summer, but they’re still producing in Edgewater. Company member Andrew Burden Swanson stars in this one-man “thriller in rhyme” by Ronán Noone about an Irish immigrant tending bar in a wealthy enclave off the coast of Massachusetts. The loss of his job and the illness of his child draw him into “a modern tale of corruption, morality and giant rats that asks what it means to call yourself a ‘citizen.’” Gus Menary directs. 2/16-3/16, Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan, 773-340-2543, jackalopetheatre.org, $15–$25 v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

I Love Your Green Eyes: A Haibun for Baba

By Fadia M. Antabli

I ran to my father and hugged him tight. I love your green eyes, Baba. He pulled me into the warmth of his arms. I rested my cheek on his chest. On that hot summer night, a full moon brightened the sky. I closed my eyes and freed my mind. It traveled to a birthplace called Home where narrow streets led to a golden dome. It traveled to a distant little girl, brown braids, short rosy dress, swaying under a lemon tree.

Unimaginably uprooted from Jerusalem. Loss and sorrow side by side, suppressed deep in our hearts. I raised my gaze and clung to him. Baba, your eyes are beautiful. His eyes smiled, Take them. Moonlight painted his face, while his olive-green pearls glowed. Baba! Why are your eyes green unlike mine? He winked in delight, Take them, before shying away. Tell me, Baba, which is more beautiful? Your eyes—or Jerusalem? Baba had already set sail on rough seas to the barren shores of those old great times. Hard, I knew I hit him hard. Deep, in a wounded heart. His eyes shone even as the pearls hid inside. We both got lost in a riddle I shouldn’t have posed. He dove into the stolen past, while I immersed myself in his arms.

From his shuddering body, a chill was born and shattered me. Long moments passed, filling the growing space between us. Boiling diamonds rolled down my cheeks. We dwelled in images engraved on our minds! He never meant to flee Falasteen. I never meant to evade Palestine. But it was the Day of Setback—June 5, 1967—al-Naksa. The day of expulsion and separation for both Baba and me. He lifted his gaze to meet mine. My heart danced through the tears. Is he finally returning to me? Trembling, I turned to him. Baba, all I need is you. Please let go and come back, come back to me. He wiped my tears and inhaled his pain. I tried again. I have missed your laughing green eyes, Baba, your sumoud, your being there for me. My father kept on shielding himself from the child inside me. The moonlight faded behind the faraway trees. Crestfallen, I froze. Baba extended a hand and raised my chin. His green eyes began to sparkle, like the stars igniting the skies over Jerusalem on the days of Eid. He planted a kiss on my forehead, held me tight, and murmured sadly in my ears: Is there anything more beautiful than Jerusalem?

Sweetheart, take my eyes, their green too. Just give me back my Jerusalem!

Fadia M. Antabli is a native of Jerusalem, Palestine. Members of her immediate family were expelled from their homes and deprived of the right to live in their homeland. As a child forced into exodus, the trauma of the war and the expulsion have never left her. These experiences, plus having to migrate from Jerusalem to Amman to Indianapolis and ultimately to Chicago, continue to inform her writing. Antabli was a finalist for the 2023 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Award and has work forthcoming in an anthology of poetry

by Palestinian writers edited by George Abraham and Noor Hindi set to be released in 2025 by Haymarket Books. Antabli is an Associate Professor of Instruction in Arabic at Northwestern University, where she has been a Searle Fellow and a recipient of the Arts and Sciences Alumni Teaching Award.

Poem curated by Faisal Mohyuddin. Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (forthcoming March 2024 from Next Page Press), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, and The Riddle of Longing. He teaches high school English in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies; he also serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-forprofit Narrative 4 and is a visual artist.

A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

Hours

Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM Saturday: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM

Kara Walker: Back of Hand

Find me www.drinkwynk.com

This exhibition highlights Walker’s long-term engagement with language and text. It features 2015 Book, a series of 11 typewritten pages with ink and watercolor illustrations, and two large-scale drawings, The Ballad of How We Got Here and Feast of Famine. This will be the first time these works are shown in Chicago.

Opening on February 15, 2024.

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 21

ILLINOISE

1/28-2/18: Tue 7 PM, Wed 1:30 and 7 PM, Thu-Fri 7 PM, Sat 2 and 7 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; ASL interpretation Fri 2/9, audio description and touch tour Sun 2/11, open captions Wed 2/14 1:30 and 7 PM; Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $41-$125

WINTER THEATER & ARTS PREVIEW

Feeling the Illinoise Chicago Shakespeare turns Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 album into a dance-theater piece.

By ANNIE HOWARD

M

ore than four minutes deep into “Come On! Feel the Illinoise! (Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition – Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream),” a song which spends a great deal of time exhorting the wonders of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Sufjan Stevens finally lets his guard down. A song that just minutes earlier celebrated Cream of Wheat, soft drinks, and the Ferris wheel, all of which debuted at the fair, is transformed into a tender vision of a spectral Carl Sandburg, Chicago’s first great poet, visiting Stevens at night, already crying himself to sleep, now forced to improvise a verse “On the attitude, the regret / Of a thousand centuries of death.” It’s the kind of emotional shape-shifting that Stevens has devised throughout his entire career, but arguably reached its peak on the 2005 album Illinois, where the song first appeared.

Just after Stevens confronts Sandburg’s deathly presence, a chorus of female singers begin intoning, “Are you writing from the heart?” It’s a question almost too direct for its own good, yet one that can unravel any artist, uncertain whether they’ve truly managed to bring their full creative presence into the world. But it serves as a thesis statement of sorts for the entire Illinois project, a 74-minute opus that spawned a subsequent B-sides album, The Avalanche, that somehow ran two minutes longer than its predecessor.

An all-encompassing world that’s delighted listeners for almost two decades, the album is now set to undergo its next transformation, as the Chicago Shakespeare Theater hosts a three-week run of Illinoise, playing on the album’s own cheeky interpretation of our state name.

For Timo Andres, a composer and pianist who has collaborated with Stevens for nearly a decade, the chance to reassemble the album into a staged production was one of the greatest challenges, and pleasures, of his career.

Andres titled a blog post about working on the project with the lyrics “Are you writing from the heart?” and says that it’s a sentiment that

22 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

he cherished in this process.

That proved especially significant throughout 2023, as Stevens underwent successive major life disruptions: after sharing in September that he’d been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that forced him to relearn how to walk, the October release of Stevens’s latest album, Javelin, also came with the announcement that his partner, Evans Richardson IV, had passed away earlier that year. Stevens’s music has memorably soundtracked the abject

as Sufjan’s conduit for this project.”

Illinoise began in the mind of Tony Award– winning choreographer Justin Peck almost a decade ago, picking up steam in 2022. Peck, who directed and choreographed the project, collaborated on the script with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, conjuring “a new kind of musical,” as the show bills itself. A 14-person orchestra, which includes three vocalists, will perform reimagined arrangements of the album’s full tracklist, including a significant number of

Company members from the Fisher Center production of Illinoise

sobs of Timothée Chalamet’s character in Call Me by Your Name, to say nothing of millions of private moments for listeners around the world (present company not excluded), and Andres experienced a great deal of gratitude in being entrusted with this project.

“This music is such an important part of so many people’s lives, and is in many cases so heartbreaking and emotional,” Andres said.

“Going through the past year, that weight has imposed itself on me to a greater degree, and it’s a great responsibility and privilege to act

MATT MURPHY

songs that Stevens never played live, reinvigorating a project that’s woven itself into the lives of countless listeners.

Still, the album’s complexity poses ample challenges. How, one might ask, can you expect to adapt “Casimir Pulaski Day,” a song that’s nominally about Illinois’s early March holiday for a Revolutionary War hero, but is in practice a devastating meditation on unexpected death, Christian faith, and the unnameable feelings that arise in the face of the unknown? The emotional range of the

album also says nothing about the sonic complexities of distilling a record known for its lush, eclectic compositions, which veer from simple combinations of guitar and voice in one moment to overabundant, layered orchestral arrangements the next.

In his role as lead arranger for the show, Andres learned to do more with less, with many members of the orchestra playing multiple instruments across the performance. To visualize the album’s themes, and to center the project’s complexities in a sense of grounded simplicity, Peck and Drury assembled a 16-person dance crew, whose key players swap the album’s countless tales across one of humanity’s oldest conversation spaces: a burning fire. Without additional dialogue, the show nonetheless brings out the album’s sense of self-discovery and features characters learning to express long-simmering feelings from across the flames, with Peck’s choreography offering subtle hints of the emotions passing between the characters.

Though both Peck and Drury have already received countless accolades for their choreography and playwriting, Illinoise took its collaborators into uncharted territory. Tasked with finding a delicate balance between maintaining the integrity of the original album and crafting an original narrative atop the existing work, Peck told Pitchfork last year, “I couldn’t tell you if it’s a concert or dance-theater piece or musical. It’s somewhere amidst all that but feels like its own thing.”

While the show had a brief run at Bard College’s Fisher Center last summer, the run at Navy Pier brings the show back to its homeland. Following Stevens’s 2003 album Greetings From Michigan, Illinois was the second in a long-teased (and ultimately joking) fifty-states project, which promised a record for every U.S. state.

For musician Tasha Viets-VanLear, better known simply as Tasha, being asked to sing and play guitar in the production has been a full-circle moment in her career. Growing up in Albany Park, she says that she and her theater nerd friends cherished the record, and she fondly remembers learning to play tracks like “Casimir Pulaski Day” on guitar, moments that proved influential in her burgeoning interest in becoming a musician.

“I specifically remember the song [‘The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!’], like that one being the song for me, the one I would post on my Tumblr,” Viets-VanLear said. “When my friends and I

WINTER THEATER & ARTS

Ricky Ubeda (left) and Ben Cook in Illinoise MATT MURPHY

would drive around after school, that’s the song we would put on in the car.”

Illinoise is an unmistakable labor of love for the many who made it come to life; as Peck recounted last year, he’d pestered Stevens countless times about a possible adaptation, only for the singer to rebuff him again and again.

“After a certain amount of time, he realized that I wasn’t going to stop asking,” Peck said, creating a pathway for the show’s creation.

For nearly 20 years, fans have brought the record into their lives; speaking personally, I recall fondly my first trip to Chicago in 2012 and making a pilgrimage to the Wicker Park location of Reckless Records to buy the double-record album. Since then, I’ve seen Stevens play twice: once on the somber Carrie & Lowell tour in 2015, an album recorded in memory of his recently departed mother, and then again in 2016 when Stevens, adorned in translucent angel wings, cut loose while headlining Pitchfork Music Festival.

The kind of devout fandom that Stevens has cultivated over the years, and the weight placed upon the shoulders of someone whose countless collaborators are often lost in the face of Stevens’s intensely personal songwriting, has often made the 48-year-old singer someone larger than life. The outpouring of love and care shown by fans last year upon the release of Javelin, a record that once more brought Sufjan’s mourning into public conversation, was a necessary reminder that those

who enjoy someone’s work still see a fraction of what’s happening, a distance put in place to protect the artist and preserve the work’s integrity.

Now, with Illinoise making its way to the city whose eponymous song will always be a point of pride for fans who call Chicago home, the entire team bringing the work to life can lift some of the weight from Stevens’s shoulders. Millions call Illinois home; millions more have made Illinois a spiritual resting place, somewhere to return to, anywhere across the globe. By allowing the work to take on a new form, those interpreting it can share in the joy and sorrow the work has cultivated for years, a significance that all involved hold with tenderness.

“As an artist, I can understand what it feels like to make something and release it and the process of detachment that happens, where the meaning that it carries and the way that it’s embodied is not up to you anymore, it’s up to the people who listen to it and make that music a part of their lives,” Viets-VanLear said. “[Sufjan’s] detachment from the record for himself doesn’t diminish the value of what it means to be doing this project now, and for people like me or other fans who haven’t had the chance to see him tour or play, I think hearing this music live for the first time brings a lot of joy and excitement.” v

SUNDAY, JUNE 2 10K Run • 5K Run/Walk Kids’ Course • 10K/5K Virtual Course Start the new year off on the right foot! Sign up early to support your zoo.

Scan the QR code to register.

m letters@chicagoreader.com JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 23

WINTER THEATER & ARTS STAND-UP STRUGGLES

‘I’ll get there but it’s going to be a bitch and a half.’

A night out with comedian Wes McGehee

By KOSTER KENNARD

S

ixty comedians stand outside Laugh Factory Chicago waiting to find out if they will perform in the night’s open mike.

“Sucks they’re canceling the Second City open mike,” says one. “What were they even going to do with it?” says another.

(The stand-up open mike night at the Wells Street comedy emporium lasted only a few months and closed because the free event wasn’t selling enough drinks to make the club money.)

Wes McGehee, 23, stays silent as the group talks, except for the occasional “hi” to comedians he knows. He leaves to smoke by the curb—a break from social situations, which exhaust him, and because he likes nicotine.

After his cigarette, McGehee rejoins the group and grabs an orange ticket from the bucket used to select comedians. He writes his name on it and creases it in half. “A little tip for aspiring comedians,” he tells me. “Bend the ticket. If not, it’ll go to the bottom.” He kisses the ticket for good luck and drops it in the bucket. “Do you always kiss the ticket?” I ask him. “No, but I’m going to start,” he says with a smirk.

McGehee gets on about half of the Laugh Factory open mikes. “It’s a little demoralizing,” he says. A club employee announces they’re pulling 15 names, ten to perform tonight and five for next week. He reads the names. Each comedian raises their hand to claim their spot. The others clap politely.

“Sorry, I really wanted to show you Laugh Factory,” McGehee tells me with a slight grimace. “I think I might go to the Annoyance [also hosting an open mike that night].” He and some other comedians head to a bar to kill time.

McGehee performs four to six nights a week, mostly at open mikes as part of what some call “the circuit”—a network of local comedians who see each other perform so often they’re sick of each other’s jokes. In four years of performing stand-up, he’s made $500. A graduate

24 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

student at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) studying creative writing, he’s taken out student loans to pay for half his expenses, and his mom has paid the other half. This summer, he hoped to find a job somewhere “laid-back” like a record store. He didn’t.

September 17, 2019, was the first day McGehee performed stand-up. He bombed. He was in college at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Julia, whom he’d met in a class, invited him to perform at an open mike at nearby Lucky Joe Craft Coffee and he accepted. McGehee had wanted to do comedy since the first time he saw Dave Chappelle perform stand-up on Chappelle’s Show, but he hadn’t told anyone.

McGehee prepared for his set on his porch, scribbling jokes in sloppy cursive in his leather notebook and rehearsing them for three hours, thinking about what he would look like on stage. He paced and smoked a blunt.

Julia acted as emcee that first night. McGehee remembers his hand was low on the mike and it shook. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he thought as he stood on stage. “Man, this material is bad. But, this is so cool.”

He can’t remember the jokes he told that night, but he thinks he told one about Joe Keery, who plays Steve Harrington on Stranger Things. McGehee wanted to tell topical jokes.

That, he thought, is what good comics do. Comedians made up the entire audience at Lucky Joe. They looked at him stone-faced. When he left the stage, he felt like someone had kicked him in the chest. He thought to himself, “I have to get good at this.”

In March 2020, he performed in front of Brian Simpson, a comedian featured on Netflix’s series The Standups. McGehee told a joke he tells me always works.

“One time I sent a nude—kind of. You couldn’t see my dick in the photo,” McGehee says. “After the woman opened it I texted her, ‘For $20, I’ll move that can of shaving cream.

She sent me $20. I’m a man of my word, so I had to send her another picture. And I sent her

another message and said for 20 more dollars I’ll move that bottle of baby aspirin. And she texted me back and said, ‘Wes, stop sending pictures of stuff in your asshole.’”

McGehee remembers Simpson slowly looking up from his phone and pulling down his headphones as he watched.

The following week, COVID-19 shut down the country. McGehee performed twice during the shutdown at outdoor shows.

In January 2021, McGehee performed in front of 20 people at a bar in Wilmington, North Carolina called the Barzarre. Weeks later, at the Barzarre, he left a notebook on a chair during a set because he was trying to memorize his material instead of reading it on stage. When he returned, a rat had chewed the corner.

The bar was both empty enough and infested enough t h a t a ro d e n t , probably not the only one in the room, snuck a bite of his notebook.

In June 2022, Simpson invited McGehee to perform with him at the legendary Comedy Store in Los Angeles. In September 2022, McGehee moved to Chicago, abandoning the audience he had attracted. He says Chicago is where comedians come to get good.

McGehee’s goal is to be able to walk into any comedy club in the country and be well-known enough that they’ll let him perform. He says even Brian Simpson isn’t there yet but will be in about ten years.

“I don’t know if I’ll—,” he tells me and interrupts himself mid-sentence. “I’ll get there but it’s going to be a bitch and a half.”

After the bar, McGehee heads to the Annoyance’s open mike. Performers write their names on small pieces of paper and place them in old red fry baskets—one basket for stand-up, one for improv, and one labeled “other.” Tonight, “other” means a Charlie Chaplin-style silent performance; other nights it means a magician or a mime. McGehee tears off a piece of paper, writes his name on it, folds it, kisses it, and places it in the stand-ups basket. McGehee says he has a good chance

of getting on because he knows the emcee.

According to McGehee, open-mike hosts often reserve spots for people they know before filling them by drawing names.

McGehee has three comedy notebooks: one for joke ideas, one for written-out jokes, and one for jokes that “get a laugh every time.” He keeps all three in a backpack that he carries with him wherever he goes. “Big claps for Wes McGee,” the emcee announces, mispronouncing McGehee’s name.

“I grew up Southern Baptist,” he says to dead silence. “They do this thing called missions. It’s basically where a bunch of people get together and they go to a village in a third world country and they’ll be like, ‘Hey, so we see that you

Wes McGehee KOSTER KENNARD

need, like, fresh food and clean water. So we’re going to give you a church.’” One man cackles from the back. “That way you can pray for that other stuff.” The man laughs again and is joined by a few other crowd members.

McGehee walks back to his table and opens a Google Sheet on his phone where he tallies each comedy set and his time spent on stage.

In 2023, he did 137 sets and 591 minutes of live comedy. Since that night at the Annoyance, he’s hosted a few open mikes there, and has applied to the English doctorate program at UIC. He’s thought about moving to other big cities but that would mean starting over—again.

After the show, McGehee asks me if I’m ready to go. I tell him I enjoyed the set as we walk past the bar, down the steps, and out of the building. “It’s probably worse in my head than it really is,” he says, and stares down the street. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Witness the powerful stories of 19 individuals fighting to overcome and transform America’s education and criminal justice systems

“EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH IT, AT LEAST ONCE” – The Guardian

“A SEARING AND URGENT –WORK WORK” The New York Times

$5 OFF with code READER5 Some restrictions may apply

LIMITED RUN! STARTS JANUARY 31

615 W. Wellington Avenue (at Broadway), Chicago

773.281.8463 timelinetheatre.com

PLAYWRIGHT AND TEXT CURATOR JEN SILVERMAN BASED ON THE DIGITAL ARCHIVES OF DANA DELANY CREATED BY DANA DELANY, MIKE DONAHUE, DANE LAFFREY AND JEN SILVERMAN DIRECTED BY MIKE DONAHUE

FEATURING

DANA DELANY

DOT-MARIE JONES

THOMAS MURPHY MOLONY

Emmy Award-winner Dana Delany (China Beach, Desperate Housewives) stars in this new thriller—part love story, part ghost story—crafted from hundreds of tweets and DMs. TIMESTAMP: October, 2012: “@DanaDelany, Are you married? If not, I’d marry you.” When Cam, a 13-year-old fan in a desperate medical situation captures actress Dana Delany’s attention on Twitter, she’s quickly swept into an intense, around-the-clock online friendship. But when Cam starts receiving messages from beyond, Dana is thrust into a world where unexpected revelations raise the question of how far we go to love and be loved.

NOW THROUGH FEBRUARY 18 New Play Award

GoodmanTheatre.org 312.443.3800

themag i c parlo urc hi cag o . c o m

Groups 10+: Groups@GoodmanTheatre.org

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 25

WINTER THEATER & ARTS POP-PUNK PLAY

The Best Damn Thing explores teenage power and pain The Understudy premieres a play with songs inspired by Avril Lavigne.

BY YASMIN ZACARIA MIKHAIEL

W

hen my mom bought us Avril Lavigne’s album The Best Damn Thing, it quickly became a staple in my household—well, in my bedroom, where I blasted it from a mini hot-pink boom box. (And in her car, when she could convince me to share it.) Lavigne shepherded pop-punk into the era of Hot Topic and Myspace. As I survived suburbia in my plaid parochial school uniforms and decompressed in secret AOL chat rooms, I reveled in the girl-powered anthems and stunning guitar riffs and solos. During the mid-aughts and beyond, Lavigne inspired a generation of teens navigating crushes, friendships, and confidence.

Lucky for Chicago, one of those inspired

by Lavigne’s work is playwright Hanna Kime, whose world premiere of The Best Damn Thing (yes, named after the iconic album) is getting produced with a live band by the Understudy Coffee and Books. Kime’s play-within-a-play (with music) centers on two ex-best friends in high school. One ex-best friend has written a musical inspired by Avril Lavigne’s discography, and the other has the power to get it considered for their high school’s theater season. Kime’s exploration of girlhood aims to take their experiences as whole and real and serious.

“As a literary manager, I would read so many play descriptions that were like, ‘This is a story where women are messy,’” says Kime.

“And then I read it and it’s like they’re just having normal emotions in reaction to a traumatic or upsetting situation.” Kime is drawn to making space for the genuine, contradictory emotions within all of us, where characters can be hurtful and unkind in the same breath that they demonstrate care.

Director Grace Dolezal-Ng notes, “The play

26 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

THE BEST DAMN THING

1/27-2/5: Thu-Sun 7:30 PM; also industry nights Mon 1/29 and 2/5 7:30 PM; understudy performance Tue 1/30 7:30 PM; the Understudy, 5531 N. Clark, theunderstudy.com, $25 ($10 understudy performance); sold out through 1/29

“Our intent from the beginning was to create a space that was flexible for events. All of the furniture in our bookstore was designated to be modular so we could say yes to as many kinds of events as possible,” co-owner and operator Adam Todd Crawford shares. He and his partner, co-owner and operator Danny Fender, work carefully to balance programming that is brought to them by the community and their own staff, keeping in mind what feels values-aligned. Crawford has an eye on making sure that their space doesn’t become one where they’re “artistic arbiters,” but rather one where they lower the barrier to entry to producing for a range of audiences at a range of capacities.

Kime initially reached out to the duo to invite them to her reading of It Girl, a play she workshopped as a part of the Goodman Theatre’s Playwrights Unit (and had largely drafted at the Understudy). Although schedules didn’t align, Fender later followed up with interest in reading her scripts. Fender wanted to see how they could work with Kime, as supporting writers has been core to their mission in founding their book and coffee shop. Upon reading The Best Damn Thing, Fender shares, “I was like, ‘Wow—this has a really clear voice. . . . There were Glee references . . . it happens in a basement. It really spoke to me.”

Future discussions of a reading at the Understudy seemed to dance around what the play really deserved and was nearly ready for—a fully staged production. When Kime initially wrote the play, she imagined using songs

by Lavigne, but quickly realized the reality of copyright hoops and barriers. When the play received its first reading in 2020 at First Floor Theater, Kime met actor and budding guitarist Sara Geist. Through that process, something clicked between them, and they became fast friends and collaborators.

Geist reflects, “I was starting to delve really into songwriting more fully because the reading was right before the pandemic. And then, of course, all the acting jobs went away. So, I started putting songwriting at the forefront.

When Hanna heard that, she was like, ‘Do you want to write original songs with me?’” Geist had been writing a couple songs a year during high school, but never really felt like a good instrumentalist. In 2018, it became a block she wanted to bust through by learning guitar. “I found it really empowering, being able to write and play my own and other people’s music.”

In writing songs together, Kime and Geist

listened to Lavigne voraciously, constantly.

This intense study and experimenting resulted in what some team members have described as Avril Lavigne B-sides, where the bops feel like they were written by the pop-punk princess herself.

Geist brought demos and ideas to her band and worked with her fellow musicians to translate them into a sonic landscape that could be played live. “It’s been very fun to get in the room with a bunch of people who are young and vibrant and excited and passionate about this, and not feel beholden to maybe like a bigger, imposing theater company’s [vision].”

Kime is drawn to making space for the genuine, contradictory emotions within all of us.

Maya Hlava (left) and Elisabeth Del Toro in The Best Damn Thing UNDERSTUDY

situates itself at the intersection of taking these girls so seriously and also honoring that growing up as a teenager is also extremely absurd.” Dolezal-Ng appreciates that her collaborators are moving with the same desire to counter “media about teenage girls that makes fun of them, or kind of ridicules them.”

As the world premiere finds its home at the Understudy, it’s not lost on the team how Chicago and how punk it feels to produce the play in an untraditional, found space amongst friends. Since opening day of the store last March, the Understudy has been the home to between 50 to 60 events including drag performances, string quartets, readings, trivia, and more. But The Best Damn Thing is its first fully staged production.

On the flip side, the reality of the venue calls for much creativity. Wearing additional hats as the associate director and a producer, Fender wanted to be clear that “as long as we make every single decision with the knowledge that we are doing this in a bookstore, that we are going to have limited resources in terms of what we’re able to do because of that, and give attention to those details, we can make something really, really special.”

Although staging this play in the Understudy presents some spatial limitations, director Dolezal-Ng has found these to be opportunities ripe for collaboration. Her goal is to “empower everyone to do their best work” by inviting her team to “express their ideas” and for actors to “feel out what naturally feels right in their bodies” when considering the tightness of the space and proximity to the audience. “It really does feel like everyone has a hand not just in the blocking of the play, but also kind of in realizing the world.”

Playwright Kime further affirms, “This really passionate group of really talented twentysomethings is making a show that speaks to our generation in a way that I think is rare and special.” As Kime roots this play in the “heartbreak of teenage girlhood, all of its joy and discovery, the unbridled creativity and competence,” it’s clear the Understudy’s creatives on The Best Damn Thing have carried with them the same tenacity and curiosity from their own teen years. And they hope you dress the part when you join them. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

THE BAND’S VISIT MUSIC & LYRICS BY DAVID YAZBEK BOOK BY ITAMAR MOSES BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY BY ERAN KOLIRIN DIRECTED BY ZI ALIKHAN MUSIC SUPERVISION BY ANDRA VELIS SIMON CHOREOGRAPHY BY SEBASTIANI ROMAGNOLO

| FEB 7 - MAR 2, 2024

A HOME WHAT

HOWLS (OR THE HOUSE WHAT WAS RAVINE)

By MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS Directed by LAURA ALCALÁ BAKER Featuring ensemble member TIM HOPPER with CHARÍN ÁLVAREZ, LESLIE SOPHIA PÉREZ, ISABEL QUINTERO and EDDIE TORRES

A powerful and poetic collision between youth activism and the forces of injustice

TICKETS START AT $20/$5 HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

PURPOSE

Pictured: Adam Qutaishat, Rom Barkhordarand and Jonathan Shaboo. Photo by Saverio Truglia.

NEXT AT

WINNER OF 10 TONY AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST MUSICAL. SEASON SPONSOR

FEBRUARY 8 - MARCH 17 847-242-6000 I WRITERSTHEATRE.ORG

| MAR 14 - APR 21, 2024

World premiere by

BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS

Directed by

PHYLICIA RASHAD

TICKETS FOR $30, $15, OR LESS!

chicagotheatreweek.com

Featuring ensemble members ALANA ARENAS, GLENN DAVIS and JON MICHAEL HILL with AYANNA BRIA BAKARI, HARRY LENNIX and TAMARA TUNIE

A rowdy, funny and epic drama about a Chicago family who are pillars of Black American Politics

TICKETS START AT $20

steppenwolf.org | 312-335-1650

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 27

CHICAGO FILM SOCIETY, SEASON 33 R 1/10–4/24, locations vary $10–$13 per screening, chicagofilmsociety.org

WINTER THEATER & ARTS REPERTORY SCREENINGS

Lost and found 35-millimeter prints, gorgeous Technicolor, and more from the Chicago Film Society An avid moviegoer and local film programmers look forward to upcoming repertory screenings.

By KAT SACHS

T

he Chicago Film Society ’s current season is underway, promising many more weeks of film to come. In this context, “film” holds a dual significance, not only as the artistic entities being exhibited but also as the material—celluloid—from which they are crafted. While the prevalence of celluloid in filmmaking has diminished over time, it once exclusively defined the medium.

The Chicago Film Society embraces this fact as a guiding ethos, presenting films as they were originally meant to be experienced (specifically in 35 millimeter and 16 millimeter), undeterred by any digital advancements. It’s this unwavering passion that keeps me warm as I attend their screenings in the dead of a particularly frigid Chicago winter, trudging through the snow for what’s guaranteed to be a great show.

Screenings take place at Northeastern Illinois University (the Auditorium in Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr), the Music Box Theatre, the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago Filmmakers, and the Chicago Film Society’s own office, the address for which will be given upon RSVP. They’ve opened more than just their space for this calendar; I asked the celluloid zealots via email which screenings they’re most excited for, to which Chicago Film Society cofounder Rebecca Hall replied, “‘What are you most excited for?’ is a difficult question for me because usually I haven’t seen what we are showing ahead of time. So I am typically excited for everything!” Fair enough, and same.

Even when there are films I’ve seen prior, it’s nevertheless exciting to see them flawlessly projected by these experts of the craft, with edifying introductions and a carefully selected short film shown beforehand.

But, really, what am I excited for in this coming lineup? Cecil B. DeMille’s 1916 silent film Joan the Woman screens on Sunday, February 4, at 7:30 PM, at the Music Box Theatre.

Featuring opera star Geraldine Farrar in the titular role of Joan of Arc, DeMille’s first spec-

28 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

tacle was also something of a propagandistic Trojan horse, although in reverse, as the story of the Maid of Orléans is here sandwiched by a contemporary subplot involving a British soldier fighting in World War I who becomes inspired by Joan’s tenacity. Margaret Joan Maddox writes in her essay for the book Icons of the Middle Ages that the film “was made at a time when few middle-class women were in the workforce and no American woman had the right to vote. DeMille’s Joan of Arc was intended to inspire men to fight and women to contribute to the war effort in womanly ways.” While its regard for women may not be up to date, its artistic value is timeless; the Handschiegl color process, which involved artificially adding color to select parts of the image, was invented by engraver Max Handschiegl and the film’s cinematographer Alvin W. Wyckoff for the film. “It’s not often you get to witness a 108 year-old silent movie on 35-millimeter,” affirms programmer Rocío Irizarry Nuñez.

True crime is all the rage now, but rippedfrom-the-headlines inspiration predates even Law & Order. Josef von Sternberg’s pre-code drama An American Tragedy—screening Wednesday, February 7, at 7:30 PM, at Northeastern Illinois University—was adapted from Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel of the same name, which itself was based on the real-life murder of factory girl Grace Brown by Chester Gillette, the factory owner’s nephew, when she got pregnant. Under Sternberg’s masterful direction, it transcends sordid melodrama into an examination of human crises.

Vivid melodrama was the domain of one Douglas Sirk, though Has Anybody Seen My Gal (1952) came before the period during which he made his best-known films. It’s a musical set in the 1920s and stars Rock Hudson in the first of many collaborations between him and Sirk. “We have been trying to show Gal for a long time,” Chicago Film Society cofounder Kyle Westphal wrote. “The studio doesn’t have a print, and there are no archives with

Take respite from the brutal winter at a Chicago Film Society screening. ANNA MIELNICZUK FOR CHICAGO READER

this title on 35-millimeter. We worked with a private collector who had an original 35-millimeter IB Technicolor print—but he could only find three of the five reels. We’ve been waiting years for the other two, and they finally turned up. We’ll be showing a whole weekend of Technicolor prints at the [Gene Siskel Film Center] March 15-17, but Gal is the only one where Rock Hudson plays a soda jerk, and it’s delightful.”

Among the other films screening during Technicolor Weekend are Jack Starrett’s 1973 blaxploitation film Cleopatra Jones, starring Tamara Dobson as the iconic badass; Jerry Lewis’s The Nutty Professor, for those not perturbed by Lewis’s asinine comedy like I am; and Richard Fleischer’s live-action 1954 Disney movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. “I’m really excited for our Technicolor Shorts program, which comes mostly from our own film collection,” Chicago Film Society cofounder and executive director Julian Antos says of the program screening Saturday, March 16, at 2 PM. “We’re basically compiling 90 minutes of documentaries, cartoons, and trailers which showcase the Technicolor printing process, so

these will all look really beautiful.”

There’s also Francis Ford Coppola’s 2001 “the horror” film Apocalypse Now Redux, the second of three versions that Coppola has released in the past 40-plus years. Per the Chicago Film Society’s description of the film, “original 35-millimeter (and 70-millimeter!) prints of Apocalypse Now in 1979 were Eastmancolor, but the brief resurgence of IB Technicolor in the late 1990s allowed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s expressive palette to reach its apotheosis in Redux.” Is it even possible to make the film more intense? Apparently. This screens on Sunday, March 16, at 7 PM, at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Programmer Tavi Veraldi is eager for the “rare 35mm screening” of George Butler’s Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985). Following his 1977 docudrama Pumping Iron, Butler turned his camera to female bodybuilders preparing for and competing in the 1983 Caesars World Cup. “This documentary serves as a perfect example of the deceptive nature of truth in documentary filmmaking and just how enjoyable witnessing that can be,” Veraldi

WINTER THEATER & ARTS teases. But it was also ahead of its time in how it portrayed the athletes, who were unfairly maligned due to bodybuilding being thought of solely as a men’s sport. In his review of the film for Sports Illustrated, Frank Deford wrote that “while most people of both genders will find the exceptionally muscular women grotesque, the documentary itself is engaging and intriguing—and only the insensitive person will end up not rooting for the most grotesque and unnatural of the contestants.” Nevertheless, these extraordinary women exemplify a mix of femininity and strength.

Twenty-twenty feels like a million years ago. But in Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars (2000, which feels like a billion years ago), screening Thursday, March 21, at 6:45 PM, at the Music Box Theatre, it’s the year 2020, and humans have made it to the Red Planet. Things don’t go as planned, so a second mission is deployed to rescue the one survivor who sent a distress call. Those tax dollars may have gone to waste, but the film’s $100 million budget didn’t. Based on the Mission to Mars ride at Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, the film was a critical and commercial flop that still found defenders—as many misunderstood films do—in the French, with the film placing fourth on that year’s Cahiers du Cinéma top ten list.

“I’m particularly excited to share Tokyo Pop with our audience,” programmer Rebecca Lyon exclaims of Fran Rubel Kuzui’s 1988 film, screening Wednesday, March 27, at 7:30 PM, at Northeastern Illinois University. “The Chicago Film Society . . . is always doing intake on recently acquired prints, so to make assessing these prints a little more engaging and fun we’ll occasionally have ‘mystery screenings.’

No one except the projectionist knows what will be screened beforehand, and the big rule is that you can’t complain about the movie. So I went in blind to one of these screenings several winters ago and was rewarded with this exuberant, epic, international romance (and musical!) starring Carol Burnett’s daughter. I did not complain about the movie.” It centers on a flourishing relationship between Wendy, who moves to Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend, and Hiro, and the temporary success they find as musicians, which ultimately hinges on the gimmick of Wendy being a blonde American. True love thrives even where artistic integrity might falter, though they find that in the end, too.

Where upward mobility had been at the heart of some of his earlier collaborations with Sirk or frequent costar Doris Day, Rock

Hudson’s turn in John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (1966) is a noirish evaluation of being unfulfilled despite seeming to have it all. Hudson stars as a disaffected banking executive who, when given the chance, takes up a covert organization’s offer (more of a blackmail attempt, really) to change his identity, going so far as to fake his death and get plastic surgery to change his appearance. (John Randolph actually stars as the banking executive, Arthur Hamilton, though it’s Hudson, or Tony Wilson, who he turns into. Lucky him.) More than just merely dystopic, there’s a defense for Seconds as a philosophical treatise of sorts. Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek posits that “transforming himself into Wilson, Hamilton realizes what he always dreamt of, but things go terribly wrong when he becomes aware that those transgressive dreams were part of the same oppressive reality from which he tried to escape.” Luminary cinematographer James Wong Howe shot it, earning the film an Academy Award nomination for black-andwhite cinematography.

The Chicago Film Society occasionally deviates from conventional narrative and documentary films, and this season features two experimental cinema programs. The first, “Left-Handed Memories: The Films of Shellie Fleming,” screens Saturday, April 6, at 7 PM, at Chicago Filmmakers, as part of the Onion City Experimental Film Festival.

Then, on April 20 at 7 PM, at the Chicago Film Society’s office, “Films to Dance to with Kioto Aoki.” About this, programmer Cameron Worden says, “Few artists in Chicago are as dedicated to the work of making art as musician and filmmaker Kioto Aoki.

In addition to the numerous albums she’s played on and gallery exhibitions she’s contributed to over the past ten years, Kioto has also made dozens of short experimental films in 16mm, a corpus undertaken with an unusual degree of rigor and purity of vision, as well as a healthy sense of artistic play.” The program will feature live musical accompaniment by cellist Jamie Kempkers.

During a season when the sun begins to set at 5 PM, maybe it’s best to just submit to the darkness altogether and head to the movies, where to sit in the dim light of the big screen is to be temporarily transfixed with strangers to whom you become bonded for a brief period of time. It may not help in keeping you physically warm, but one’s heart and soul will definitely benefit. v

UPCOMING AT

THE LOGAN I LIKE IT LIKE THAT

JAN 26-29 AT 11 PM

POETIC JUSTICE FEB 2-5 AT 11 PM

2646 N. MILWAUKEE AVE | CHICAGO, IL | THELOGANTHEATRE.COM | 773.342.5555

m letters@chicagoreader.com JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 29

WINTER THEATER & ARTS

CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN FILM FESTIVAL R 1/31–2/4, Chicago Architecture Center, 111 E. Wacker, $20 per film, $15 for CAC members adfilmfest.com/adff-chicago

FESTIVAL PREVIEW

The Architecture & Design Film Festival builds a bridge between Chicago and the world The Chicago Architecture Center will once again host the ADFF.

By NORA PAUL

T

he Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) returns to Chicago next weekend in its second consecutive year at the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC). The five-day festival features 20 films, ten short films, and a series of panels and speakers pulled from the worlds of architecture and design within Chicago and internationally.

The festival runs in Chicago after visiting New York, Toronto, and Vancouver during the last three months.

The film medium brings visibility to far-flung stories, the narratives bridging temporal, geographic, and cultural gaps to share universal components of our structural, ecological, and social fabric. The feature films survey a broad range of themes and voices of those designing, developing, and interacting with the built environment.

“We have selected films highlighting issues applicable across the architecture and design world and beyond,” wrote Adam Rubin, the senior director of content, exhibits, and interpretation for the CAC, and the festival’s curator, in an email to the Reader. Rubin worked with ADFF founder and executive director Kyle Bergman both to select the films for the festival and to curate a panel of speakers and specialists.

“Even if a story takes place outside of Chicago, it can be connected to i s s u e s C h i c a go is experiencing,” Rubin wrote. For example, the film House of Adaptation follows the construction of a climate-adaptive building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that will float with rising sea levels. “We will use this film to have a conversation about climate change and resilience in Chicago.”

A Q&A session with Michelle Woods, a proj-

ect manager for the City of Chicago, will follow the screening, which will appear as a double feature with TerraForma on February 1 at 5:45 PM. Eleanor Esser Gorski, the CEO and president of the CAC, said: “This year’s cinematic celebration not only showcases the diverse narratives of architecture and design but also serves as a reflection of Chicago’s rich architectural history, including our importance to the modernist movement.”

Other films include Modernism, Inc., which centers architect and industrial designer Eliot Noyes, who introduced a modernist approach to corporate America. A transitional figure in the history of American design, Noyes built the design programs for IBM, Westinghouse, and Mobil Oil. In The Mies van der Rohes, filmmaker Sabine Gisiger introduces us to the many women who impacted the life of world-renowned architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Drawing on a private archive of footage, photos, and docents, the film retells the story of the architect as remembered by his eldest daughter, Georgia.

As Mies van der Rohe’s family stayed in Berlin when he moved to Chicago, the film’s focus is mostly within Germany.

However, Chicago becomes his adopted home.

Several of the films are profiles of famous architects made by their children.

Skin of Glass follows director Denise Zmekhol’s journey after discovering that her late father’s most celebrated work as an architect, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo known as the Pele de Vidro (“Skin of Glass”), has become occupied by hundreds

“Even if a story takes place outside of Chicago, it can be connected to issues Chicago is experiencing.”

30 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

The Mies van der Rohes ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN FILM FESTIVAL

of unhoused people. Roger Zmekhol had designed the building for corporate office use, but in 1964, when it was almost complete, a military coup led to government possession of the building. The Pele de Vidro was used as a federal police station before being abandoned in 2003. Zmekhol traces the shape of Brazil’s recent history through these shifting forms of use. The film delicately interweaves the personal and political in a meditation on displacement, inequality, and loss.

It is appropriate that Chicago’s landscape is highlighted in the festival. Known for its architecture, the city’s design has also historically been reconfigured and reimagined in forms of resilience that insist on the future.

Communities invest in their own potential and that of spaces which, rather than controlling civic life, can be part of an ecosystem that benefits it.

The Making of Mahalia Jackson Court is a short film depicting the placemaking site Mahalia Jackson Court. In 2022, artists, craftspeople, and community members redeveloped the vacant lot at 1 E. 79th into a vibrant community space to honor revered

gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who lived in Chatham.

This year’s festival coincides with the fifth annual Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5). Titled “This Is A Rehearsal,” the biennial centers the public as participants in building public life and reveals that cities are not static places. CAB 5 engages the community with architecture through an exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center, a collaboration with Chicago Public Schools, and site-specific and functional installations throughout the city. Like the ADFF, CAB 5 convenes international sites of shared social, economic, and political issues.

An official site of CAB 5, the CAC currently hosts biennial exhibitions in its galleries before it becomes a cineplex for the festival.

The ten short films from around the world will be played on a 75-minute loop in the Chicago Gallery at the CAC. The center is free to the public throughout the festival, Rubin noted, with the intention that Chicagoans and other visitors can engage in these conversations. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

THE STAGE IS HOT THIS WINTER AT

Complexions Contemporary Ballet Saturday February 3, 2024

Compañía Nacional de Danza Saturday February 10, 2024

Blade Runner In Concert Saturday February 17, 2024

Richard Marx with guest John Waite Friday March 1, 2024

Trinity Irish Dance Company Sunday March 3, 2024

MOMIX - ALICE Saturday March 9, 2024

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 31

WINTER THEATER & ARTS THE XXX-FILES

Bang whose gong?

How to soundtrack an orgy

By MICCO CAPORALE Some names have been changed to protect subjects’ privacy.

M

y friend Jean believes orgies are the antidote to cuffing season. This fall we went to a warehouse co n ce r t , a n d b e twe e n bands she explained the life-changing magic of fucking in a group. For the past few years, she’d cruised all the typical public spots where queer people go for sexual experiences in the company of others—Steamworks, Cell Block, Banana Video, and so on. She quickly graduated to play parties at dungeons, then at private rentals and homes. Over the past year and a half, she’s noticed a surge in group-sex parties, and in spring 2023 she began hosting her own.

After hosting for more than six months, she settled into a rhythm that requires a strict but comfortable mindfulness about her schedule, housekeeping, and friendships. This rhythm not only gives her life more structure but also provides emotional and sexual fulfillment that’s made her no longer dread winter. She’s freed herself of the anxiety that plagues many unpartnered people—straight or gay, monogamous or poly—who feel a clock ticking down each autumn as their peers race to lock in some kind of companionship to wait out the cold weather. If nothing else, she has the intimacy and bacchanalia of her parties. She’s sorted out most of the logistics—maintaining a clean apartment, attracting and vetting the right guests—but there’s been one consistent sticking point: the music.

“I’m not a music person,” Jean says. “When I’m at a party and someone’s like, ‘What should we listen to? You DJ!,’ I panic. Music can make or break a mood so easily, and it’s not something I keep up with.”

At one of her parties she noticed that, no matter where she moved the speaker, people would migrate away from it. In a hurry, she’d put on an old sex playlist she’d made for hook-

32 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

ing up with a former flame. It had worked with that p e r s o n ( s h e ’d based it on their taste), but in a group setting it killed the mood.

“I was like, ‘ W h a t ’s go i n g on?

W h a t ’s wrong here?’

And then I heard the songs and was like, ‘Oh. My. God. I can’t believe I thought a group of people would want to have sex to this!’”

The music was all pop, but much of it was too languid (Lolawolf ’s “Whole House”) or so hypersexual it sounded corny (Alewya’s “Sweating”). The biggest mood killer was Giveon’s “For Tonight,” with its maudlin lyrics about a toxic rendezvous, its self-pitying tone, and its comically oversize beat—and when the list finished, Spotify’s algorithm seemed hell-bent on resurfacing that particular track and similarly ill-suited songs.

“I was mortified.”

Jean isn’t alone in noticing that what works one-on-one doesn’t always work in a group.

Yar, who sings in Chicago metalcore band Blood Nymph, played Boy Harsher—a personal favorite—at the first sex party she hosted, and it didn’t go over well.

“Boy Harsher is kind of, like, driving elec-

COLLAGE BY KIRK WILLIAMSON

tronic bass,” she explains, “a lot of powerful drums, very powerful rhythms. That’s good for me. But I found very quickly that it was a little too demanding of an audience in a group-sex space. I don’t think music works in that context when you have to engage with the music on its terms rather than, like, offering it as a backdrop for your mood, your vibe, your sexiness.”

Yar had always dreamed of pursuing group sex, and before the pandemic she’d had an experience similar to Jean’s: trying out different public spots before moving to underground parties. Coming out of lockdown, she had an even stronger desire for intimate connections but gravitated to smaller DIY events, hoping

to find more people who shared her attitudes about COVID and consent. “There’s a lot of harm that can happen in these spaces that’s not just physical,” Yar says.

As for the music at her own parties, Yar has experimented and found that romantic instrumentals do the trick—moody, quiet, and not too heavily rhythmic, such as Spanish guitar, piano concertos, or mellow jazz. Like a good hostess, she also likes to pick music to complement a theme. Around Christmas, she threw a solstice sex party and wanted music that acknowledged the season without making guests feel trapped by the forced cheerfulness of a holiday shopping soundtrack. She looked

WINTER THEATER & ARTS for 1940s jazz covers of Christmas songs that would land like snowflakes on the tongue, especially those that alluded to holiday loneliness or winter as a season of death.

There are no hard-and-fast rules to throwing orgies: some like them as intimate as five or six guests, while others prefer groups as large as 15 or 20. Some people think inviting in pairs is ideal because it encourages coupling off, while others insist on odd numbers so there can never be just twosomes. Everyone agrees it’s helpful to have the energy and enthusiasm of newcomers as well as the guidance of more experienced players, but depending on the party “more experienced” can mean more experience with group sex or more experience with specific acts that have high barriers to entry, such as fisting or blood play. Regardless, a party is guaranteed to flop if everyone’s not on the same page about expectations and attitude.

Hosts sometimes handpick guests, usually starting with people they’ve enjoyed playing with before and then opening the list to those

vides it to friends and friends of friends as well as to people who respond to her periodic posts on Instagram, Lex, and other social media. On the form, she outlines what is and isn’t acceptable in her space and asks questions about what people want to get out of the experience and how they will d e m o n s t ra te safety and accountability —Yar, singer of Blood Nymph and sex-party host to others. Jean o n l y i nv i te s people whose tion, while another might be geared toward forms she’s approved, but sometimes she gets a little more particular to avoid, say, a party toys and different kinds of sensation.

Jean keeps a master invite list, and everyone with all tops, all beginners, or the same people on it has filled out a vetting form—she pro- as last time.

Bernie likes to pick music based on her guest list. In her 20s, she lived in New York and tried all kinds of sex parties, including big swinger events and play parties that took over private clubs. Approaching her 30s, she found herself drawn to smaller sex parties in people’s homes. “I like to see evidence of people’s lives, like a laundry hamper,” she says. “It feels more intimate and personable and reminds me I’m being hosted by someone.”

Just before the pandemic hit, she moved to Chicago, so she spent most of her first full year here inside. When lockdown was lifted and she was able to get vaccinated, she was eager to experience the local sex scene—but she has an immunocompromised partner and couldn’t risk their health. Hosting gave her freedom and safety she couldn’t find elsewhere: she could set her own COVID protocols and trust her invite list to follow them. Sometimes her partner thinks about the musical taste of each person and makes a playlist that blends everyone’s interests. Bernie prefers to keep it a little simpler.

In New York, she went to a lot of parties

players’ partners. The event might be organized around a specific kind of play. One party might be oriented around pain and humilia-

“I don’t think music works in that context when you have to engage with the music on its terms rather than, like, offering it as a backdrop for your mood, your vibe, your sexiness.”

COMING UP AT SYMPHONY CENTER FEB 8-10 Seong-Jin Cho Plays Beethoven

APR 25-27 CSO x Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

FEB 17 Carnival of the Animals

MAY 2-4 Sheherazade

MAR 8 Eliades Ochoa

MAY 30-JUNE 1 Montgomery & Bruckner 7

MAR 30 Herbie Hancock

JUNE 9 Hilary Hahn & Friends

APR 4-6 Klaus Mäkelä & Yuja Wang

JUNE 13-15 The Elements with Joshua Bell

HIL ARY HAHN

HERBIE HANCOCK

S E O N G -J I N C H O

Choose any three or more concerts to save 15%

CSO.ORG/CYO | 312-294-3000 SYMPHONY CENTER | 220 S. MICHIGAN AVE.

PLUS, UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE SUBSCRIBER REWARDS: Flexible ticket exchanges 15% off additional concert tickets Exclusive parking rates Subscriber offers, presales and events

Official Airline of the CSO

Feb. 8-10 & Apr. 4-6 performances are generously sponsored by

Youth Education Program Sponsor

These programs are partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Media Partners

Artists, prices and programs subject to change.

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 33

WINTER THEATER & ARTS continued from p. 33 with thin white people in expensive lingerie, so she tries to get as far away from that as possible. Group sex can be intimidating, and it sometimes makes people feel very vulnerable; she likes things to be silly and casual.

“I don’t want the music to seem too cool,” Bernie says, laughing. “Left to my own devices, I make pizza rolls and go with a sort of nostalgic 90s station—you know, a lot of Britney and Christina. I want things to feel comfortable and familiar.”

At one party, she had a lot of theater people, so she put on a Spotify station of songs from musicals. Throughout the evening, people kept breaking into song together.

“I think it didn’t kill the mood because— well, it was a group of mostly people who love musicals, so there’s that,” Bernie explains.

“But when you’re in a group, it’s so much about communal pleasure, so if there’s a faction of the group that’s really enjoying the music, even if it’s not something you love, just their enjoyment of it can be sexy.”

When in doubt, Bernie plays Massive Attack. “Massive Attack is sexy and mysterious,” she says. “It’s not too heavy, and you don’t want to sing along.” When it’s time to wind down, she switches to something softer and folkier to signal that the party is coming to a close.

amount of sexy sophistication.

“I don’t necessarily listen to music when I’m just having sex with a partner,” she says, “because I like to hear all of the sounds and dialogue. But at parties, I feel so weird if there’s no music!”

Gnat has experienced different sizes and styles of parties in a variety of venues, but she believes the same things work in all those settings. The music can’t be too loud—people shouldn’t be competing with it to communicate—and it can’t be too harsh, chaotic, or repetitive. Her favorite sex-party soundtrack is darkwave, which she describes as “filthy industrial music” that’s “sleek and synthy.”

But she also likes Cocteau Twins and reggaeton by the likes of Bad Bunny and Young Miko. She’s found that the latter can be a little too fierce and raunchy for white tenderqueers, but because most people at the parties she attends don’t know Spanish, they can simply lose themselves in the vibe. The Cocteau Twins’ music feels much softer and more delicate, but she enjoys it for a similar reason: it’s not as much about the words as a feeling.

Ava also prefers music without words. Her default is electronic music, she says, because it’s easy to find something energetic and agreeable that “gets you in your body.”

But as a jazz pianist, she also appreciates fucking in a group to —Bernie, sex-party host classical piano—the same sort of thing Yar likes. The only Gnat Rosa Madrid, who designs candy- time the music has taken her out of the expericolored vinyl BDSM gear under the name Gnat ence? When a DJ went a little too avant-garde Glitter Kink, agrees that the music at a sex and tried too many bizarre or jarring sounds that didn’t create smooth transitions between party shouldn’t be too heavy and overwhelmsongs. ing, but she doesn’t like silliness in that conAva is a little over three years into transitext. From the time she came out as a teenager, she always knew she wanted to get into group tion, but she spent her first two in a monogamous marriage. After divorcing a year ago, she sex, but it wasn’t until 2015—after several years of traveling in BDSM circles—that she was eager to experience life as a single trans woman and dove headfirst into an assortment finally took the plunge. She expects a certain

“I don’t want the music to seem too cool. Left to my own devices, I make pizza rolls and go with a sort of nostalgic 90s station— you know, a lot of Britney and Christina.”

34 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

COLLAGE BY KIRK WILLIAMSON

of queer dating and sexual experiences. But at Banana Video and spaces like it, she felt like prey.

“Grindr and app culture changed cruising,” she says, “so in my experience, a lot of the people who go to those spaces on your average night are very on the down-low—like straight guys with families at home or whatever. Just people who for whatever reason aren’t part of the community and don’t want to be and have no sense of boundaries and won’t take no for an answer.”

DIY parties provide Ava a sense of safety, as they do for many others, though in her case it’s less about COVID and more about strength in numbers. At underground parties, she never worries about being the only trans person there. And even if she’s hooking up with someone for the first time, she trusts that someone has her back if there’s fallout—someone is ignoring another person’s boundaries, say, or a top didn’t participate in aftercare following a scene—because she knows the organizers or other guests.

“For me, the last year has been a really intense immersion in group sex,” Ava says. “There’s no better way of getting comfortable with your body and realizing bodies are wonderful. There’s a lot of variety to them. Group sex affirms sex-positive and body-positive practices, and it teaches you about boundaries and consent and learning sexual possibilities within platonic relationships. There’s just a lot to learn from

navigating these spaces. It’s beautiful!”

Beyond music, a good orgy needs the same things as any party: ample snacks, multiple areas for gathering and settling in, and one or two spaces where people can calm down and recover from overstimulation. Sexy lighting is necessary too, and icebreakers are a big plus—spin the bottle and its variations seem to be universal winners. Many hosts advocate a strict cutoff time for guests to arrive, so latecomers won’t interrupt anything. There’s no consensus about the wisdom of involving drugs and alcohol, but that’s to be expected given the range of activities on the table. Some people think it’s fine to have a drink or a little toke to take the edge off, while others—especially those engaging in extreme BDSM—believe that people need to be completely sober and present to stay safe. Everyone agrees not to invite people who have to get “twisted” to have sex.

For many, group sex seems like an intangible fantasy: something that happens only in movies or in secret enclaves, a la Eyes Wide Shut. But organizing an orgy can be easier than throwing a punk show—not least because it’s more discreet. When the vibe is right, it can grow your self-knowledge and deepen and strengthen friendships and relationships.

It’s the life-changing magic of fucking in a group. v

m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S ALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE S THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SH SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SH SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

UPCOMING SHOWS

FEB 14–16

crying at the shed

FEB 23

COLD WAR KIDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .THE SHED

FEB 24

INZO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .THE SHED

WITH JOE P

WITH EAZYBAKED, CHMURA X DAGGS, BLOOKAH AND LHASA PETIK

FEB 25

NECK DEEP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .THE SHED WITH DRAIN, BEARINGS AND HIGHER POWER

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA FEB 26 PORNO FOR PYROS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .THE SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED T WITH TIGERCUB SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S ALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE S THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED T ON SALE NOW SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S ALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED T JANUARYSHED 25, 2024 - CHICAGO 35 SH SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT THEREADER SALT SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA

MUSIC

Rufus Sims at his home in Maywood in December 2023, reenacting the conditions of his recent house arrest to raise awareness of the practice THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

CITY OF WIN

‘I had a long fling with the streets but chose not to marry it.’

Rapper Rufus Sims forges a path for himself outside the shadow of his drug kingpin father.

By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Alejandro Hernandez that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.

“M

y dad was in the Chicago Reader in 1998,” says Chicago rapper Rufus Sims. “They mentioned him and his whole reign he had going on, and I would be on house arrest reading it, thinking it would be great if I can be in the Reader. Just a full-circle moment.”

That 1998 article, written by Grant Pick, was titled “Black and White and Feared All Over,” and it brought up Sims’s father, drug kingpin Rufus “the Weasel” Sims, in the course of profiling bare-knuckled biweekly west-side newspaper the Austin Voice.

36 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

“He drove a Rolls-Royce, wore diamondstudded sunglasses, and kept two luxury houses in the suburbs in addition to his Austin home,” Pick wrote. “When Sims was indicted on federal drug and racketeering charges in 1992, he went on the lam.” The Austin Voice didn’t want to glamorize the drug trade, so it headlined the story about his flight “Rufus on the Run . . . Or Pop Goes the Weasel.”

The younger Rufus Sims was born on the west side and grew up in the shadow of this charismatic antihero. Even before his own encounters with the carceral state, he knew what life could be like for an outlaw in this country—where making a living by whatever means you can often puts you at risk of losing your life or freedom. In 1995 a judge sent Sims’s father to federal prison for 27 years for money laundering.

The war on drugs has made it easy for poli-

ticians and pundits to point the finger at drug dealers for ruining communities, when the drug trade wouldn’t have taken root if such powerful people had supported investment in those communities in the first place. It’s much easier to starve a neighborhood than it is to rebuild it, and when someone is born into privation and an extralegal livelihood is all they know, breaking away from it completely is easier said than done.

“I’ve been a person who’s kind of been torn between worlds,” Sims says. ”It was almost like [the streets] rolled out the red carpet for me, but it also just took a lot from me too. So I’ve just been this person that’s been trying to find my way in a different world, in a regular world outside of the streets. And music has been like a guiding light.”

When Sims started rapping in grade school, he used the name “Weasel Sims” as a nod to his father. He began consistently recording in a studio while in high school, by which time he was also earning his keep in the streets. As he gained a reputation in Chicago’s music scene, he likewise gained a reputation with local law enforcement. Sims was locked up several times, but he considers all of them valuable learning experiences.

“Those times made me better, no bap,” he admits. “I just get in my own world. I strictly read, work out, write, and correspond with a few people over the phone. It’s almost like God put me in these positions to make me better, because I probably went to jail maybe three or four times—two of them being 18-month

stints—and I did nothing but write those times and come back so much better.”

From October 2019 till October 2021, Sims was on house arrest as he fought a gun possession case. He’d built a life for himself in the suburbs, with a decent job and a home for his family, but he had to move in with his mother in Chicago in order to comply with the requirement that he serve his house arrest in the same county as his offense. He was looking at up to nine years behind bars, but he bargained down to four—and with credit for his time on house arrest, he eventually ended up serving two months in prison.

“I’m a very much more peaceful guy these days, and I’m just trying to make my music and stay out the way.”

—Rufus Sims Sims’s ordeal was shorter than it could’ve been, but he still spent years unable to go outside freely or live a normal life. He used that time to do some deep introspection, read more, and examine what he could do to improve as a person, father, and artist. He’s in his early 30s and has kids to feed, so he learned how to set up a music publishing company for himself. He registered his songs with rights organizations to ensure he’d get the back-end checks he’s due.

His new perspective on life also motivated

MUSIC him to shed the Weasel Sims persona in fall 2022 and embrace a new creative identity as Rufus Sims. He began recording more music than he ever had before, and in 2023 alone he dropped three albums: B4 House Arrest, House Arrest, and a collection of House Arrest outtakes called Bond Hearing.

“I’m a very much more peaceful guy these days, and I’m just trying to make my music and stay out the way,” he explains. “My dad’s a legendary figure in his own world, and now I feel like I want to establish my own path. I’ve been going up a lot harder as Rufus.”

Sims’s music is a treat for fans of witty bars and soul-sampling production. House Arrest in particular is a no-frills project detailing the trials and tribulations on his path to improvement. “There’s plenty of rappers who will show you how to die,” he told online magazine Passion of the Weiss in November, “but I am more about showing you how to live.” His biggest strengths are his lyricism and his storytelling ability, and the second track, the gripping “Interrogating Baby Boys,” transports you right into the interrogation room with him.

Sims raps about his experiences like a paint-

er without a canvas, using such colorful details that you can close your eyes and see his images perfectly in your head. He hopes his stories can serve as therapy for those who relate, as well as provide inspiration for anyone looking to change their life for the better the way he did.

“I had a long fling with the streets but chose not to marry it,” he raps on the House Arrest track “Nowhere.”

“I feel like we have to go inside of ourselves and not let our environment or the people around us dictate how we think or move,” Sims says. “Someone has to find something that they really love or enjoy doing and just lock into that. That means you might have to cut out and sacrifice some other things. But if you really lock on what you’re trying to do, you’re gonna grow.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate communitydriven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond.

LISTENBOLDLY 2023/24 SEASON

BRINGING THE WORLD’S BEST MUSIC TO CHICAGO FOR 80 REMARKABLE YEARS.

Tickets start at just $10!

more info

chicagopresents.uchicago.edu 773.702.ARTS (2787) @uchicagopresents

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 37

MUSIC CHICAGOANS OF NOTE

Kyle LaValley, Ramova Theatre programming and creative director “Any person with an email address and a little bit of cash can be a promoter. It’s really different to be a curator, connector, and a conduit for special moments to happen.”

As told to LEOR GALIL In the fall, Bridgeport’s soon-to-be-opened Ramova Theatre announced two key positions: director of operations Pete Falknor and programming and creative director Kyle LaValley.

Both hires gave me a lot of confidence in the future of this new music venue, whose main hall has a capacity of 1,500 people. LaValley, a metro Detroit native, landed a brief gig as a production assistant for the Empty Bottle and Thalia Hall ten years ago, and in 2018 she went to work as talent buyer for the still-new Sleeping Village, helping make it one of Avondale’s hot spots. LaValley’s music-industry experience also includes almost two years as a festival creative director in Denton, Texas, in the early 2010s, as well as talent-buyer jobs in Nashville and Madison, Wisconsin, before her stint at Sleeping Village. The Ramova officially opened its doors with a Slo ’Mo party on New Year’s Eve, and I look forward to seeing how LaValley shapes its culture in the months and years to come.

“I’m very motivated by telling the story of how this reimagined space came to be—also paying homage and holding space for what was before as well.”

I

had quietly been thinking about my next career move. I felt like I had done some good work at Sleeping Village and with everything we were producing outside of Sleeping Village—our shows at Cactus Club and Logan Square Arts Fest. But I had kind of felt like creatively I had hit my ceiling there, and I wanted to get out of the way for some younger people, like Alicia Maciel, who’s now the director of programming. I hadn’t put my flag up or anything yet, but I got a message from my buddy Pete Falknor.

I worked for Pete when he was the GM of Thalia as they were about to open. We’ve always had a really good rapport but have been on our own journey since I moved to Madison and then Nashville and was kind of just out of the picture for a while. But when I came back and started working at SV, we reconnected. He had been working for House of Blues for a while. He actually hit me up, and I thought that he was still at House of

38 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

love—[including] having a smaller, developing room as well as a larger space.

Ramova, the time that I saw it for the first time, was really in a space where it looked like a lot of the spaces where I grew up hanging out in Detroit. Seeing the plans that they had for the theater, hearing Tyler and his wife, Emily, talk about it, and knowing that Pete was involved in the project, I had to take an instinctual leap, and that’s what I did.

I started in April [2023], and that was partially due to the fact that I just needed to give some good notice and time to hand things over

CLAYTON HAUCK

Blues. He was like, “So, what are you doing right now? What’s your next move?” And I was like, “Not working for fucking Live Nation!” I thought he was trying to poach me, and I’ve had that opportunity to work for that company—that’s where good promoters go to die. I shut it down. He was like, “No,

actually, I’m working on this new spot called the Ramova.”

We started chatting about it. I met Tyler Nevius, who was the developer and owner of the new project. It was really loose and casual.

The opportunity sounded really interesting and is a marriage of a lot of the things that I

at SV. I took a month to transition out there and help try to put some good systems in place for the folks who were going to start handling everything that I’d been doing.

SV was actually a move into a more dedicated, small direction, which is something I was looking for. I’d been in Nashville prior to that job, booking a space that’s kind of similar [to the Ramova]—in the way that it’s a compound. It had a [1,275]-cap called the Cannery Ballroom, the 500-cap Mercy Lounge, about 300 [for the] High Watt, all within the same giant building. In a lot of ways, coming to the Ramova is kind of like coming home—to being able to work in a space that’s very malleable and has lots of different types of events and programming, both small and large.

I was a teenager during the garage-rock explosion, so I saw the Von Bondies, White Stripes, and Dirtbombs in tiny little clubs when I was real young. I had a lot of musical ambassadors in my life who were older people that turned me on to a bunch of different styles of music and types of people. That experience informed me and made me have a social purpose within that scene.

Because I don’t have any musical talent, I was able to photograph bands and people and connect the nightlife culture around all the

UPCOMING CONCERTS AT

MUSIC 4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

The reopened Ramova Theatre KIRK WILLIAMSON

shows and parties I was going to. I also got interested in electronic music at the time. It was rock that I’d grown up with, and electronic music, and then hip-hop, all intersected in a really cool way—just with the age I was when D12 was kind of first starting to really bubble.

Then we had Danny Brown and all these awesome people.

Then I went to photo school with the intent to be a photojournalist. I’ve always really loved watching people and connecting people that I think have creative potential. In its essence, photographing and meeting all these people gave me the exposure to get into music and working more closely with musicians and artists.

Then I fell into creative directing and programming when I moved to Texas and met Natalie Dávila, who now works at Polyvinyl.

She was operating a big DIY space there. She and I started collaborating and then ended up taking over a fest called 35 Denton. We had Killer Mike, Solange, Sleep, and a lot of people ahead of their curves. That was a really special and formative time and totally flipped a switch for me to be like, “Oh, I’m gonna have a career now.” I didn’t know what shape that would take.

I see myself as a promoter who exercises all of my creative potential in my shows. Any person with an email address and a little bit of cash can be a promoter. It’s really different to be a curator, connector, and a conduit for special moments to happen. You can book the shows that are force-fed to you, but I think there’s a lot that goes into being early on things, being ahead of everyone else. It’s a lot of instinct, but it’s also a lot of creative maneuvering, paying attention, and having a good circle—other artists and creative people that you kind of pick up on these little cues.

I see my work as “I’m a promoter who’s super involved in the marketing and the arts and the assets and all of the things we do to promote the show differently.” That’s one of the things that put SV on the map: the through line of our programming being really eclectic and interesting, but also the way that we presented shows and presented ideas being a little bit different and charming.

I can fall in love—and have fallen in love— with every scene I’ve ever visited. Detroit, Nashville, and Wisconsin, all these places that I’ve been lucky enough to be a small part of a scene, all have a lot of determination and grit and all the things that make good artists excel. But I think Chicago, especially now—as opposed to when I first lived here and was on the periphery and doing stuff for the Empty Bottle—is much more friendly as it relates to intramusician or -artist relationships [and] relationships with other promoters. A lot of us came up together; it’s a lot of young and interesting people that are all competing but are also friendly to each other.

It used to be very much a thing where if you worked for another house and I saw you out, we were posturing and not really talking. But, like, we hang out together and we share ideas, and [we’re] learning to collaborate more just because of the environment that we’re in with all these big corporate companies. We’re having to be creative and grittier because of that,

and the fact that we don’t have such a large presence compared to those other markets.

It’s something that’s very special and something that we have to protect, as independents.

I always want to have a community hub.

Community means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and the word is tossed around a lot in our work as tastemakers. But for me, my community is the people I’m inspired by and excited by their ideas and the things that they’re bringing to the table. I’ve always naturally been drawn to weirdos and creatives my entire life.

When I go out, when I have free time of my own, I usually go to shows just to see what people are listening to or talking about or what the crowds are like. My work is good because I am participating actively outside of the work too.

I’m actually going out and trying to support people and having conversations and talking to people about what they’re working on in a way that isn’t to serve my business as much as it is a natural curiosity with what people are creating.

Much like SV, I think that the focus for me is always to have eclectic programming and a through line of taste—where you don’t necessarily know the artist, or maybe just the name, [but] you say, “Oh, that’s happening at the Ramova. Cool, I’ll have to check that.” Discovery is really important for me.

We’re trying to actually foster community involvement and make a community space where people can come and learn with workshops—just having things that are not necessarily a hard ticket, but that allow the space to be used as, essentially, a community center.

That’s really important to ownership as well as myself, and just to kind of do some events that are not necessarily standard.

I’m very motivated by telling the story of how this reimagined space came to be—also paying homage and holding space for what was before as well. We’re launching this storyshare campaign where we’re having people who had been to the Ramova in its original rendition, years ago, to share their stories. To have [a] social-media feature on a monthly basis that also has a corresponding mini museum in the theater lobby, where people can see artifacts, pictures, and read these stories.

I think that that’s really motivating. It’s really exciting for me to think about people who have been to the original space coming back and seeing the reimagined room, and the look on their faces is the thing that I’m really looking forward to. v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW! 3/9 Beth Orton 3/9 Charlie Parr 3/30 Andrew Sa / Jake Blount 4/18 Joe Pug (2nd Show Added!)

4/26 Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams 5/18 The Secret Sisters

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4 7PM

Alash In Szold Hall THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8 8PM

Reverie Road In Szold Hall SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17 8PM

Parker Millsap In Szold Hall SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18 11AM

Justin Roberts & The Not Ready For Naptime Players

Kids & Family Show!

In Maurer Hall

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 7PM

Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet In Maurer Hall SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 7PM

Matt Andersen In Szold Hall THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 29 8PM

Masters Of Hawaiian Music In Maurer Hall FRIDAY, MARCH 1 8PM

Jess Williamson In Maurer Hall FRIDAY, MARCH 1 8PM

Willam Fitzsimmons In Szold Hall SUNDAY, MARCH 3 3PM & 7PM

Lúnasa In Maurer Hall MONDAY, MARCH 11 8PM

Rickie Lee Jones In Maurer Hall WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

1/31

Julián Pujols Quall and Mamey

2/7

Lunar New Year Celebration

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 39

Recommended and notable shows and releases with critics’ insights for the week of January 25

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

THURSDAY25

R.A.P. Ferreira returns home to Chicago with another resplendently cerebral album

Armand Hammer, Quelle Chris 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $25, $23 in advance. 18+

CORRIONADO IDEOLOGÍA

R.A.P. FERREIRA, SEMIRATRUTH, RANDAL BRAVERY Sun 1/28, 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $22. 17+

AMERICAN INDEPENDENT music in general and underground hip-hop more specifically would be a lot less interesting without Rory Allen Philip Ferreira. The Nashville-based Chicago native has released a torrent of playfully cerebral music under several pseudonyms, including Scallops Hotel; he broke out in the early 2010s rapping as Milo, then put that name to rest in 2018 in favor of R.A.P. Ferreira. He’s a skilled MC whose mellow, confident vibe helps his flow feel sturdy even when he speeds up and slows down throughout a song. His even-keeled ease also makes him sound like he’s encoding the secrets of the universe into his work, loading his cheeky verses with genuine wisdom and esoteric-seeming references. The top YouTube comment on the video for “Asiatique Black Wizard Lily Funk,” the giddy title track from an album he dropped in October, reads “rory inspired me to go to college and get a bachelors so i can understand wtf hes talking about.” I like how he rhymes “Ellingtonian renegade” with “vaporwave” on that track—it’s a tiny moment

40 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

that I can savor as thoroughly as an entire song by a lesser artist.

On January 26, Ferreira drops The First Fist to Make Contact When We Dap, a resplendent full-length collaboration with Tokyo producer Fumitake Tamura. The LP emphasizes Ferreira’s loose melodic sensibilities and connects his knotty, unconventional poeticism to a constellation of historically important Black avant-garde artists, including Sun Ra and the Last Poets. Ferreira also runs a label, Ruby Yacht, that releases his own work and that of his colleagues, and he knows how vital it is to his economic health as an artist to maintain control over his music and how it’s distributed. First in Maine and now in Nashville, he’s run a brick-and-mortar shop called Soulfolks Records and Tapes, whose bottom line doubtless benefits from his position in the national underground. Given the tight relationships Ferreira has cultivated with his fans over the years, I suspect folks will visit from far and wide just to see how his tastes manifest themselves in a record store. —LEOR GALIL

Beloved New York City duo Armand Hammer voice concerns of a postmodern world with dark humor and near surgical poetic insight. Rappers Billy Woods and Elucid (aka Chaz Hall) approach their music with a cunning instinct, whether they’re exploring the niche territory of raw, beautiful NYC corner tales or the big-picture issue of growing global disdain. Armand Hammer’s aphotic interpretations of Blackness in America teem with discernment and tiny glimmers of hope, and they’ve earned the group a cultlike following, critical acclaim, and massive support in underground hip-hop. Their sixth and latest album, September’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (Fat Possum), lived on “Best of 2023” lists. That said, listening to Woods and Elucid trade sermons at breakneck speeds admittedly requires more attention than your average rap jaunt, which could limit their appeal with mainstream audiences.

But for those of us who appreciate dense and fruitful hip-hop, it’s a feast.

Armand Hammer are on the road with exceptional Detroit producer, rapper, and songwriter Quelle Chris, aka Gavin Christopher Tennille.

Quelle has been releasing music for more than a decade, and his solo work, production projects, and group efforts range from very good to great; just like his tourmates, he has a lengthy catalog worthy of thorough investigation. Quelle’s deep focus, excellent craftsmanship, and arresting combination of warmth, sharpness, wit, and charm have made him one of hip-hop’s crown jewels. His writing is emotive, meaty, and beautifully weathered, and he’s quietly become a sought-after collaborator. He has too many credits to properly list here, but among my favorites are his production work for Nappy Nina (on 2019’s “No Yes”) and Danny Brown (multiple tracks on last year’s Quaranta) and his amazing guest verse with experimental hip-hop duo H31r on their October single, “Down Down Bb.” Rap veterans of this ilk don’t often get to tour together, and these are some of the most important acts working in the genre today. Expect long lines and diehards at this show, and plan to get there early. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

Cactus Blossoms Joe George opens. 8 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $18-$25. b The Cactus Blossoms’ country music has a spooky 50s twang that gives it a vibe like something out of a David Lynch production. And sure enough, the filmmaker and musician recruited the group to perform an eerie, reverb-drenched rendition of “Mississippi” (from their 2016 record You’re Dreaming) for 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Minneapolis brothers Jack Torrey (guitar, bass, vocals) and Page Burkum (guitar, vocals) put their debts to the Everly Brothers, Chris Isaak, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and other classic crooners front and center in their sound, along with hints of spacious 70s country rock that recalls the Eagles or the Grateful Dead. That’s not a ton of stylistic range, but if you love achingly close harmonies you can happi-

MUSIC ly coast through their catalog’s upbeat but somewhat haunted grooves (“Hey Baby,” from 2022’s One Day) and heartbroken but still searching ballads (“Easy Way,” from their self-titled 2019 album).

Like the best of Lynch’s own music, the Cactus Blossoms’ recordings capture a wistful innocence echoing in an expansive darkness. The sweet is sweeter and the menace more menacing as they dance around each other like the brothers’ exquisite high-lonesome voices, lifting up toward the desert stars. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Blackwater Sniper further their unsettling atmospheres with a mix of glitches, samples, and hair-raising alarm and emergency sounds. Their ferocity is on full display in their prolific stream of singles: December 2022’s “The End of Good Times” confronts the war crime of targeting medical facilities, and to me it feels eerily prescient against the backdrop of Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza. “Choosing to bomb hospitals / Pray to God, pray to God / Children scream, skin and bone / Why.” Blackwater Sniper don’t hold back on horror, and the vibe at their shows verges on fearsome camp performance art; the musicians wear ghillie suits, which are simultaneously ridiculous and capable of eliciting primal hindbrain terror. Live, they pack a tremendous amount of material into just a few powerful minutes, so get to the Burlington on time—and don’t take a pee break unless you’re willing to risk missing the whole set. —MONICA KENDRICK

FRIDAY26 2hollis 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20. 18+ Los Angeles–based rapper 2hollis makes sugary, constantly shifting, radically processed pop songs— the kind so thoroughly colored by the Internet that it’s difficult to imagine what he’s like IRL. (He’s cultivated this image, or lack of an image, by withholding critical details about himself from the Web—and if you’ve spent any time on social media, it’s hard to fault him.) His albums (2022’s White Tiger and last year’s 2, both self-released) often fail to focus their stylistic ping-ponging and devolve into jumbles of electronic sequences—he maintains an exciting, even explosive tension, but he doesn’t seem to know how to discharge or direct it. On his singles, though, 2hollis reins in these disruptive tendencies and wrestles his songs’ unexpected jumps into powerful hooks. On August’s “Whiplash,” he smears his blurry vocals over a stuttering, melodic piano loop that’s edited ever so slightly to draw it taut, as though it might snap at the slightest breath; when the pristine, stomping hook finally arrives, the song lights up the sky like forbidden fireworks smuggled from Indiana. —LEOR GALIL

Blackwater Sniper Bleached Cross, Griefeater, Urine Hell, and Veganinblack (DJ set) open. 8 PM, Burlington Bar, 3425 W. Fullerton, $10. 21+ I’ve occasionally been asked why people like extremely raw, dark music, given that the world is arguably going to shit. “Are they simply wallowing?” they wonder. “Surely, upbeat music can at least bring a little hope?” I think the answer is that music full of rage and horror can in fact be soothing, comforting, and affirming, because it brings the inner and outer states into alignment. Toxic positivity—in music or otherwise—can be oppressive in its rush to smooth over well-justified anger and fear.

Chicago duo Blackwater Sniper bring a no-holdsbarred sensibility to their brutal powerviolence.

They deliver it fast and skillfully, ripping up performance spaces with a ruthlessness that reflects the violence of our time. They’re also kind of hilarious.

After Spotify dropped their March 2022 record Extraviolence because its songs were too short, Blackwater Sniper released an EP titled Too Fast for Spotify, whose seven tracks all clock in between ten and 17 seconds (a fraction the length of the shortest cuts on Extraviolence), along with five 90-minute cassette copies that contain the entire EP looped back-to-back 44 times.

Armand Hammer ALEXANDER RICHTER

Cactus Blossoms NATE RYAN

2hollis COURTESY THE ARTIST

Lovesliescrushing Openers are gs70 and a duo of Kyle Bates (aka Drowse) and Lula Asplund.

10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15. 21+ Shoegaze has entered its heretofore unforeseen Billboard era, as documented in Eli Enis’s sprawling December story for Stereogum. TikTok has helped propel young artists just out of high school (or, in the case of flyingfish, not even old enough to drive) onto the charts. These new artists are contributing to the renewed popularity of a style whose all-consuming fuzz can feel ecstatic or onenote, depending on the practitioner—their concise, hook-oriented interpretations of shoegaze contrast with the long-form, entrancing repetition that characterizes some of the genre’s defining documents. When any musical subculture suddenly blows up, I hope new fans dig deeper than the first page of Google results. And now that it’s shoegaze’s turn in the revival machine, I specifically hope more people discover cult midwestern act Lovesliescrushing.

In 1991, the two core members of Lovesliescrushing, Scott Cortez and Melissa Arpin Duimstra, began making late-night recordings in their living room in East Lansing, Michigan. They’ve released music only sporadically, due in no small part to the members’ divergent paths; Cortez moved to Chicago in 1998, and Arpin Duimstra started medical school in 2014. But as Lovesliescrushing they’ve maintained a consistent twilight sensibility that saturates their work, beginning with 1992’s Bloweyelashwish and extending through the heaps of old and new recordings they’ve uploaded to Bandcamp over the past decade. Their music seeps more than it soars, so that they’re more like drone explorers than the pop-centric TikTok artists pushing shoegaze onto the Billboard charts. Arpin Duimstra’s hushed vocals and Cortez’s drapes of guitars settle into your pores like a thick emulsion. It’s sometimes hard to tell where one song ends and the next begins, and that’s also part of the point— Lovesliescrushing cast aside structure in order to bathe in subtle tonal shifts. The duo share a love for texture, accretion, and gradual change with many artists operating in the slowcore space, illustrated perfectly by their December 2022 EP of Low covers, Psalms, which honors the Minnesota band’s late drummer and singer, Mimi Parker.

Lovesliescrushing rarely perform live—they’d only

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 41

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews.

continued from p. 41

played “about seven” concerts at the time of a 2021 Reader feature. After this Empty Bottle date, the duo will appear in March on the first day of the Slide Away festival, a two-day shoegaze spectacular with shows in Philadelphia (the hometown of curators and headliners Nothing) and then Los Angeles. Cortez’s dream-pop project Astrobrite is part of both bills. —LEOR GALIL

Jeff Parker & the New Breed 7:30 PM, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th, $40, $32 for U. of C. faculty and staff, $20 for people under 35, $10 for students, free for U. of C. students. b Ten years have passed since Jeff Parker moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, but he’s hardly been a stranger. He’s continued to work with musicians based in Chicago and musicians he met here, including Rob Mazurek, Joshua Abrams, Makaya McCraven, and instrumental combo Tortoise (he’s been a member since 1997). He played three shows in the city last year alone. Parker is best known as an electric guitarist with an ability to shift fluidly between sweet melodies, rich harmonies, coarse fuzz, and note-dense shredding, which has enabled him to sound equally apposite accompanying late jazz mentor Fred Anderson and soul polymath Meshell Ndegeocello. But he’s also an experienced multi-instrumentalist, beat maker, and DJ. He brings these varied talents under one roof in the New Breed, a combo he named after a clothing store that his dad ran in the 1970s. The family angle is strong—Parker has put one of his parents on the cover of each New Breed album, and his daughter Ruby sings on both—and it reflects the music’s inclusive nature and multigenerational appeal. On the band’s self-titled first album, the layers of sampled and played rhythms on “Executive Life” could set hip-hop heads a-bobbing. On the video for the title track of 2020’s Suite for Max Brown (released by local label International Anthem, like its predecessor), dancers who might be contemporaries of Parker’s folks dance in solitary ecstasy to the tune’s

Blackwater Sniper CARLISLE JONES

42 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

Lovesliescrushing JULIAN ARPIN-CORTEZ lyrical horn breaks and slinky rhythms. The latter LP also contains a lush, dreamy rendition of John Coltrane’s “After the Rain.” In concert, Parker’s jazz instincts take over, and the band stretches out on tracks that last a brief few minutes on record. The New Breed’s lineup for this concert includes Parker on guitar, Makaya McCraven on drums, Josh Johnson on keyboards and processed saxophone, and Paul Bryan on bass guitar and bass synthesizer; Parker expects that they’ll play new material alongside tunes from both records. —BILL MEYER

SUNDAY28 R.A.P. Ferreira See Pick of the Week on page 40. Semiratruth and Randal Bravery open.

8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $22. 17+

THURSDAY1 Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble 7 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park West, $20-$150. b Calling jazz drummer Kahil El’Zabar a “local treasure” might be the understatement of the century.

It’s certainly the understatement of the half century: El’Zabar recently marked 50 years of recording with his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. The polymathic percussionist—he’s also a vocalist, composer, fashion designer, and former chairman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians— is a legend among fans of free and spiritual jazz in Chicago and beyond, and this milestone should be cause for a global celebration.

Luckily for us, El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensem-

Jeff Parker JIM NEWBERRY

ble is commemorating the occasion with a new album, Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit (Spiritmuse). The ensemble began as a quintet but by the early 80s had settled into a trio format with two horn players. Its current iteration continues in that vein, pairing El’Zabar with longtime collaborators Corey Wilkes (trumpet, percussion) and Alex Harding (baritone sax). On Open Me, the trio is joined by violinist and violist James Sanders and cellist Ishmael Ali. Together they transform the traditional spiritual “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” into an evocative, textural Afrocentric soundscape. The LP’s lead single employs minimalist grooves to take on Eugene McDaniels’s classic 1966 jazz-blues protest anthem, “Compared to What” (popularized by two 1969 cover versions, one by Roberta Flack and the other by Les McCann and Eddie Harris). Fueled by El’Zabar’s nimble kalimba and gruffly sublime vocals, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s cover reflects the AACM’s credo “Ancient to the Future” as it recognizes the past, the present, and the beyond. The group borrow another AACM motto, “Great Black Music,” to title a thumb piano–fueled voyage adorned with shakers, shouts, horn solos, and other ethereal details— one of the album’s transcendent original songs.

Open Me also fearlessly transmogrifies tunes by Miles Davis (“All Blues”) and McCoy Tyner (“Passion Dance”) into cosmic mission statements. The core trio will perform this material live at the Promontory as part of their February North American tour honoring Black History Month and their 50th anniversary. Catch this force of nature in action and uplift your soul. —STEVE KRAKOW

TUESDAY6 Brittany Howard, Becca Mancari See also Wed 2/7. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+ After years fronting Alabama Shakes, Bermuda Triangle, and Thunderbitch, vocalist and guitarist Brit-

MUSIC

Let’s Play!

Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.

Kahil El’Zabar (center) with the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble CHRISTOPHER ANDREW tany Howard released her first solo record, Jaime, in 2019. “I said, ‘This is my ship. I’m going to sail it. If it sinks, then I sunk it,’” she told NPR last year. Reader, the ship sailed triumphantly: Jaime drew near universal critical acclaim, landing on “Best of 2019” lists from the likes of Pitchfork, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Stereogum. More than four years later, Howard follows Jaime with What Now (Island).

On the new album, her interests in psychedelia, dream pop, free jazz, and acid funk sit shoulder to shoulder, or maybe in one another’s laps. Its songs are separated by the pure peal of a singing bowl—a nod to Howard’s transcendental meditation practice and a built-in aural palate cleanser before the next course. Her heartstring-thrumming vocals are arguably the most obvious thread connecting the nervy rock of Thunderbitch, the summer-night Americana of Alabama Shakes, and the guitar-tickled yearning

of Bermuda Triangle. But where Jaime built cathedrals around those trademark pipes, What Now works them into bustling cityscapes. (For her U.S. dates supporting the new album, Howard is joined

by Bermuda Triangle bandmate Becca Mancari, who released Left Hand in August.) On What Now Howard tackles lead production for the first time, and naturally it feels like the most immersive plunge into her creative vision yet. We’re not on Howard’s ship anymore—we’re in her ocean. —HANNAH EDGAR

WEDNESDAY7 Brittany Howard, Becca Mancari See Tue 2/6. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $60.50. 17+ v

Sign up for classes today at

oldtownschool.org MUSIC CLASSES FOR ADULTS & KIDS LINCOLN SQUARE LINCOLN PARK SOUTH LOOP & ONLINE Brittany Howard BOBBI RICH OTS_1_2V_ClassAd_072921.indd 1

2:21 PM JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO7/23/21 READER 43

EARLY WARNINGS

UPCOMING CONCERTS TO HAVE ON YOUR RADAR

b ALL AGES

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

Early Warnings newsletter: sign up here

THU 5/2 Eric Slick 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ THU 5/23 Electric Six, Supersuckers 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

Pixies JAMES JOINER

FEBRUARY SAT 2/17 Funky Nights Soul Session featuring Peven Everett, Twilite Tone, Billie Jewell (part of CIVL Fest 2024) 9 PM, Chop Shop FRI 2/23 Ellen Arkbro (part of Frequency Festival) 8 PM, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel F b Elton Aura, Semiratruth 9 PM, Sleeping Village SUN 2/25 Yakuza and friends (25th anniversary show) 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ MON 2/26 Ira Glass, Kitty Litter, Background Character 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ WED 2/28 Avery Sunshine 7:30 PM, City Winery b THU 2/29 Avery Sunshine 7:30 PM, City Winery b Masters of Hawaiian Music featuring George Kahumoku Jr., Daniel Ho, Tia Carrere 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

MARCH FRI 3/1 Avery Sunshine 7:30 PM, City Winery b Friko, Smut, Neptune’s Core 8 PM, Metro b Lil Tecca, Sofaygo, Tana, Chow Lee 8 PM, Patio Theater b SAT 3/2 Avery Sunshine 7:30 PM, City Winery b THU 3/7 Glen Phillips, Chris Pureka 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

SUN 3/17 Kim Dracula, Jeris Johnson, Tallah 6 PM, House of Blues b

MON 6/3 Durry, Mega Mango 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

MON 3/18 Sofiane Pamart 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

FRI 6/7 Miki Berenyi Trio, Lol Tolhurst & Budgie 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

WED 3/20 Kodie Shane 7 PM, the Promontory b SUN 3/24 Mong Tong 9 PM, Empty Bottle MON 3/25 Bas 6:30 PM, House of Blues b WED 3/27 Beyond the Gate featuring Colin Stetson 8:30 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery Cathedral, 17+ THU 3/28 Beyond the Gate featuring Colin Stetson 8:30 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery Cathedral, 17+ SAT 3/30 Kid Francescoli, Kazy Lambist 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

BEYOND TUE 4/9 Kanii 7:30 PM, Subterranean b THU 4/11 Arizona Zervas 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ SAT 4/13 Ladysmith Black Mambazo 3 and 6 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b THU 4/18 Daniel, Me Estás Matando 7:30 PM, Park West b WED 4/24 TsuShiMaMiRe 9 PM, Empty Bottle SAT 4/27 Allah-Las 7:30 PM, Metro, 18+

44 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

MON 6/10 Raveonettes 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ FRI 6/14 Hollow Coves, Billianne 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ WED 6/19 Janet Jackson, Nelly 8 PM, United Center b Pixies, Modest Mouse, Cat Power 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion b SAT 7/13 Mother Mother, Cavetown, Destroy Boys 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion b WED 8/7 Bush, Jerry Cantrell, Candlebox 6 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion b SUN 8/25 Doobie Brothers, Steve Winwood 7 PM, Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b THU 8/29 Passenger 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b WED 9/25 Sunny Day Real Estate 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ FRI 10/18 Osees, Iguana Death Cult 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ SAT 10/19 Osees, Iguana Death Cult 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ FRI 12/13 Dead South, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ v

CHICAGO BAND Routine Fuss released Live, Laugh, Fuss in December, and its four high-energy songs average less than two and a half minutes—the EP is meant to feel over before you know it. “I love the idea of leaving you wanting a little bit more,” says lead singer and guitarist Avery Black. “It’s supposed to just encapsulate having a ton of fun with your friends playing music.” Black performed and recorded two one-man projects during COVID lockdown, which mostly reminded him that he likes working with other musicians. Once things opened up again, he found bassist Jordan Affeldt and drummer Colin Cubr, now good friends of his, and taught them to play the parts he’d developed on his own. “I got to make the records completely by myself. But now we’re a band, and we get to go through the band thing,” Black says. He hopes Routine Fuss will resonate with fans of Into It. Over It., Manchester Orchestra, and Weatherbox, all of whom he calls forefathers of fourth-wave emo. The music takes inspiration from math rock too, and you can still tell that Black loved Jack White and Rage Against the Machine in the early 2000s. “They’ll just be with me forever,” he says. Routine Fuss celebrate Live, Laugh, Fuss with a release show at Gman Tavern on Friday, January 26. Local bands Gosh Diggity, Lettering, and Background Character share the bill.

Garage-pop troubadour James Swanberg has a new band called the Tames made up of Chicago teamsters. Swanberg tells Gossip Wolf that three of them got the idea to collaborate in summer 2022. “We all end up on a show together called Somebody Somewhere out in the burbs,” Swanberg says. “We say, ‘Let’s start a band. It’d be funny for us to have a teamster rock band.’” On April Fools’ Day last year, Swanberg recruited those two teamster friends to play with him at Cole’s, and they became the Tames after adding two more teamsters to the group. Swanberg has written a torrent of bluesy arena-rock songs that he says all but require you to dance, and the Tames will make their live debut opening for Tall Juan at the Empty Bottle on Thursday, January 25. Swanberg has big ambitions for this group: he wants to be part of a new rock wave. “I’m not gonna stop flying this flag until, you know, kids are making bands,” Swan-

berg says. “I want the White Stripes to come back. I would love it if we had a real rootsbased rock ’n’ roll revival in this country. We’re ripe for it.”

The Daisy Heaves are a four-piece psychedelic rock band who headline Cole’s Bar on Saturday, January 27. Guitarist and lead vocalist Ryan Dahl says the Daisy Heaves usually start writing a song with Esteban Martinez’s drum parts, followed by bass and synth lines from Steven Kobylinski and guitars from Dahl and lead player Carlos Escalante.

And you can hear it: their most recent project, the August 2023 EP Galilean Satellites, definitely has drum-forward production. The song “The Moon Is Made of Green Cheese” would make a perfect soundtrack for an expedition to the moon gone awry, where you find yourself and your thoughts lost in time and space and up against the crunch of a ticking clock. The Daisy Heaves started writing Galilean Satellites while still recording 2022’s Phantom-Love-Happiness, and it’s the closest the band has come so far to balancing their live sound and their studio sound. “Whenever we’re about to release something, usually we’re already working on the next couple of things,” Dahl says. The Daisy Heaves will be joined at Cole’s by locals Baby Jesus Paper Boy and Machïn.

Some of Chicago’s best Black and Brown femme DJs will single-handedly degentrify Wicker Park for one evening at Gyrate, a monthly party inspired by the Caribbean and Black diaspora. Dancers at Bourbon on Division on Saturday, January 27, can expect the finest reggaeton, dancehall, and Afro beat to reverberate through the venue and transform it into a late-night island-party paradise.

This month’s lineup features Simmy, a south side–raised DJ who’s contributed production to local artists such as Kilt Karter, Carla G, and Kingpin Rue; DJ and producer Mamicana, who founded Gyrate two years ago to build community around diasporic sounds and spins every month; and renowned local house and techno DJ CtrlZora, who cofounded the collective HourNine. Tickets cost $5 to $10. —DMB AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

COMING SOON TO THALIA HALL 02.01 02.02

02.04 E A R LY

RAILROAD EARTH

THE ROCK AND ROLL PLAYHOUSE

02.05

TONI ROMITI

02.06 02.07

BRITTANY HOWARD

LOW TIX

02.08 02.09

02.13

02.14

WHAT NOW TOUR + BECCA MANCARI

1807 S ALLPORT ST CHICAGO 60622

02.23

02.24

02.25 E A R LY

ULTRAPURE TOUR

DEAP VALLY

FAREWELL / SISTRIONIX 10TH ANNIV. TOUR + SLOPPY JANE

PINK SWEAT$

03.14

DAÐI FREYR

03.16

ARLO PARKS

ONE IN A MILLENNIAL TOUR: BE THERE IN 2005

03.17

THE PAPER KITES

MADDIE ZAHM

03.18

SOFIANE PAMART

03.19

DONNA MISSAL

03.20

VOVOID + PRONG

03.21

MITCH ROWLAND

03.22

MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE + THE BRIGHT LIGHT SOCIAL HOUR

03.23

MARC BROUSSARD

03.30

LA LOM

03.31

GLASS BEACH

04.01

JAMMING OFFLINE WITH

04.03

TWRP

04.05

KITCHEN DWELLERS

ACOUSTIC TOUR 2024 + SPECIAL GUEST SOLOMON

KATE KENNEDY

NOW THAT I’VE BEEN HONEST: THE TOUR + LEANNA FIRESTONE

JONATHAN RICHMAN LIVE ON STAGE FT. TOMMY LARKINS ON THE DRUMS!

THE ROCK AND ROLL PLAYHOUSE PLAYS MUSIC OF TALKING HEADS AND MORE FOR KIDS

BRISTON MARONEY 02.25

YAKUZA & FRIENDS

03.01

WE WEREN'T INVITED

25TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW

+ SCARLET DEMORE + SNUFFED + TATIANA HAZEL + SI DIOS QUIERE

SARAH JAROSZ

POLAROID LOVERS TOUR + THE BALLROOM THIEVES

03.03

PUB CHOIR

RACHAEL & VILRAY

03.04

RYAN BEATTY

LOW TIX

+ MAY ERLEWINE

02.15 02.16

INDIGO DE SOUZA

02.17

NIGHT LOVELL

02.18

02.22

+ QUEEN KEY + MELLO BUCKZZ

LOW TIX

02.10

02.19

METH

IN THE ROUND + SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY + USURP SYNAPSE + DEAF CLUB + DJ SPEEDSICK

PLAYS MUSIC OF GRATEFUL DEAD AND MORE FOR KIDS

SINCE 1892

2024

I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY TOUR + HAARPER + GERM

SQUID

+ WATER FROM YOUR EYES

LOW TIX

03.06

FUTUREBIRDS + THE NUDE PARTY + FONTEYN

03.07 03.08

COBRAH

SUCCUBUS TOUR

LOW TIX

03.09 03.10

OTOBOKE BEAVER

MY SOFT MACHINE TOUR + CHLOE GEORGE

+ BOY GOLDEN

+ BLACK CROSS HOTEL

CARENCRO 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR + JOE HERTLER & THE RAINBOW SEEKERS

IN THE ROUND

+ ARCADIA GREY + FLEECE KAWASAKI

CALEB HEARON AND ANNIE DIRUSSO DIGITAL NIGHTMARE 2024 TOUR + TREY MAGNIFIQUE + NELWAR

+ CRIS JACOBS

+ DRINKING BOYS + GIRLS CHOIR

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER AT THALIAHALLCHICAGO.COM

JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 45

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS GENERAL

AUDITIONS MATCHES ADULT SERVICES

JOBS Project Manager Bailey Edward Design Inc seeks a Project Manager.

Mail resume to 35 E Wacker Dr. STE 2800.

Chicago, IL. 60601.

Engagement Manager positions avail w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US in Chicago, IL. Lead teams of consultants to resolve business probs for variety of clients/ industries.

Req’s Master’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ, or non-bus adv degree, & 1 yr exp as Associate-level mgmt consultant w/ a major top-tier int’l mgmt consulting firm.

Domestic & int’l travel typically required. Dest & freq impossible to predict. Email resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to CTR0103.

Multiple positions.

Nursing Assistants Serenity Home Healthcare Inc. seeks High School/ GED+1mth training exp. + CNA certif ication: Nursing Assistants (NA24A): Provide physical support to assist patients. Mail resume with job ID # to Ayowale Alao: 6640 W. Touhy Ave., Niles, IL 60714.

Therapist (Chicago, IL) Responsible for providing crisis intervention, short/ long-term therapy & group counseling utilizing a variety of treatment methods & techniques.

Masters in art therapy, Counseling, Psychotherapy, or related field. Chinese language skills preferred but not req’d. Send resumes to: HR Director, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, 1 North Lasalle Street, Suite 1700, Chicago, Illinois, 60602; EOE Energy Systems Lead Energy Systems Lead – Assist in projects supporting accelerated deployment of low-carbon, low-cost energy systems.

Duties: lead work on Veritas collab, coord with segment leads and tech team to ensure workstreams and goals; principal investigator on DOE project “Storage Tank Emissions Assessments and Quantification”, coord with project leads, and engage operators for site access; analysis re methane emissions solutions; devel projects for Zero Emissions Systems Team; contrib ideas and support team within ZEST; establish GTI as center for decarbonization expertise, esp methane mitigation, life-cycle analysis, and carbon accounting; attend conferences to raise awareness of GTI’s expertise; analysis of tech pathways, decision points, barriers, and opportunities around energy

transitions; engage w partners across industry, academia, government, and NGOs. Reqd: BS in Energy, Enviro, or Civil Eng w 5 yrs exp w energy system ops, incl applying energy systems analysis to long-term energy challenges, integrating new energy tech, and scenario/pathway analysis. In lieu of BS pls 5, MS in Energy, Enviro, or Civil Eng w 2 yrs exp w energy system ops, incl applying energy systems analysis to long-term energy challenges, integrating new energy tech, and scenario/pathway analysis.

Dir inquires to Institute of Gas Technology, 1700 S. Mount Prospect Rd., Des Plaines, IL 60018, Attn: A. Carter, HR. TheMathCompany is seeking an Associate Principal for its Chicago, IL office. Manage existing client engagements & drive growth in new tech & accts. Respsbl for the growth of the cmpny in the US region they lead.

To apply, send your cover letter & CV to Yuvaraj.r@ themathcompany.com.

Investment Professional Investment Professional, MPowered Capital LLC, Chicago, IL. Source, conduct diligence on & underwrite pre-fund direct investments, co-investments, fund investments, & GP structured partnerships w/ private equity/buyout, growth equity & venture capital fund managers w/ focus on investing in Diverse Talent/Diverse Managers across asset classes & industry sectors. Construct financial models & perform in-depth analysis to assess the financial return of potential investment opportunities. Prepare investment memos & make well-reasoned investment recommendations to the investment committee.

Lead investment process from initial evaluation to final closing, incl. deal structuring, negotiation, legal documentation & conducting site visits.

Oversee & manage existing portfolio investments & work w/ fund managers to develop value creation initiatives & attend AGMs & board meetings. MBA is required. Must also have 5 yrs of direct deal exp as an Intern or Associate in the private equity industry in buy side, sell side, or advisory capacity, sourcing deals, conducting due diligence, executing on investments & managing an investment portfolio.

Exp may be gained concurrently. 20-40% domestic travel may be required.

Position is based in Chicago, IL w/ option to work 2 days / week from home office in Chicago area.

Send resume to HR@ Mpoweredcapital.com

Associate Consultant, Electrical Design Engineer - (Chicago, IL) WSP USA Buildings Inc.: Dsgn lighting control matrix & sequence of ops for hospitals & behavioral health projs using the IECC & FGI codes. Reqs bach (or frgn equiv) in Elec Engg, or rltd. + 2 yrs exp as an Elec Engnr, Elec Dsgnr or rltd. Email resumes to: Attn: Julia Savaneli - Ref #1681, julia.savaneli @wsp.com.

TECHNICAL Yum Connect LLC is accepting resumes for the following position in CHICAGO, IL: Sr. Software Engineer (REF#7306490): Design, develop and support a critical frontend React web application. Telecommuting permitted. Send resume to Yum Connect LLC Yu m . R e c r u i t m e n t @ yum.com. EOE. Must include REF code.

Morningstar Investment Management LLC seeks Senior Principal Software Architect (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to provide holistic oversight of software development & product architecture especially at the integration points.

BS in Computer Science, Applied Computer Science or rltd field & 10 yrs in relevant software exp is req’d. National travel is less than 5%.

Add’l specific skills req’d.

For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-042057.

IT Business Analyst Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. seeks IT Business Analyst in Hoffman Estates, IL. Review business processes. Reqs: Bach deg or foreign equiv in Comp Eng, Mech Eng, Comp Sci or rel fld & 6 yrs of rel exp. Must be able to travel throughout Chicago area. Mail resume to: Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc c/o, Tamara Sharpless, 40 Liberty Blvd., Malvern, PA 193551418. Ref. #: 398425 Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks IT Systems Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks IT Systems Engineer to build/manage & maintain security of Relativity’s internal networks/servers & workstations & processes & policies that govern them & support expanding user base & technical reqs. as our software platform grows. Remote work option. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 249002 in the subject line.

Senior Customer Insights Program Manager telecommuting

WANT TO ADD A LISTING TO OUR CLASSIFIEDS? Go to classifieds.chicagoreader.com

46 CHICAGO READER - JANUARY 25, 2024

position available in Chicago, IL. Develop corporate voice of customer strategy and execute the design and administration of the program. Mentor junior members of the Customer Experience team. Participate in external partner audits.

Generate customer insights via quantitative and qualitative data analysis.

Identify opportunities and present recommendations for improvement initiatives.

Manage sensitive customer information on Qualtrics. May telecommute. Apply: Email resumes to Alisha Panavas at Softchoice Corporation at USrecruitment@ softchoice.com.

Please reference job ID: SC2023MO Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Senior Software Engineer to leverage knowledge of Java or C#/SQL/JavaScript/CSS & AJAX to design & build web-based litigation support platform. Periodic travel to Chicago, IL office req. for planning sessions & team activities. Remote work option. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 249001 in the subject line.

HR Specialist National Safety Apparel (Chicago, IL) seeking HR Specialist to support recruiting, onboarding, and engaging employees. Will manage leaves of absence, ensure employee compliance, and assist with employee relations. Requires bachelor’s degree in HR, business, public administration or related (foreign equiv. accepted) and 1 year’s human resources experience in a manufacturing business environment, including payroll and recordkeeping. $45,635/year. Send cover letter and resume to: National Safety Apparel, Attn: Crystal Beal, 15825 Industrial Pkwy, Cleveland, OH 44135.

Sr. Food Scientist Perform formula commercialization, ingredient substitution & clean label formulations. Provide technical support to customers. Present initial feasibility factors of mfg.

Utilize QI methodology.

Determine mfg process flow. Organize production trials, & assess & record parameters of the food product. Innovate R&D process flow. **Work is at the Employer’s hq office at 238 Tubeway Dr, Carol Stream, IL 60188 with no travel involved.

Min Reqs: Master’s in Food Sci, Food Process Engineering, or closely rltd field + 1 yr exp in occupation rltd to Food Scientist. Must possess

1 yr exp in the following: Developing clean label food products w/o the use of chem preservatives per FDA regs; Conceptualizing & creating acidified food & condiment products per 21 CFR Part 114 from the Code of Federal Regs; Replacing chem preservatives w/ natural additives to food products; Creating food products in compliance with FSPCA; Organizing safety & mfg records in compliance with HACCP regs; Calculating mass balance equations to obtain the yield, cycle time, & cost reduction on food products; Performing food consistency measurements using a Bostwick Consistometer or Brookfield Viscometer; Ta k i n g a c i d i t y m e a surements using a pH Potentiometer; Creating nutritional labels using a nutrition label software such as Recipal or Formulator. Please send resume to 87P, LLC at info@thefreshfactory.co.

Sr. Software Application Developer Federal Home Loan Bank Chicago is seeking a Sr. Software Application Developer.

Enhance and maintain Core Banking software system, Summit. 100% remote position. Must live in one of the following states: IL, WI, MN, FL, CO, MI, CT, NC, OR, TX, MD, VA. Apply on-line at fhlbc.com/careers.

Trusty Plumbing Inc seeks Construction Project Managers for La Grange, IL location to engage in construction management & cost estimation. Bachelors in Construction Management/related field + 2 yrs exp OR 4 yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills: exp operating excavators, truck loaders, & other heavy construction equipment, electric wielding & utility installation; construction project management, construction cost estimation, knowledge of sewer & plumbing sys.

20% travel req’d. Send resume: A. Gedvilas, Sewerwater@trustyplumbing.com, REF: NV E n g i n e e r, C a p a c i t y Planning Commonwealth Edison seeks Engineer, Capacity Planning in O a k b r o o k Te r r a c e , I L t o p e r f o r m e n g r. assignments in capacity planning, incl. performing load flow studies & analysis on the electric distribution grid, dvlping & dsgning engr. projects to maintain & enhance the integrity of the distribution sys., performing technical studies for new load additions to ensure adequate electric distribution sys. capacity, & evaluating impact of new load to the grid.

Reqs. U.S. Master’s deg. in Elec. Engr. focused on electric & control sys. &

evidencing demonstrable knwldg of power electronics, microgrid dsgn & operation, operation & planning of the distributed power grid, power electronic dynamics & control, & power mrkt economics & security. Reply by email w/ resume to jobposting@ exeloncorp.com.

Senior Quality Engineer III Senior Quality Engineer III (Chicago, IL): Research, implement, and improve automation frameworks for UI, web services and databases using selenium, JAVA, C#, JAVA Script. Telecommuting permitted.

Resumes: HR, Clearcover Inc., hr@clearcover.com.

Analytics Engineer Analytics Engineer (Chicago, IL): Work closely with data engineers, data analysts and data stakeholders to deliver tested and documented datasets to various data domains at Clearcover.

Telecommuting allowed.

Resumes: HR, Clearcover Inc., hr@clearcover.com.

Morningstar, Inc. seeks Senior Product Specialist (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to own the tactical roadmap to build & deliver client- & advisor-facing financial planning applications (incl investment planning & proposal generation) by integrating & building on existing capabilities & developing new ones (10%). BS in Economics, Computer Science or rltd field & 5 yrs in product management, business analysis, or software d e v e l o p m e n t . Tr a v e l required 2-3 days per quarter for occasional client meetings. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-041957.

Clinical Supervisor Lotus Root Counseling PLLC - Clinical Supervisor (Chicago, IL): Master’s degree in social work, mental health counseling, or closely related major.

Unrestricted LPC, LSW, LCPC, or LCSW license in the State of Illinois.

Minimum of one year of experience in mental health social work.

Familiar with evidencebased treatment models such as CBT, ACT and E M D R . P ro f i c i e n t i n Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and familiarity with SPSS. Strong communication and organizational skills.

Email resume to lori@ lotusrootcounseling. com; 1935 W Belmont Ave, Chicago, IL 60657. $47,195.00/Yr. Morningstar, Inc. seeks a Senior Quantitative Analyst (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to analyze large data sets & condense complex

information into concise, relevant, & easy to communicate results (10%).

BS deg in Finance, Comp Sci or relevant quant or financial discipline & 3 yrs of relevant exp as Quant Analyst or rltd position involving software engg or finance. In alternative, MS deg in Finance, Comp Sci or relevant quant or financial discipline & 1 yr of relevant exp as Quant Analyst or rltd position involving software engg or finance. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www.mor ningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-043002.

Dental Group of Chicago seeks Dentist in Chicago, IL to diagnose & treat dental conditions, perform tooth & gum-related procedures, provide cosmetic dentistry services & coordinate treatment w/ specialists.

Must have DDS or DDM degree; 18 mos. exp. as Dentist; IL dentist license & IL controlled substances license. Must work 2 evenings per week until 8 pm & 1 Saturday per month. E-mail CV to r ro b e rg @ d g o c h i c a g o . com. Use job code 1556.

QA Senior Associate (Chicago, IL) for Adams Street Partners, LLC to dvlp & execute s/ ware tests to identify s/ ware problems & their causes. Reqs Bach deg in IT & Mgmt, Comp Sci, Comp Engg or rltd field of study, & 5 yrs exp in any job title/occupation/ position involved in Quality Assurance in a fin’l svcs firm. Exp specified must incl 5 yrs exp w/ each of the following: s/ware testing & automated testing techniques; & maintaining the quality throughout the entire SDLC. Exp specified must also incl 3 yrs exp w/ each of the following: API platforms & rltd testing using tools such as Postman; querying relational d/ base systems incl SQL Server; & reqmt analysis & test plan documentation.

Te l e c o m m u t i n g is permitted up to 3 days/ wk in accordance w/ co. policy (subject to change).

Salary: $117,000/yr. To apply visit https://www. a d a m s s t re e t p a r t n e r s . c o m / c a r e e r s j o b - p o s t / ? g h _ jid=4193974007 Specialist w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US (Chicago, IL) Help hospitals implement strategies, operating models, & org enhancements that sustain improvements in the quality of care and boost cost-effectiveness. Telecommuting permitted. Req’s Masters or foreign degree equiv & 2yrs exp working on hospital/clinical projects focused on healthcare advanced data analytics, workforce mgmt, clinical

operations, operational improvement, & strategic planning for healthcare p ro v i d e r s . D o m e s t i c travel typically required.

Destination & frequency impossible to predict.

Email your resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to Job # 7214481.

M AT C H E S A l l ro m a n t i c d a t e s women wanted All ro m a n t i c f u n d a t e s all requests 24.7 Call (773) 977-8862 swm Late 50’s MWM Seeks a European Lady for Adult Friendship I’m 58, white, clean d/d free. ISO of fun discreet European woman that would love some adult attention.

Have many interests

the BOOKS

MWM Oral Lover Seeks Lady That Would Love A Steady Oral Partner Clean, fun male loves pleasing a lady orally. I think I’m good! looking for a fun, clean lady that loves oral! Northwest side Enjoy a Good Spanking Occasionally? MWM seeks female that loves a firm hand occasionally. Love spanking a beautiful tush! I’m a sane, nice guy with a love for giving a good spanking occasionally!

Do loud, unpleasant detergents on peoples’ clothes make you sick or give you a headache? Call and let’s talk about what we can do. 773-276-3776

Gossip Girl at Chicago Public Library YouTube Librarian Mike Jay Dubensky looking for distinctively dressed woman to buy lunch. He is willing to read out loud from Cecily’s novel. Video games? VR? Massage?

RSVP vrbreakchicago@ g m a i l . c o m .

Two Times the Fun! Two older Male friends seek one sexy lady that would love twice the attention! We love pleasing a lady together, especially oral fun.! Let’s meet for some coffee!

IDM/EDM ARTISTS WANTED original m u s i c o n l y. c o n tact : idm-edm.com

A D U LT

3730 N CLARK ST METROCHICAGO.COM @METROCHICAGO

SERVICES Mistress Chyna Vixxen For all your WICKED desires Call me 1(888)7411076 all calls are $2.99 per minute http://bit. ly/3ACU7h

SAT FEB 17

Hot cool female wanted for pics clips etc Fun cool clean safe discreet secret Call 773-977-8862

Local Goods & Services

JAKE SCOTT

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB

FRI JAN 26 / 9PM / 18+ M E T RO, SMA RT BA R , F O RMAT & O B S C U R E PRE S E NT

FRI FEB 23 / 8 PM / AL L AG ES A M E T RO LO CAL S E RI E S

WED JAN 31 / 8PM / 18+

S AT FEB 24 / 1 0 PM / 21 + 2 YE AR ANNI V E RSARY PART Y

999999999 BRENDA JOSH TONG

Music: SoFTT (Miami) / Ariel Zetina / Blesstonio BOOTS (DJ Set) Live Performance by: Chrissy Chlapecka

FLIP PHONE XXL DANCE PARTY & DRAG SHOW

ADVERTISE YOUR

BOOK!

PINKSQUEEZE UNIFLORA SHARP PINS BOOTS

F R I F E B 02 / 9 P M / 1 8 +

HOME IMPROVEMENT

+ VOWWS

THU MAR 14

SAT MAR 09

+ Holly

for information!

TWIN TEMPLE

+ Melt

DJ SHADOW

ads@chicagoreader.com

GOD IS DEAD TOUR

AU D I T I O N S

platform

Get a discounted price on a year-long Platform ad for your book!

Contact us at

WED MAR 06

ANDY FRASCO & THE U.N.

FRI M AR 0 1 / 8 PM / AL L AG ES

FRIKO

+ Smut / Neptune's Core

with Kornbread / Hershii LiqCour-Jeté SAT FEB 10 / 11PM / 18+ AM E R I C A N G OT H I C P RO DUC T I O N S P R E S E NT S

NOCTURNA

Annual New Loves & Broken Hearts Valentine’s Ball

MAR 15 MAR 16 MAR 20 MAR 21

KMFDM THE TOSSERS DANNY BROWN ANA TIJOUX

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+

The story of Mozart’s centuries-delayed encore is available in standard printed format exclusively at AMAZON.COM

FRI JAN 26

HORSE MEAT DISCO HARRY CROSS

A premier contractor serving Chicago and the surrounding areas since 1976.

SAT JAN 27

AVALON EMERSON MISS B HAVEN LEESH SAT FEB 03

SHAUN J WRIGHT RAHAAN VITIGRRL

We offer remodeling, repairs, maintenance work, spray foam installation, and much more.

Contact for more info!

(773) 528-1671 | thebuildingdoc@hotmail.com | garyjbuilder.com

FRI FEB 09

CHIPPY NONSTOP MISS TWINK USA JANESITA

Laid Back | Cold Beer | Live Music

21+

@GMANTAVERN GMANTAVERN.COM 3740 N CLARK ST

To advertise, e-mail ads@chicagoreader.com JANUARY 25, 2024 - CHICAGO READER 47

CLOSING FEB 25

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO

Faith Ringgold, American People Series #16: Woman Looking in a Mirror, 1966. Oil on canvas; 36 × 32 inches (91.4 × 81.3 cm).

Baz Family Collection. © 2023 Faith Ringgold / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York.