Chicago Reader print issue of March 21, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 12)

Spring Theater & Arts

THIS WEEK

LETTERS

04 Readers Respond No one wants to pay for those stadiums.

04 Editor’s Note Culture is important.

FOOD & DRINK

06 Sula | Feature Meet barefoot businessman Muffadal Saylawala and his Oro Chocolate Cafe.

NEWS & POLITICS

12 Policing Cops with histories of misconduct continue to make arrests.

14 Environment Promontory Point’s historic limestone is again at risk.

SPRING ARTS

17 Allen | Introduction

18 Renken | Gatherings C2E2 brings all the nerds together.

ARTS & CULTURE

22 Gallery opening A new gallery and art book imprint opens in Humboldt Park.

23 Profile Ionit Behar’s latest curatorial project is on view at DePaul Art Museum.

24 Review At PO Box, four artists examine the war in Palestine.

26 Exhibitions of Note Recommended exhibitions at the Poetry Foundation, Slow Dance, and more

THEATER

28 Feature Bramble Arts Lo prepares to open in Andersonville.

30 Profile Puppetqueers creates space for all kinds of people and objects.

34 Reid | Stages of Survival Lifeline Theatre adapts to the times.

35 Performance picks Our critics highlight the best in live shows for spring.

FILM

36 Festival previews Asian Pop-up Cinema, Film Girl Film Festival, the

Sound of Silent Film Festival, and more

40 Preview A retrospective of Japanese actor and filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka screens this spring.

42 Movies of Note Imaginary is fuzzy and predictable, Love Lies Bleeding is the queer moment, and more.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

44 City of Win Cunty MeMe is genderless and genreless.

45 Galil | Feature Shitposts riffing on 90s emo might put more fans onto the vital present-day scene.

48 Chicagoans of Note Ishmael Ali, cellist and cocurator of Elastic’s Improvised Music Series

52 The Secret History of Chicago Music Shanta Nurullah brings the sitar to the Black avantgarde.

56 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Frail Body,

READER

Girlschool, Glass Beach, and the Spring Powerjam with Gucci Man, Cam’Ron, and Trina

60 Early Warnings Upcoming shows to have on your radar

60 Gossip Wolf Chaepter celebrates his first studio recording with a full-band show, Canal Irreal drop a new album of fiercely chilly postpunk, and more.

CLASSIFIEDS

62 Jobs

62 Housing

62 Professionals & Services

62 Matches

OPINION

63 Savage Love Dan Savage encourages an accidental Dom.

THE COVER: PHOTO BY YIJUN PAN OF THE PUPPETQUEERS AT THE BRAMBLE ARTS LOFT’S BEATRICE THEATER. PICTURED CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PUPPETEERS LINDSEY BALL (PUPPET BY BALL); GRACE NEEDLMAN (PUPPET BY NEEDLMAN); SUMMER SLIME (KEVIN MICHAEL WESSON); ABBY PALEN (PALEN); RACHEL HARTMANN (HARTMANN); JACKY KELSEY (KELSEY); GABRIEL CHALFINPINEY (CHALFIN-PINEY); KEVIN MICHAEL WESSON (NEEDLMAN); AMIRA HEGAZY (PUPPET PALS). THANKS TO MATTHEW LUNT OF BRAMBLE, GETHSEMANE GARDEN CENTER, JILL EVANS LAPENNA AND JAMES JULIANO OF SHOUT CHICAGO, AND LINDSEY BALL AND THE PUPPETQUEERS. FOR MORE OF YIJUN’S WORK, GO TO YIJUNPAN.COM.

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

INTERIM CHIEF DEVELOPMENT

OFFICER MARY GRACE WOLF

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

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY

SENIOR SALES REPRESENTATIVE LINDSAY FIGURSKI

SALES TEAM VANESSA FLEMING, WILL ROGERS

DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING

MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER

ADVERTISING

ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM

CLASSIFIEDS: CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM

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, JAMAL DEGERATTO, DANIEL DEVER,

READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED BIWEEKLY BY THE READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM

2930 S. MICHIGAN, SUITE 102 CHICAGO,

Affordable Rental Opportunity

Pershing Place Apartments

34 Income Restricted Units

Minimum Incomes Apply (IF APPLICABLE). Minimum incomes do not apply to households with housing assistance (Section 8, VASH, HCV, etc)

Applications are available starting February 14, 2024. Visit our website at .PershingPlaceapts.com to apply for our waitlist online.

To request an application be sent by e-mail contact us at PershingPlace@tcbinc.org or call (872) 299-8445 | TTY: 711. Applications may also be picked up in person at the leasing office at 508 E. Pershing Rd., Chicago, IL 60653 during office hours: Monday – Friday 9 am – 5 pm.

Asset & Use Restrictions apply. Preferences & Income Limits Apply. List of Amenities can be found at .PershingPlaceApts.com

For more information, language assistance, or reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities please call (872) 299-8445 | TTY: 711 or PershingPlace@tcbinc.org

Professionally Managed by The Community Builders, Inc.

Reader Letters m

Re: “Shots in the dark,” written by Ed Vogel and Shawn Mulcahy and published in the February 8 issue (volume 53, number nine)

While less than 50 percent accuracy may not be impressive, the article does point out most shots are not called in. So even capturing some is better than none.

I wonder if the City study examines medical outcomes for gun shot victims found as a result of ShotSpotter. Every second counts to save lives, and I believe that is where the value of the system can be found. —Nicholas Jay, via LinkedIn

Re: “Review: 3 Body Problem (Season one),” written by Noah Berlatsky and published at chicagoreader.com on March 11

Anyone that calls Remembrance of Earth’s Past (all three books) weak source material either didn’t read them or flatly is too dense to understand it. —CM (@xnoiidb), via X

Re: “Overpromised and underdelivered,” written by Joe Engleman and published at chicagoreader.com on March 5

At least make them sign 50-year leases. No owner should get two buildings in their lifetimes. —Dan Ezrow, via Facebook

Hahahaha, nope. Has nothing to do with inequality. How about who can fill the pockets the quickest . . . The pandering is GREAT. —Julie Marx, via Facebook

Thank you for defining the issue in clear and straightforward language. At the end of the day, this is all there is: should the community fund a private enterprise that does not in any meaningful way give back

to said community?. —Borki Balboa, via Facebook

No public money should be going to fund these stadiums. Let them move if they want to. I’m a Sox fan but I am dead against using my money to help a billionaire get richer. Let him use his own money or get out of here and go somewhere else. —BP Mack, via Facebook

I really just don’t have anything to say in response to this that wouldn’t get me banned. —Adam Agosto, via Facebook

Re: “Dusty Brown le behind a discography much smaller than his talent,” written and illustrated by Steve Krakow and published in the March 7 issue (volume 53, number 11)

Loved reading this feature. I grew up next door to an urban contemporary radio station in Greenwood, Mississippi and later DJed there in the late 80s. We had a strong blues program that entertained thousands all day on Saturdays and was sprinkled throughout the week. Many Malaco artists were featured and artists who produced songs similar to the two Dusty Brown songs on YouTube that were shared [in the online version of this article]. —Christopher Leon Gray, via Facebook

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

EDITOR’S NOTE

This issue is one of our seasonal looks at the diverse, well-populated, and active communities we enjoy in Chicago that are devoted to creating theater, visual arts, film, television, dance, drag, performance art, and comedy. We started running these special, arts-focused issues a few years ago as a way to protect some space for our arts and culture editors and our arts-focused writers.

These teams, led by section editors Taryn Allen (who introduces the package in a few pages), Kerry Cardoza, and Kerry Reid, work hard year-round to help us navigate these topics. Their work is often behind the scenes, as is an editor’s wont: figuring out a schedule of review coverage that allows our readers to take in the thought-provoking work along with the goofy and fun, reading countless new scripts, books, industry journals, and online gossip, and finding and tending to a champion group of staff writers as well as freelancers (both new to the game and longtime Reader contributors).

All of the things I just mentioned are the tasks of any of our editors for sure, but often for Kerry, Kerry, and Taryn (I agree, they should form a 60s folk group) there’s an additional challenge: they fi nd that they must personally go out into the world and take in all the stu .

I cannot emphasize how many times we’ve received a note in our shared Slack channels, checking in, from any of them, something like, “signing o early today (but I’m going to 16 previews on Sunday so I’ll make up the time then!)”. It’s a tremendous undertaking to cover the culture of a city, and these editors do it with aplomb and enthusiasm.

One of the biggest questions that I get from native Chicagoans when they find out that I work for the Reader is when we’ll bring back full listings for any and every performance, show, concert, reading, exhibition, and screening that might take place in our distribution area from now until the end of time. I kid, but I completely understand the thrill of being able to look at a complete list of upcoming events, and the Reader’s important place in that realm pre-Internet. At one point, we had people who were employed just to compile the information on index cards, by hand (thankfully some of those records are archived at the Newberry Library).

While at some point during my tenure here at RICJ I fully intend to explore new ways of retaining and publishing “everything, everywhere, all at once” style listings, I like to point out to my local friends that the biggest question I get from readers and journalism colleagues from other cities is, “How is your publication able to do so much arts coverage? Dance? You write about dance?”

It’s sad to think that we’re one of only a few local outlets that are able to cover the arts in the way that we do, not just for the sake of the artists, but for the sake of our city’s soul. It’s not just poetry, people: artists are given the special gift of tools with which to remake the world. From their creations, we can see new possibilities, solutions to problems, and ideas that we may wish to live in. Peace comes through art. The answers come from art. We just need to shut up and let the artists show us another world. v

—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

From the Newberry Library archives: a letter from cartoonist Lynda Barry SALEM COLLO-JULIN

SUMMER 2024

SEASON LINEUP ANNOUNCED

DONOR PRESALE BEGIN AS EARLY AS MARCH 19

PUBLIC TICKET SALES BEGIN APRIL 24

FOOD & DRINK

Meet barefoot businessman Mu adal Saylawala and his Oro Chocolate cafe

The cocoa trafficante brought bean-to-bar chocolate from the Nicaraguan rainforest to Chicago via house arrest.

By MIKE SULA

In early 2020, Muffadal Saylawala’s chocolate contained two primary ingredients: sugar and 77 percent cacao grown on the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve in northern Nicaragua.

Some bars were molded with flavored inclusions like ginger, co ee, or hibiscus—but none included cannabis.

And yet, one day in February 2020, as he tried to board a plane to Amsterdam, Costa Rican customs o cials seized four suitcases full of his Oro Chocolate bars and charged him with drug tra cking. With some 200 pounds of chocolate in police custody, he faced 20 years in prison.

Saylawala and a business partner were on their way to the annual Chocoa sustainable chocolate trade show, where they’d rented a booth intending to introduce their brand to the international craft cacao industry. Instead, they were outfitted with ankle bracelets and endured three and half months under house arrest above a mechanic’s garage just as the pandemic kicked in. The ordeal almost destroyed his Nicaraguan-based businesses—all seven of them—but it wasn’t the only struggle he faced opening the door to Oro Chocolate & Co ee, his bean-to-bar cafe in Wicker Park. Oro’s Chicago storefront, which opened last November, is only the latest in a network of ecotourism enterprises Saylawala’s built over the last 11 years. But it’s the first outside his headquarters in San Juan del Sur, a beach town on Nicaragua’s southwest Pacific coast adjacent to some of the best surfing in the world (and three seasons of Survivor). He oversees an 80-acre regenerative farm planted with turmeric and fruit trees along a ridge just above town with a view of the waves below. There’s the recently relaunched Casa Oro, a bustling hostel that shuttles tourists to the beach. The boutique El Pacifico Hotel and Nuestra Casa cater to more upscale guests, while Casa Andalucía, high above the town,

serves as a luxe natural retreat. He’s not only selling coffee and chocolate to Chicagoans, he’s also selling them to Nicaraguans— notable in an economy where the country’s commodity crops are mostly exported.

Saylawala designed this “eco-community” around the agricultural concept of permaculture, a system of interdependent, sustainable, and regenerative operations modeled on the way natural ecosystems develop and grow.

When he began, “I was coming from this notion that sustainability isn’t enough to solve climate issues,” he says. “We have to have a net positive e ect on the environment to be able to move the needle back to balance things again. I’m still pretty idealistic, but I definitely had more save-the-world syndrome. I needed to figure out how I could build a bridge between the hippie world and the business world. I thought a lot about myself as this barefoot businessman.”

That was not the path he was supposed to take growing up in south suburban Darien, the son of a tech entrepreneur and homemaker. “I grew up with stereotypical Pakistani–South Asian expectations,” says Saylawala, who’s 35. “Like, smart Brown kid: be a doctor. Be an engineer.” That was the direction he headed as a business major at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But after graduation, he only lasted 22 months as a financial analyst for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In 2009, to the horror of his parents, Saylawala quit his job at the height of the financial crisis and lit out for Costa Rica to volunteer at an ecolodge, shoveling cow manure to make compost. He followed it with a one-month internship on an educational permaculture farm on Ometepe, a twin volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua. “I did all the manual grunt labor. I would dig holes and do gardening and carry water, kill scorpions. I was in the same pair of shorts the whole time.”

From there, he joined the inaugural class of the Experience

Muffadal Saylawala (above) and a bucket of Nicaraguan coffee beans (next page) SARAH CROWLEY FOR CHICAGO READER

773

1553

Institute, an alternative graduate program built around real-life work. “I just wanted to do things. I didn’t want to go back to school. Instead of picking a major, you pick a mission or question. The question I had was, ‘How might we redesign society to be more whole? How do we find this intersection between the business community and the environment?’” He embarked on a series of apprenticeships. He wrote a business model for a spiritual retreat center in Australia. He spent four months rebuilding a Philippine village destroyed by a typhoon using recycled materials. Back in Chicago, he helped explore ways to reinvigorate corporate culture at Leo Burnett. Through it all, Central America was calling him back.

After graduating, he headed back to San Juan del Sur, just south of Ometepe, to reflect and plan his next move. “I wanted to build an ecolodge, as well as a development—a community where people could come and buy homes. And I wanted it to be a completely self-sufficient and regenerative place, where we would grow our own food and do agroforestry.”

Amid these dreams, his parents visited. His father had always toyed with the idea of investing in real estate, and they looked at a few buildings together, without much interest. When it was time for the folks to leave, “I was kissing them goodbye at the airport, and it’s getting a little emotional. My dad looks me in the eye and tells me, ‘Go out. Go find that piece of land, and let’s build your dream.’”

It took a week to find the right property but more than a year to close the deal, time he spent practicing yoga, writing, and planning. Part of his vision was to open a farm-to-table cafe in town supplied by his own land, but that plan changed when he noticed Casa Oro was for

sale. The hostel, the first of its kind in town, was mentioned in all the guidebooks and was doing a bustling business, but no one

seemed to be biting. Saylawala sat in front, watching guests come and go and running numbers in his head. He figured he wasn’t dreaming big enough.

On a trip back home, he asked his father and uncle—business partners—for a meeting. “I made a badass PowerPoint presentation. I suit up, put on my pointy shoes, tie, go into the o ce, and make a very good financial case—I didn’t say anything about the environmental stuff. Halfway through, my uncle stops me: ‘How much do you think we should o er?’”

The case he didn’t make was “my regeneration agenda through real estate development. The idea of design inspired by nature. Businesses as ecosystems. A diverse range of things that connect to each other and feed into each other. . . . The more people buy our food, or take our shuttles to the beach, the more that our place gets known, the more people are going to come stay with us. Then the more trees we can plant, the more demand that creates for the type of agriculture that we’re doing. Then other people say, ‘Those guys are making money doing that.

FOOD & DRINK

continued from p. 7

Maybe we should do that too.’”

At the time, Nicaragua was enjoying a tourism boom, growing a reputation as a less developed alternative to Costa Rica and, based solely on word of mouth, he was so consistently booked that he was turning potential guests away.

“My dad and my uncle started coming to Nicaragua every few months and their blood pressure would go down, and they wouldn’t have to take all their diabetes medication. My uncle saw what was happening and said, ‘This is good. Let’s do more of this.’ So we reinvested the money that we were making into another property.”

Over time, they bought more buildings, all of which required a degree of remodeling. Saylawala worked as architect, engineer, and general contractor. At his peak he employed some 60 locals full time, and 40 more on the construction team.

“I started a composting program and recycling program. We were taking all the stu my farm was collecting from everyone in town and building walls out of glass bottles. Then everyone in town’s building walls out of glass bottles.

“I started hugging everyone. I was becoming ‘Don Mu a.’ And I’m like, ‘Don’t call me that.’ So then people just started calling me jefe.”

He also remodeled the cafe in the hostel and says he began serving some of the first Indian food in Nicaragua—and coffee grown in the rainforest. “I liked the historical reference of these great Enlightenment thinkers hanging out in coffee shops, getting super caffeinated and talking about all these great new ideas. They were the advisers to all these powerful businesspeople and politicians of the age that changed the world.”

By early 2018, Saylawala says all of his properties were averaging about a 90 percent occupancy rate and trending upward. But that April, protests against the government of President Daniel Ortega led to months of violent unrest throughout Nicaragua. The tourist trade cratered, and so did his hospitality ecosystem.

“I thought, ‘I need to get smarter. I need to diversify. I need to double down on food, on farm agribusiness.” He started spending more time on his farm planting trees, and in the forest, nerding out on co ee and, later, cacao. “I was hanging out and listening to the plight

of farmers and understanding how it works for producers, seeing how it’s just so hard to grow coffee. It’s a very extractive plant from the earth. It takes a lot of inputs. A cup of co ee should probably cost like $40.”

He came across an artisanal chocolate maker at a farmers’ market using native cacao, and he began studying the plant, fascinated by its fruit: “It looks like an alien growing on the trunk. It’s amazing. It’s so tasty. It tastes nothing like chocolate.”

Most of the cacao trees grown in Nicaragua are old-growth heirloom varieties that require far fewer environmental inputs than coffee. Most of it’s grown by small farmers, and in total the country produces less than .03 percent of the world cocoa supply. Big Chocolate doesn’t have much of a presence there—and neither does the child slave labor tragedy that’s pervasive in the African cacao trade. Saylawala became absorbed by the process of transforming the fruit’s beans into fine, complex chocolate, from the biannual harvest of the pods, to the extraordinarily complicated fermentation of the seeds within them, then drying, roasting, cracking, and winnowing out the pure cacao nibs within.

Saylawala joined forces with a few guys who were making small-batch chocolate already. He put them up in one of his hotels and set up production in its kitchen, where the nibs were stone ground with sugar into mass-

es of cocoa, followed by the tempering process in which it’s melted and circulated at varying temperatures to achieve the proper crystalline structure that gives finished chocolate its satisfying sheen and snap.

At first, Saylawala was determined not to add cocoa butter back in the process, a step that gives chocolate its smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

“I was more purist from a philosophical point of view. ‘We’re just going to use cacao, and it’s beautiful.’” Saylawala designed the molds and the packaging and began selling Oro Chocolate at specialty shops and cafes all over Nicaragua.

The reception was positive enough that they decided to invest in a booth at Chocoa 2020 in Amsterdam. Saylawala and his partner’s flight was scheduled for February 15 from neighboring Costa Rica’s Liberia Guanacaste Airport.

“We’re going through the airport, and an o cer at security starts getting aggressive and pointing at me. I’m used to getting checked in airports. I’ve learned to accept that’s part of it. But he was like, ‘What drugs do you have?’

“I’m like, ‘What? It’s chocolate. We’re going to the chocolate fair.’” The o cer demanded to analyze a bar with a field drug test, which involved placing a sample in a vial filled with a liquid chemical reagent that changes color depending on the material placed inside. The o cer told Saylawala his chocolate tested negative for cocaine—but positive for marijuana.

“‘I mean, there’s no way,’” said Saylawala. “‘Children eat our chocolate. They were in the factory yesterday. And we’re going to Amsterdam, of all places. Who takes sand to the beach?’”

Saylawala turned to his phone, googling “false positive marijuana chocolate,” and immediately turned up articles about these types of reagent field test kits—widely used since the early 70s—and their high propensity to yield false positives.

More o cers showed up, and then armed police, and the pair’s luggage and phones were seized. Saylawala begged the o cers to test a common Hershey’s bar sold in the airport, and says he witnessed its results turn positive as well. And yet, he says, the o cials pretended this didn’t happen (and ate the Hershey’s bar). Saylawala and his partner were strip-searched and sent to jail.

In the middle of the night, he met with a public defender who informed him he was being charged with drug trafficking and, given the weight of the chocolate in the suitcases, he was facing 20 years in prison. She encouraged him to admit guilt and allow her to negotiate a deal.

“She just kept trying to fish out that we’re not being truthful, and I felt ready to explode. ‘We’re not drug lords! We’re going to the chocolate fair! I want a chemical lab test done. I want proof!’”

After 40 hours, Saylawala was allowed a phone call, and his father was able to hire a private lawyer. He made a case in front of the judge who agreed to hold the men under house arrest until a proper chemical analysis on the chocolate was completed in a lab. A second local attorney was added—one who represented actual drug traffickers—and a third U.S.-based lawyer joined later. A mechanic who owed someone on the defense team a favor agreed to house them above his garage, where Saylawala spent his days practicing yoga, breath work, and meditation, and trying to remotely keep his businesses alive. Meanwhile the pandemic accelerated, delaying the processing of the lab test.

It was three and a half months before its results cleared them. Their ankle trackers were removed, their phones and the remains of their chocolate were returned, and they were released. Meanwhile, COVID restrictions had closed the border to Nicaragua, so it wasn’t until the end of May that they were able to charter a plane and return home.

While the pandemic and further political

Saylawala makes chocolate at his Milwaukee Avenue storefront. SARAH CROWLEY FOR CHICAGO READER

unrest had completely shut down Saylawala’s other businesses, he doubled down on chocolate. “It was like, ‘That’s what we can do now.’ Chocolate was growing during COVID. People were buying more chocolate. So I was like, ‘Let’s do this.’ I became a scientist. I became obsessed. I just made a bunch of chocolate by myself.”

Saylawala split with his partner and switched cacao suppliers to Ingemann Fine Cocoa, a company that pays premium prices to farmers to encourage them to grow higher quality varieties instead of highly productive, environmentally detrimental ones, along the way replanting the forest with more than a million trees and counting.

He made small batches of chocolate, combining different varieties and testing the results of his experiments among his friends and employees. He was trying to achieve flavors that were simultaneously funky, fruity, and floral—but also classic, familiar chocolate flavors that everyone knows and loves. He selected two varieties that, respectively, met these standards: O’payo and O’tuma.

He also abandoned his commitment to two-ingredient chocolate. “I just found that through this testing and sharing that people love the added cocoa butter, even if they don’t know what it is or why. The mouthfeel is so much more velvety, and it melts in your mouth, not in your hands. At that point I said, ‘Let’s do the dream. Let’s make it accessible in Nicaragua. Let’s make it a price that people can actually afford here, and then let’s start thinking about our global growth expansion.’”

Part of that dream was to open a cafe that would bring Nicaraguan co ee and chocolate to Chicago, straight from the source. After more than a decade abroad, Saylawala wanted to be closer to his family, but he also

wanted to show Nicaragua to the world.

“I needed to think like nature again, and part of what makes that work is pollination.

Pollinators take stu from here to there, and this is what gives rise to an incredibly rich, beautiful planet. What does Nicaragua have? Some of the best co ee in the world. The finest cacao on Earth is grown in Nicaragua. Now that I can export, I can also be a pollinator. I wanted to take this message out in a bigger way. To be able to share it with the place I came from. I wanted to build something that was emblematic of Nicaragua.”

In October 2021, he bought the building that once housed the Steve Madden storefront in Wicker Park. Problems with his contractor led to delays, and eventually he took over the job, drawing on his construction experience in Nicaragua.

Today, after two years of design, development and construction, a glass-enclosed room houses his co ee roaster in the rear of the cafe. In the seating area, the furniture is made from Nicaraguan bamboo, while an undulating Nicaraguan teak sculpture hangs from the ceiling. “It’s like an ode to water. How do we honor the water in the rain forest where the cacao and co ee comes from? It’s a prayer to protect the

FOOD & DRINK

continued from p. 9

water.” Along the south wall, chocolate bars, co ee, and drinking chocolate are displayed opposite baristas packaging bonbons and pouring co ee, tea, and drinking chocolate.

Saylawala’s cacao is ground with cocoa butter and sugar in Nicaragua, which is vacuum-sealed and shipped to Chicago in five-kilogram blocks. Those are fed into the production line that faces busy Milwaukee Avenue. Gleaming stainless steel Italian melting and tempering machines pipe molten chocolate into a hopper above a dosing head with nozzles that purge it into plastic molds carried along a vibrating conveyor belt that shakes the air bubbles out.

I’ve tried Saylawala’s chocolate on numerous occasions: the simple, now 78 percent cacao dark chocolate bar, and those molded with sea salt, crystallized ginger, or coffee grinds, along with a delicious “Ayurvedic” milk chocolate bar flavored with turmeric, cardamom, cloves, and black pepper. “That one’s like me. It’s like my PakistaniIndian flavors, with ingredients brought back from Nicaragua.”

I also tasted raw O’tuma and O’payo cacao that he offered me. The latter was so delicious it sent chills down the back of my legs. The finished chocolate does indeed taste of Saylawala’s preferred fruity and conventional chocolate flavors, but it also yields a slightly grainy texture when it melts on the tongue, one I haven’t encountered before in a highend craft chocolate bar. When I mentioned this to Saylawala, he chalked it up to errors in tempering, though chocolate experts I asked say that this effect is more likely due to improperly connected milling stones, leading to inconsistent grinding.

One recent Saturday afternoon, it was a full house in the cafe while Saylawala, his manager, pastry chef, and parents gathered around the machinery to take part in or observe the process of breaking in a new piece of tubing, and experimenting with a new chocolate temperature, down a half degree from 31.5 Celsius. They were also there to bid Saylawala bon voyage ahead of a monthlong trip back to Nicaragua. His younger brother Ibrahim was there as well, training to take on a part-time position in the cafe.

But before there was chocolate, there was troubleshooting. First, they couldn’t get chocolate to flow from the tempering machine into the hopper. It took some time to dislodge a

mass of solid chocolate that had lodged in the connecting pipe.

Next, they couldn’t figure out why the tempered chocolate wasn’t flowing uniformly out of the nozzles below the hopper and into the molds. Many customers came and went before the crew realized that two small but critical plastic pieces were missing from the internal gears that feed the chocolate into the nozzles. Once they were replaced, the gears were too gunked up with chocolate to fit snugly back into place. After an hour of fussing, Saylawala pivoted.

“OK, we’re gonna have to take it all apart and clean it. We’re not gonna be able to run it again today, because it needs to get bone dry. We’re gonna come back again tomorrow morning. Good effort everyone. We’re still new. This is the reality of learning. We’re still new.” The following day, the crew successfully produced half the intended run—150 fresh dark chocolate bars, plains, salted, ginger, and co ee.

Saylawala regularly travels back to Nicaragua to check on his businesses and nurture new ones. There’s a spiritual healing center in the offing in the north of the country on an experimental co ee farm belonging to the man who supplies his beans. He recently redesigned and relaunched the original Cafe Oro, and he’s hoping to build a solar dehydrator to process the fruit from his farm, where he plants a couple thousand new trees each year.

I asked him, now that he’s far from the faulty field drug tests of Central America and settled back home in a state where cannabis is legal, if he would ever consider producing cannabisinfused chocolate.

He didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, sure, why not? I would love to. I hear it’s a great business.” v

m msula@chicagoreader.com

“Chocolate was growing during COVID. People were buying more chocolate. So I was like, ‘Let’s do this.’ I became a scientist. I became obsessed,” said Saylawala. SARAH CROWLEY FOR CHICAGO READER

The purpose of this match is to challenge RICJ to build out its portfolio of individual donors making gifts of $500-$5,000, expanding its mid-level giving program to provide significant annual support to RICJ and building a donor base.

Contributions made through Dec. 31, 2024 qualify for this challenge.

NEWS & POLITICS

Disgraced cops still on the streets and in the courtrooms

Hundreds of officers have documented histories of dishonesty and misconduct.

Many continue to make arrests.

By MATT CHAPMAN, MAX BLAISDELL, AND SAM STECKLOW

On a balmy August day in 2020, Chicago police officers James Hunt and Washington Mina stopped a 38-yearold Black man named Rickey Turner after they claimed to see him commit several tra c violations while driving through the south side’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood.

Citing the smell of marijuana, the cops searched Turner’s car. They found weed, which was legal to possess in small amounts, and a handgun, for which Turner told the officers he didn’t have a license. Hunt and Washington arrested Turner and brought him to the Fifth District police station for processing. (Neither o cer was wearing a body-worn camera at the time of the stop.)

Four months later, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s O ce (SAO) charged Turner with five separate offenses, including possessing a gun with a revoked Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card, driving on a suspended license, and cannabis possession.

Turner hired William Murphy, a longtime Cook County defense attorney with more than

racist behavior or the SAO’s internal memos, he says he would have used that information to negotiate a better plea bargain or even push the SAO to dismiss the case entirely. It “would have definitely made [a] di erence in how I approached the case,” Murphy says. “That there would be a tool that I could use.”

In an emailed statement, Eugenia Orr, a spokesperson for the SAO, said, “Multiple o cers witnessed the arrest and seizure who were not subject to disclosure and could have acted as witnesses had this case gone to trial.”

Far from being an anomaly, Hunt is one of 20 Chicago Police Department (CPD) o cers who made hundreds of arrests after their misconduct was identified by the SAO, according to an analysis of CPD data and SAO records by the Reader and the Invisible Institute. The arrests ran the gamut of categories, from illegal weapons charges to drug possession, many of which rely on o cer truthfulness to establish probable cause. Some are still pending.

To conduct this analysis, reporters relied upon two separate lists of disgraced law enforcement o cers maintained by the SAO. These lists, which were only compiled in recent years, are meant to help prosecutors fulfill a constitutional requirement to tell defendants about information that could undermine the credibility of any government witness testifying against them—often, but not always, police o cers.

stripped o cers from CPD, and any names not already included were added.”)

The disclosure list, meanwhile, numbered 128 cops as of April 2023. The SAO denied the Reader and Invisible Institute’s request for a more up-to-date version, citing the work product exemption of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, intended to shield drafts of documents—but not finalized ones—from public scrutiny.

In an emailed statement, Orr said the prosecutor’s o ce “remains committed to collaborating closely with our law enforcement partners, emphasizing that inclusion on our internal disclosure lists in no way hinders police o cers from making arrests or performing their duties.”

The second part of Orr’s statement, about arrests made by officers on the internal disclosure list, raised eyebrows among experts interviewed by the Reader and Invisible Institute.

Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor and director of the school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project, says an o cer shouldn’t be making arrests if they “can’t be trusted to give truthful and accurate testimony.”

“Such a policy also makes little sense from a practical standpoint,” Futterman continued. “What happens when the state or defense requires reliable testimony about an arrest from the arresting o cers?”

five decades of experience, to represent him against those charges. Murphy, who previously led the Law O ce of the Cook County Public Defender’s homicide division, negotiated a plea deal with the SAO that, at the time, he thought was fair: two years of probation. He advised Turner to take it. Turner agreed and, in July 2022, Judge James Obbish handed down the sentence.

What Murphy didn’t know was that almost two years prior, the SAO had flagged Hunt in an internal memo. It stemmed from a 2018 viral video in which Hunt taunted an innocent Black man, telling him, “I kill motherfuckers.”

In 2021, based on the same video, the SAO circulated a second memo, this time stating that Hunt would never again be called to testify as a witness. (The CPD is currently attempting to fire Hunt in a separate, ongoing case.)

But the SAO never disclosed any of that information. That’s despite long-standing judicial precedent and state court rules that require prosecutors to hand over all “exculpatory” evidence that could help a defendant.

Had Murphy known about Hunt’s history of

The SAO’s lists are divided between o cers who prosecutors say they will never call to testify—the “do not call” (DNC) list—and those they say can be called to testify, so long as their history of past dishonesty or misconduct is disclosed to defense counsel in advance of a hearing—the “disclosure” list.

Collectively, the two lists number hundreds of names. Although the majority of officers on these lists hail from Chicago, they include some cops from suburban police departments. According to the SAO, both lists are updated continuously.

The SAO first released the DNC list publicly in July. Since then, it has almost doubled in size, growing from 174 names to 326, the Reader and Invisible Institute found. Most were retroactive additions—meaning the SAO had already determined the o cers shouldn’t be called as witnesses but had not yet included them on the public-facing list. Thirty-six were new additions, and another 18 were removed without explanation. (Orr said in a statement that, after the SAO first released the DNC list, prosecutors received an “updated list of

Jonathan Abel, a University of California San Francisco law professor, says that when an o cer with credibility issues continues to work cases and make arrests, “you take a risk that, someday, a jury will be called to assess that o cer’s credibility and may not trust that o cer.”

Abel, a former public defender, has studied “blind spots” in disclosing “impeachment” information, which calls a witness o cer’s credibility into question, based on conduct in other cases. He says the SAO’s position is “legally correct,” but it’s not how he “would implement” constitutional disclosure requirements.

Rachel Moran, a University of St. Thomas law professor who studied the creation of Brady lists, tells the Reader and the Invisible Institute that “the CCSAO should be paying attention to arrests made by” o cers on the disclosure list. However, she says she doesn’t think every o cer on the list should be “prohibited from making arrests—if a Brady list is as thorough as it should be, it will include types of misconduct that both do and don’t impact the reliability of an arrest.”

Justice statue, artist unknown, courtesy the American Bar Association, Chicago offi ce JAMES HOSKING

Moran, a former Illinois appellate defender, gives the example of a disclosure list officer who “has a history of making arrests not justified by probable cause.” That would be “very relevant even though the o cer may not be on a DNC list.” On the other hand, if an o cer is included on the list because of something like an old DUI conviction, “that probably isn’t pertinent to the legality of the o cer’s arrest.”

(An analysis of the SAO’s disclosure list found it included more than 50 o cers whose testimony judges found incredible or who made false statements or reports. Only four officers were included because of decidedly more minor tra c violations.)

Technically, the CPD and suburban police departments are under no legal obligation to fire o cers or otherwise remove those o cers from beat duties that involve interactions with the public when they are placed on either of the prosecutors’ two lists.

But Tim Grace, an attorney for the Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP) Lodge 7, the largest police union in Chicago, and a former Cook County prosecutor, has stated in court that being placed on the SAO’s lists is e ectively the end of a cop’s career.

“When an o cer is put on that Giglio list, they are essentially done,” Grace told a Cook County judge in 2020. “Maybe they can sort evidence somewhere. Maybe they can work a desk somewhere. But once their credibility is found to be shot, then they are done.”

In a 2023 interview with the Reader and Invisible Institute, Grace clarified his position somewhat: “There are o cers [on the disclosure list] that have been pulled o the street and are either placed in a nonpolicing position or they are placed in a position where they would never be able to give testimony because of their credibility.”

An analysis by the Reader and Invisible Institute proves otherwise. Three disclosure list o cers—Katie Blocker, Clara Cinta, and Constantino Martinez—who a Cook County judge found “not credible” in July 2019 accounted for more than 100 of the arrests after being flagged by prosecutors.

Although the disclosure requirement, as mandated by both the U.S. and Illinois Supreme Courts, has been in place for decades, the SAO has historic issues in fulfilling its duty to turn over relevant materials to defendants.

In 2010, for example, thousands of pages of CPD “street files”—reports from detectives in homicide cases that didn’t make it into the

o cial investigation of the case—were found in an old filing cabinet in the basement boiler room of a south-side police station. They were located as part of a lawsuit filed by Nathson Fields, who was convicted of a double murder by a corrupt judge based on coerced eyewitness testimony.

The discovery of the street files six years before Fields was exonerated led to a jury awarding him $22 million in 2016. In 2020, a federal appeals court called the withholding of the files “evidence of systemic underproduction of police reports” that “was su cient to show a systemic failing that went beyond his own case.” The discovered street files have since helped attorneys argue that notorious northwestside detective Reynaldo Guevara framed dozens of men in the Humboldt Park area.

O cially, police stopped using street files in 1986 after they were exposed in the course of a homicide trial. But evidence issues continued, according to a 2020 report by the O ce of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG found that the CPD unit responsible for responding to subpoenas from both prosecutors and defense attorneys still failed to check paper records and failed to conduct thorough searches across all divisions of the department when asked for all records about a case. (The CPD declined to comment.)

Shoddy recordkeeping across the department means subpoena responses are often incomplete, leaving room for Brady material to be withheld, purposefully or otherwise—a difference without a distinction, in the eyes of the law. One such case includes the recent conviction of Alexander Villa in the 2011 killing of off-duty CPD officer Clifton Lewis, which Villa’s attorneys contend was the result of coerced confessions and withheld evidence, by both police and prosecutors.

The CPD’s issues in producing evidence underlie a key problem in the role of police in the disclosure process: the SAO, responsible for all potential Brady information that any member of the prosecution team might have, doesn’t actually have full control over the evidence in each case. That includes both case documents that could point to other witnesses or coerced confessions, like the street files and impeachment information.

Failure to comply with Brady requirements can result in the wrongful convictions of innocent people, many of whom end up serving decades in prison while fighting for their freedom. In fact, the National Registry of Exonerations estimates that nearly one-third of all exonerations result from prosecutorial

misconduct and that two in five are specifically the result of prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence. The same report found that police committed misconduct in more than one-third of the registry’s cases.

Prosecutors who fail to turn over relevant exculpatory evidence or impeachment information can, on paper, face legal sanctions from courts, discipline by their state bar associations, or be subject to criminal investigations and felony charges.

However, actual repercussions for Brady violations are few and far between. From 1963 to 1999, 46 Illinoisans had their convictions overturned due to Brady violations, according to a 1999 Chicago Tribune investigation, but not a single one of the prosecutors who tried them was convicted of a crime, barred from practicing law, or saw their opportunities for career advancement limited. And courts elsewhere have been similarly unwilling to hold prosecutors to account when faced with clear examples of gross misconduct.

Brady violations also go unchecked because prosecutors are shielded from civil lawsuits through a judicial doctrine known as absolute prosecutorial immunity, which holds that, even when a prosecutor’s actions clearly violate a citizen’s constitutional rights, as in the case of a Brady violation, they cannot be held personally liable for damages (although the o ce as a whole can).

By allowing disclosure list cops to continue to make arrests, CPD has created an environment in which Brady violations are more likely to occur, attorneys and experts say.

Based on court records, the SAO pursued charges and won guilty verdicts against several defendants arrested by disclosure list officers. The Reader and Invisible Institute were unable to comprehensively identify if prosecutors made the required disclosures to the defense counsel in all of the criminal cases tied to the arrests because Brady disclosures do not always appear on the court’s online docket.

To get around this, the reporters created and sent a survey to the public defender’s office, which employs more than 500 attorneys, and the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers through its former president, Jonathan Brayman, to identify cases where Brady violations may have occurred. Reporters also spoke with several veteran Cook County defense attorneys to pinpoint other possible cases.

Sharlyn Grace, a senior policy adviser at the public defender’s o ce, claims that “such affirmative notice by the State is rare.” She continues, “Most often, no disclosure is made by the State. Instead, it is our public defenders who identify credibility issues with police ocers involved in specific cases.”

Murphy, the defense attorney who represented Turner, says he has only ever received one disclosure from prosecutors, and it was done entirely over the phone, making it difficult to document. Tracey Harkins, another Cook County defense attorney, corroborates Murphy’s account that prosecutors often make disclosure orally. She tells the Reader and Invisible Institute that she hadn’t received a disclosure in any criminal matter until after the TRiiBE published an article in May 2023 highlighting the issue.

In cases like Turner’s, in which his attorney was unaware of the arresting o cer’s history of misconduct or dishonesty, attorneys are unable to make use of this information at trial or in the course of plea deal negotiations. And that information can be crucial.

According to Murphy, the one time he did receive a disclosure, the prosecutor decided to drop the case entirely rather than take it to trial. In a separate case, the Reader reported in October that a Cook County prosecutor lowered their plea deal o er by 12 years after the defense attorney discovered two of the o cers involved in his client’s arrest had histories of dishonesty.

Frank Chapman, a longtime police reform activist, is calling for the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), the city’s newly created civilian police oversight body, to investigate this issue and potentially rewrite CPD policy so o cers on the SAO’s lists are not allowed to make arrests in the future. CCPSA president Anthony Driver Jr. declined to comment.

“The CCPSA needs to look into this,” Chapman said. “The law empowers us to deal with policy. This is a policy that needs to be changed.” v

This story is part of “A Catalog of Infamy,” a series from the Invisible Institute and the Reader on Brady cops and practices at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, Chicago Police Department, and suburban police departments. This reporting was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

m

Saving the Point, again

The beloved Hyde Park green space’s historic limestone revetments are once more at risk of being destroyed.

By S. NICOLE LANE

Every summer, Steve Tullis and his wife drive roughly 20 miles from suburban La Grange to Hyde Park’s renowned Promontory Point, a pilgrimage they make at least 50 times throughout the season. It’s the only reason they visit the city anymore, Tullis says.

Tullis participates in triathlons and says, for him, the Point is a training ground where he swims a mile course (to the other pier) twice a day while his wife swims to the first buoy and back. The couple has seen impromptu weddings, burials of ashes, family reunions, study groups, support group meetings, and first dates.

“It’s a Chicago treasure,” says Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, who grew up wading in the lake, jumping on the limestone, and lounging in the sun with his dog. “It’s one of the last vestiges of stonework and easy access into the water. I think it’s kind of legendary.”

Nevertheless, in early February, the Promontory Point Conservancy, which grew out of a 2001 campaign to protect and preserve the park’s historic limestone revetments— seawalls that protect the shoreline from erosion—announced that the Point was in danger. A source inside the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), along with premature information released from a design firm, revealed renewed plans to destroy the embankments.

CDOT confirmed the rumors on February 22, when the agency announced its request for a proposal to construct a new Promontory Point. It would mark the beginning of the end for the beloved south-side park—which so many Hyde Parkers call a haven amongst the concrete and road, and so many north-siders, west-siders, and suburbanites call a worthwhile destination. (The Chicago Park District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would also be involved in the redesign.)

Last year, the Point, located along the lakefront from 54th to 56th streets, was saved

from destruction—or so we thought. The City Council conferred the park Chicago Historic Landmark status in April 2023. This followed a similar move from 2018, when the National Park Service listed it on the National Register of Historic Places. For many, this was believed to preserve the park’s beloved limestone revetments, meadow, fountain, pathways, and council rings for bonfires.

The conservancy was instrumental in securing the park’s landmark status. Jack Spicer, the nonprofit’s president and cofounder, and Debra Hammond, its treasurer, tell the Reader that in the early stages of their work, they expected to receive only a few letters from supporters. They were surprised to receive more than 500, what they say is a mark of the community’s profound attachment to the park.

In the 1980s, high lake levels spurred a $300 million plan to repair the embankments along Chicago’s coast. As a result, all of the limestone along the shoreline of Lincoln Park was replaced by concrete. By 2000, the park district and the city’s Department of Environment began to sketch plans for Promontory Point.

In response, opponents created a task force, raised funds, and hired a coastal engineer to devise alternative plans. That is, until 2002, when plans for demolition were halted after the State Historic Preservation Office sent a letter to the Army Corps that expressed concerns about construction plans and said they did not meet preservation standards. Point lovers have been on edge ever since.

The Point was designed by Alfred Caldwell, a famed 20th-century landscape architect who, while working for the park district, also designed the eponymous lily pool in Lincoln Park. With a vision inspired by the Prairie School, a midwestern architecture movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, he wanted the Point to be a place where the prairie meets the Great Lakes—a vision that absolutely came true when the city completed

construction of the Point in 1939. The park’s limestone revetments were built by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers between 1936 and 1938. They’re now the only WPA limestone embankments left on Chicago’s shoreline.

Spicer, who worked as a landscape gardener for 43 years, explains that Caldwell added soil to the area to raise the meadow so the limestone rocks aren’t visible right away. You have to walk up and over the small hill to begin to see the lake before, eventually, you meet the view of the rocks.

“Even though we may be talking about big stones and big waves and a big lake, there is something very beautiful about how Promontory Point goes from a man-made projection, to a wonderful park and green space, to this transition to these natural limestone rocks, to the water,” says Miller, who studied under Caldwell at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

In an interview from 1986, Caldwell called the Point “a place you go and you are thrilled—a beautiful experience, a joy, a delight.”

Much of Chicago’s shoreline was built between 1910 and 1931, using woodpile cribs filled with stones and topped with limestone. In the 1950s, the stones inside of the woodpile cribs began to wash away, causing the limestone to shift. By 1964, the water level in Lake Michigan reached an all-time low, causing the wood cribs to rot and erode. They’ve been in need of repair ever since. The Shoreline Protection Project, initiated by the Army Corps, aims to fix this issue. But it’s neither the most coste ective plan nor the most pleasing to the eye. It also isn’t what Chicagoans want.

The project aims to create a shoreline similar to other areas with concrete revetments with few swimmers or sunbathers. Jennefer Hoffmannn, a Hyde Park resident of 11 years, an artist, and an avid year-round swimmer who was featured in the short film Swimming Through , says that while people

Promontory Point’s limestone revetments are the last remaining on Chicago’s shoreline. CHLOE CUCINOTTA, S.

may still swim off of concrete slabs, it will never be the same. “There’s something magical about the landscape. And if it’s gone, it’s gone,” she says.

There are practical issues with the plan, too: concrete is weak. The Biltmore Estate, the Empire State Building, and the Pentagon are all made of limestone. It’s a durable material that lasts many lifetimes, whereas concrete lasts, on average, 30 to 50 years.

The role of CDOT and the Army Corps is to protect the general public. But, Miller says, they’re taking a heavy-handed approach. Along the Chicago River, that heavyhandedness might be appropriate, with its concrete embankments due to the narrow riverwalk.

“But really, along Lake Michigan, wouldn’t it be beautiful to have a sort of naturalistic setting? And the naturalistic stone, which makes one feel like it’s not a fake, man-made environment?” Miller asks.

The conservancy has been working to learn as much as it can about CDOT’s current plans for the Point. But Hammond and Spicer are alarmed by the agency’s lack of transparency and its inability to see that other options exist for the beloved limestone.

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an independent federal agency, sent a letter on March 7 to the Army Corps explaining why the lack of communication has been concerning. The letter states that a “106 review” is required in the early stages of project planning. That mandates federal agencies take into account alternatives that could avoid adverse changes to historical places.

A 2022 CDOT presentation said that the “preferred solution” is to use concrete steps. But officials have assured advocates they will preserve the limestone. Michael Padilla,

senior project manager of the Army Corps’s district in Chicago, tells the Reader that there’s “no new plan for the Promontory Point segment of the Chicago Shoreline Project at this time.” Padilla says a new plan will be developed over the next couple of years. O cials will share updates with the public throughout the process, he says. “The e ort is just now getting started with the selection of a design consultant by CDOT.”

After the selected consultant begins to design the work, the final documents will be sent to partners for review. That process will take about two years and will conclude with a contract with a construction company, he says.

revetment. It is many decades old and is in need of repair,” he tells the Reader.

The conservancy is pushing its own community preservation plan, which aims to minimize concrete, avoid disrupting the park, protect the park’s trees, and create an area that’s accessible to Chicagoans of all abilities.

limestone” that makes up the Point. “That’s a real concern beyond the delicate nature and design of Promontory Point.”

Padilla says partners will work with preservationists throughout the design process. “Although the project has a component of safety to it, the objective of the project is to rehabilitate and repair the Promontory Point

From 2002 to 2004, the nonprofit hired several engineering firms to study plans to repair the Point’s revetments. The firms concluded it would be cheaper to fill the wooden cribs with compacted stone fill.

to wooden cribs with compacted stone fill.

And new limestone, a waste material in mining operations, could be sourced from Indiana quarries.

from Indiana quarries.

In fact, the limestone at the Point has already endured almost a century’s worth of Lake Michigan waves, and most of them are still in great shape. “Are we gonna be replacing those concrete steps in the next 25 to 30 years? It would seem, I would say, most likely,” Miller says. “Whereas limestone has proved its durability. It makes you wonder why we didn’t save more of the lakefront revetment from this kind of disaster.”

McLaren Engineering Group, a firm hired by the conservancy, is finalizing a condition study that shows that the limestone revetments function as is, can be retained and repaired, and, if maintained, have another 86 or more years of service for storm damage and shoreline protection. The group will share design plans, drawings and simulations, and a cost-benefit analysis of keeping the current limestone with the conservancy in May.

million in today’s money. That’s

A coastal engineer hired by the conservancy in 2002 found that, under the group’s plan, repairs, adjusted for inflation, would cost $7.5 million. Adding in the cost to repair recent shoreline erosion, the current price tag would run between $20 to $37 million in today’s money. That’s far less than the $75 million the Army Corps projected its project would cost in 2013.

pan as the “naturalistic and

Miller, of Preservation Chicago, doesn’t think the concrete will have the same lifespan as the “naturalistic and beautifully quarried

Something Warmer

BY JAKE SHERBROOKE

“Preserving the limestone is cheaper,” says Brigid Maniates, the secretary of the Promontory Point Conservancy and operations manager at the Invisible Institute. “Accessibility at the Point is hugely important. And it doesn’t have to just be achieved by tearing down the entire Point and making it concrete. There’s already concrete at the Point that could integrate a new design with the concrete and keep the limestone.”

There’s something warmer limestone under your feet; not sand. Hot rock keeps the towel warm, While turning back, to see how far you’ve really swum I went there with friends I don’t speak to anymore I never made it a point

To reach back out and discover the new you, you may have become. Yet back, some time, when the wind felt warmer against my face I always find Chicago’s truest summer here.

An area known as the “coffins” on the very tip of the Point already has concrete and could be easily made into an area with a ramp that complies with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. The McLaren report says that the co ns have “many, many years of use.”

Maniates adds that few visitors sit on the north side of the Point, where the concrete embankments are. Meanwhile, the area with limestone is full of swimmers, sunbathers, and waders. It’s a direct visual that shows what the people choose. And the people choose limestone. Always. Every day.

CIRCLE PHOTOS BY ABIGAIL TAUBMAN, JENNEFER HOFFMANN; POEM BACKGROUND PHOTO BY JENNEFER HOFFMANN

continued from p. 17

Currently, Padilla says, partners are developing an amendment to a 1993 memorandum of agreement “that will outline how the parties will communicate and collaborate as the design moves forward.”

The 1993 memorandum says the Army Corps must consult with the Illinois historic preservation o cer to “ensure that the design and construction of the revetment will match the existing in accordance with” the secretary of the interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic Preservation. Those guidelines exist to preserve the “historic character of a property” and instruct governments to avoid “the removal of distinctive materials or alteration of features, spaces, and spatial relationships that characterize a property.”

For now, CDOT hasn’t released a timeline for the project. The conservancy predicts the public will receive a notice about a completed plan in late summer or early fall, with construction to begin in 2026.

Maniates lives across the street from the Point and considers it her “summer living room,” where she feels attuned to the lake. She

says it’s a place where you can meet new people and hang out, all while feeling connected to nature in a concrete jungle.

“New construction fundamentally would close the Point for three to five years, which would be displacing hundreds of thousands of people that use the Point year-round,” she says. The park is cross-generational, cross-community, and cross-racial. “There are few places in the contemporary world where it feels so communal and delightful,” Maniates says.

What’s more, the Point takes us somewhere else. Hoffmann says, “It’s so quintessential south-side Chicago. And yet, you know, sometimes, you feel like you’re in Croatia.” Spicer says the park reminds him of Maine. Others have called it the shores of Massachusetts. Some just call it Chicago.

That’s the beauty of the Point. You’re merely a few steps away from DuSable Lake Shore Drive, the hustle of Hyde Park, a prestigious university, and museums. But

“It’s a Chicago treasure. It’s one of the last vestiges of stonework and easy access into the water. I think it’s kind of legendary.”

you can escape to the wilderness, a type of nature we yearn for in a city of almost three million people.

Hoffmann says losing the Point, as it is today, “would be the loss of poetry.” And moreover, losing the Point would extend beyond the individual. “I would feel so sorry for the loss of the possibility of the next generation. All the kids, all the adults that sort of become kids again, climbing around on the rocks—what will be lost?” she asks.

It’s like nowhere else in Chicago. And that, my friends, is the point. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Relive a night on the town in the mid-twentieth century at our new exhibition.

Chicagoans relax at the Point in June 1941. CHARLES W. CUSHMAN, IMAGE NUMBER: P02340, INDIANA UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

Spring eater & Arts

There’s something a little di erent in this issue’s film section.

Usually, when these quarterly arts issues roll around, I as the film editor peruse pitches from a handful of writers and choose just two or three upcoming events in Chicago’s film scene for the Reader to preview. There’s often an anniversary that stands out or a program that deserves extra coverage (like last year’s feature on the tenth anniversary of the Chicago Critics Film Festival).

This season, however, I found that I couldn’t decide. Maybe Chicago’s spring film calendar is always this packed, but the more upcoming festivals, series, and events I heard about, the more I wanted to just include as many as possible.

it’s a great start.

I still think it’s hugely beneficial to zoom in on individual local events in feature-length articles—to learn the motivations of film programmers, to hear the highlights from moviegoers, to analyze films new and old that may be groundbreaking. (The other film feature, on page 40, in which contributor Kat Sachs analyzes the films of Kinuyo Tanaka, is a prime example of this.) But it was also fun, for this issue, to see what 12 different writers found compelling about 12 different festivals, covering sex and horror, experimental and silent film, and the climate crisis, and stories from Palestinian, Asian, and Latine people, and more.

And so, on page 36, you’ll find a collection of event previews to suit the taste of any movieloving Chicagoan. It’s far from a comprehensive guide on what the city has to o er its film community this spring (which continues to blow my mind—Chicago has everything), but

And that’s just one piece of this Spring Theater & Arts package, which is just one piece of this whole issue—which is just one of countless biweekly love letters from the Reader team to the city of Chicago. v

—Taryn Allen, Film Editor m tallen@chicagoreader.com

Clockwise from above: Puppet by Grace Needlman YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER Rachel Hartmann and Abby Palen (puppet by Abby Palen) YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

A still from Demi-Goddesses , playing at the Sound of Silent Film Festival SOUND OF SILENT FILM FESTIVAL Installation view, “Kara Walker: Back of Hand,” Poetry Foundation SARAH JOYCE, COURTESY OF THE POETRY FOUNDATION

Spring eater & Arts

gatherings

C2E2 brings nerds of all kinds to McCormick Place

April’s Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo creates space for enthusiasm

By CHARLI RENKEN

I’ve been attending comic book and entertainment conventions since I was just a little kid. When I was eight years old, I dressed up as a wizard for Avistrum’s Academy of Sorcery’s weekend wizarding school experience at MileHiCon in Denver. I was sorted into a fellowship (think Hogwarts house) and attended “magic” classes. Between classes, I’d roam the halls of the convention, taking in all the geekery around me. In high school, my friends and I frequented the now-defunct science fiction convention Starfest, sleeping on hotel floors for the weekend and traipsing around the convention center without our glasses to really commit to whatever character we were dressed up as.

Conventions are something I look forward to each spring as con season comes around. Since moving to Chicago five years ago, I’ve rarely missed out on Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). The largest pop culture event of the midwest, C2E2 is a weekend excursion for nerds of all kinds. Whether you’re into anime, comic books, obscure television, science fiction novels, cosplay, or meeting celebrities, there’s something for everyone. All Elite Wrestling even has a booth at C2E2. Wrestlers doing meet and greets at what’s typically known as a geeky event is an admittedly strange addition—but hey, every fandom is valid at McCormick Place this time of year. This year’s list of guests is not as exciting as previous years, though C2E2 is known for revealing last-minute celebrity appearances

CHICAGO COMIC AND ENTERTAINMENT EXPO (C2E2)

Fri 4/26 -Sun 4/28 : general show hours Fri-Sat 10 AM-7 PM, Sun 10 AM- 5 PM. After hours events, panels, and gaming zone hours are viewable at the convention’s FAQ page. McCormick Place Convention Center, South Building, 2301 S. Martin Luther King Dr., 800 -354 - 4003, c2e2 .com. Single day tickets range $ 55 -$ 80 ; three-day, VIP, and youth discounts are available.

fair amount of comic book artists behind titles like Daredevil , Iron Man , The Punisher , and Batman scheduled to appear.

Most guests are available for both autographs and photo ops on the show floor and many also sit down at panels for an hour of discussion and answering fan questions. If you plan to attend panels featuring Lloyd, Ricci,

open. Two years ago, I met four people in line waiting for an appearance of cast members of Our Flag Means Death, and now those line buddies are some of my closest friends. It turns out sitting with a bunch of people who all have the same fierce interests as you is a really good way to make fast friends.

While seeing celebrities is fun (especially if it’s someone I really admire), the guests aren’t actually my favorite part of the convention.

closer to the event, so that may change. In fact, while I was writing this, the convention announced Christina Ricci ( The Addams Family, Yellowjackets) and Christopher Lloyd ( Back to the Future , The Addams Family ). Other big stars scheduled to attend so far include Darren Criss (Glee, A Very Potter Musical, American Crime Story ), Mads Mikkelsen ( Doctor Strange , Hannibal , Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ), the McElroy Family ( The Adventure Zone ; My Brother, My Brother and Me ), and a few stars from anime such as One Piece, My Hero Academia, and Dragon Ball Z. There are also a

Criss, or Mikkelsen, I recommend getting in line early, possibly as much as an hour in advance. The room for mainstage events like these tends to fill up quickly and if there aren’t

C2E2 has an overwhelming amount of things to do—so overwhelming in fact, the convention has a designated Quiet Room, this year located on level one in room N131, for “anyone looking to break from the comic con buzz.” Given the number of neurodivergent people the convention tends to attract, having this kind of amenity shows how much attention to detail ReedPop, the company that organizes C2E2, puts into their events. They’re truly dedicated to making the convention an enjoyable experience for everyone.

My favorite part of C2E2 is the panel discussions. These really run the gamut when it comes to topic, but 90 percent of them are run by fans for fans. There’s something both heartwarming and exhilarating about people gathering to discuss their favorite media and fandoms. Panels are where fandom communities come together IRL. It’s where we get to be as passionate as we want about a subject and no one will judge us.

There’s a common saying amongst cosplayers: “Butt on floor, means photos no more!”

enough empty seats, you’ll be sent to watch the panel on a screen in another room, which honestly just stinks.

Although standing in line for an hour might sound like a bore, I’ve actually met some of my closest friends while waiting for panels to

At a panel last year where Our Flag Means Death fans were encouraged to mix and mingle, Vico Ortiz, who plays Jim Jimenez in the show, made an appearance to perform a handfasting ceremony for two fans dressed as characters Ed Teach and Stede Bonnet. The fans were already married to other people but, being polyamorous, wanted to celebrate their commitment to each other as well. Ortiz performed the short ceremony as fellow fans stood in attendance. I remember

Abbi Rago and their partner. Rago is dressed in a Dalek and Belle mash-up. MICHAEL FYE

Spring eater & Arts

continued from p. 18

tears coming to my eyes, all of us gathered around for this special moment because of a show and community we all deeply adored. It was intimate, emotional, and filled with love even though most of us were strangers. It was not the first time I’ve seen a wedding ceremony at a convention.

My usual plan of attack at C2E2 is to first download the app onto my phone, which lets attendees view everything happening that weekend and create a custom schedule complete with reminders and convention-wide notifications. While waiting to get in (there’s a lot of that at C2E2), I get to work filtering my schedule down to the panels and events I want to attend, making sure to leave myself time for meals and moseying around the show floor.

The show floor is split up into several different areas. There’s the Artist Alley, where artists of all kinds set up shop. Cosplay Central is devoted to all things costumes (and the best place to go if you have a wardrobe malfunction). Family HQ has kid-friendly activities. The Gaming Zone is complete with console and tabletop games; Pop Asia is devoted to all things anime, manga, K-pop, and Asian culture; and in the Yard beer garden, those 21 and up can knock back Revolution Brewing beverages.

championship is being held by C2E2, so the crème de la crème will gather at McCormick Place to showcase their craft. Some of these artists put years of work into their costumes using hundreds of yards of fabric, mechanical components, special e ects makeup, and more to make characters come to life on stage. It’s a must-see event whether you cosplay yourself or not.

Unfortunately, as much fun as cosplay can be, it isn’t without its challenges. My first cosplay was Catwoman and over the years I’ve had my fair share of creeps leering at me in my skintight suit. While my cosplay made me feel

Consent” in 2014. Cosplayers can report incidents right in the C2E2 app or find a volunteer to help. O enders are promptly removed from the convention without refund and may face legal consequences.

When it comes to cosplay, it’s also common etiquette to ask before taking photos. It might seem like someone dressed up in elaborate garb wants to be noticed, but some of us are actually very camera shy. And for the love of George Lucas, if you see a cosplayer sitting down, please don’t ask for a picture. There’s a common saying amongst cosplayers: “Butt on floor, means photos no more!” Being in cosplay

The show floor is also one of the best places to people-watch. C2E2 is one of the biggest conventions for cosplay in the world. Every year, I nearly fill up my camera space with countless pictures of people’s costumes. There’s something weirdly exhilarating about seeing someone dressed up as one of your favorite characters. It’s like Disneyland except there’s no line to get a picture with any of the numerous Harley Quinns wandering the convention center. I’ve seen everything from Steampunk Mario to genderbent Aziraphale (Good Omens) to a Doctor Who Dalek dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast . The imagination of fans truly has no bounds. If you want to see the best of the best cosplay, you have to check out the Cosplay Central Crown Championship. Every year, cosplayers compete at various Reedpop conventions across the globe in regional, national, and global competitions. This year, the global

mandatory part of attending conventions. In fact, I’m moving around the same time as C2E2 this year so I might not dress up at all. Does it hurt my little geeky heart to know all my cosplay is going to be in boxes that weekend? You bet it does! But I know no one is going to judge me for walking around the convention in jeans and a fandom appropriate t-shirt. If you don’t have the ability to put together a costume before the convention, don’t worry about it. You’ll have plenty of fun regardless.

Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff.

sexy and powerful, it also occasionally made me feel unsafe. I’m not the only cosplayer to deal with inappropriate attention; it’s something most of my friends deal with at every convention. Reedpop thankfully has a strict no tolerance policy when it comes to harassment, having popularized the phrase “Cosplay is Not

all day can be exhausting and uncomfortable. Don’t make it worse by making us get up from our comfy position on the floor just for you to snap a couple of photos. It’s rude, and while most of us will scramble to our feet (nerds hate confrontation), we won’t be happy about it.

It should also be said that cosplay isn’t a

After the show floor shuts down, there’s still plenty to do in and around the convention center. C2E2 has several After Dark events like burlesque shows, karaoke, dance parties, and more. Outside of the convention, there’s also plenty to do around town with your gaggle of nerds even without a C2E2 badge. The McElroy Family has two ticketed shows this year at the Riviera Theatre. There’s also a number of after-parties to check out across town including the media collective LAN Party’s first event in Chicago and Geeks and Moshpits at Reggies. This year you’ll catch me at Calypso’s Birthday Party at the Newport Theater, an Our Flag Means Death— themed party based on the celebration of the same name in season two, episode six.

The camaraderie between nerds is really something special, and while online discourse is great, there’s nothing like a convention to bring people together. I don’t always feel like I belong in the rest of the world. The general public just doesn’t understand my energetic passion for all things nerdy. They don’t understand why I spend countless hours obsessing over really niche interests or why I’d spend hundreds of dollars trying to look like a specific character in a TV show. At conventions, that kind of energy is encouraged. It’s something people who attend events like C2E2 thrive on.

Self-proclaimed nerd and author John Green told his Vlogbrothers podcast audience in a 2009 video, “Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stu . Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like, jump-up-anddown-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is, ‘You like stu ,’ which is not a good insult at all, like, ‘You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.” At C2E2, you can bounce up and down, rant for hours, squeal, yell, and enjoy stuff without judgment. It’s a place where every nerd can find a place to call their own. v

m crenken@chicagoreader.com

Top: revelers in cosplay at 2020’s C2E2 BOTH PHOTOS COURTESY OF REEDPOP

my ma met mary madonna at a bustop in Chatham

By Harlem West

& they both stood straddling the fence mid solstice tilting with housing wombs exhaling exhaust Blue Magic & Sulfer8 both sick of scattered men in their beds with their outside clothes on neither knowing how to water a tiny god. mary madonna offered my ma a new set of collateral skins. these ones would grail mahogany and age slow sum dark, like cognac or all the fallen griots in our bloodline but my ma declined content with her inherited freckled fury and olive undertones. say, we worked hard for this genetic midnight, pulled double shifts to see our breath in the cold waiting for a bus on some soil that may never love us back. so mother mary asks “where your people from?” to which my ma replied with a tall drag from her square, recalling lady day and the folks scattered like willows her grandmother left in Arkansas. miss mary nodded and says “how long have you been waiting?”.

of course, my ma kept her eyes for the 87th east bound.

“not too long”

harlem west is a poet, archivist, and community garden from 87th and Cottage. they write to recall collective memory. they write up truths their dead folks reveal to them in dreams and such. harlem’s work has been featured in the North Branch and APOGEE journals.

Poem curated by Stuti Sharma. Stuti is a poet, stand up comic, writer, filmmaker, but most importantly, a lover. She grew up on Devon street and the south suburbs. They are a Tin House 2023-2024 Reading Fellow.

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

Letras Latinas 20th Anniversary Reading & Panel

Join us for a two-day celebration of Letras Latinas’s 20th Anniversary, featuring Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta, Diannely Antigua, Jasminne Mendez, and Yesenia Montilla.

Reading: Thursday, March 21 at 7:00 PM CT

Afro-Latinx Poetry Now Panel: Saturday, March 23 at 2:00 PM CT

Kara Walker: Back of Hand

Foregrounding Walker’s long-term engagement with language and text, this exhibition features works completed in 2021 and shown for the first time in Chicago. Open through May 18, 2024.

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

Spring eater & Arts

GALLERY OPENING

Murmuration lets artists take ight

Gallery founder Kat Bawden discusses the new space and its forthcoming show with Eugene Tang.

By ERIN TOALE

Abeautiful historic studio building in Humboldt Park is host to a new gallery and book imprint helmed by artist Kat Bawden. Murmuration’s first show took place in December; the group exhibition “The Buried Line” featured Galit Aloni, Maximiliano Cervantes, Alan Huck. Next up is a solo show for photographer Eugene Tang titled “Awkward Intimacy,” opening March 23. Tang will display two series depicting his life as a gay Asian man: one features tender videos made with his parents exploring their familial relationship dynamics, and the other is a set of still photographs that capture domestic encounters Tang has with men who pursue him on the gay dating app Grindr. Below is an edited interview with Bawden and Tang where they discuss their plans for the space and show.

Erin Toale: Kat, tell me how the space came about. What is the focus of your exhibition program?

Kat Bawden: Last summer I was looking for a studio to work in, and a friend sent me a listing in her building. I instantly fell in love with the space and saw its potential as a part-time gallery in addition to my workspace.

The name Murmuration comes from the word for when starling birds gather in massive, shapeshifting formations . . . while doing research for [a] project, I learned that murmurations are understood to be a self-protective mechanism for starlings. By gathering in such large numbers they are able to collectively protect themselves from predators, while sharing warmth and resources.

This is what I want Murmuration to be— beautiful and useful, a space for artists to gather, collaborate, and support one another. And a space where emerging and established artists can experiment and take risks that might not work in a commercial gallery or museum.

You describe Murmuration as an exhibition

space and book publisher. What are your publication plans?

KB: I plan to start scaling up this part of Murmuration over the next year. Since 2018, I’ve been making small runs of handmade artist books and zines, and eventually I want Murmuration’s exhibitions to all have an accompanying handmade artist book. The first book I published through Murmuration is my own book of photographs and prose, The Dust That Made You. I’m working on expanding the edition and releasing it more o cially.

As an artist and administrator, how do you balance studio practice with exhibition production?

KB: I see the project of Murmuration and the process of putting on exhibitions as part of my studio practice. Community is deeply important to me. Before I became an artist I was a community organizer, and I still see myself as one. It’s a lovely experience for my workspace to become an extension of another artist’s imagination, or an extension of our shared imagination, and to bring our community together to share in it.

“AWKWARD INTIMACY”

Through 4/ 13 : appointment only, Murmuration, 2846 W. North, murmur-murmur.com/eugene-tang

spond with an understandable language. She’s never talking about labels or symbols like a hypnotizing scholar, but talking about how she deeply and flexibly interprets a creative process with empathy. We talk a lot about feeling, she really has a strong sensibility for things, occasions, intentions.

KB: I’ve witnessed Eugene take real risks as an artist—both in how he approaches and builds relationships with the people he photographs and in how he experiments with sculpture and installation. He puts himself in intimidating, vulnerable situations, and I think that invites the people he photographs to be vulnerable with him. He is daring, honest, and brings us into hidden, private worlds. He’s communityminded as well—last spring he curated a show of all the SAIC MFA in photography grad students.

Eugene, you mentioned that you bring a cart of photography equipment on your dates. Can you please say more about the logistics of this?

to convince me of their qualifications, even though I always emphasize that experience isn’t a factor.

The equipment cart becomes more than just tools; it’s a unique way to build trust. It’s very expensive. They always help me carry/place them. It’s the first step of trust and bridge a relationship with a certain weight. There’s a way guys on Grindr seem to know how to act when it comes to meeting up for art projects. Thankfully, everyone I’ve met has been cool and respectful. The setup process takes time, but it also allows for longer conversations, giving me a chance to connect with my subjects on a deeper level.

You’ll be exhibiting two bodies of work, one about your family and one about romantic encounters. How does your approach to making each series di er?

ET: They both talk about intimacy and vulnerability in a very di erent setup. I think the work itself will showcase two parallel rhythms in one journey. They are both complicated in contexts but one is a question coming from the inside and delves into an internal exploration. It asks questions about family bonds and seeks answers from within the dynamic itself. In contrast, the other one is the question from the outside, an outward exploration. I place myself in social settings, allowing external interactions to provide the answers in.

You mentioned that these photos are made of/with men who pursue you. What role does desire play in this series? Also, you brought up research about racial and other discriminatory “preferences” on gay dating apps, can you share that?

How did you meet and how did this show develop?

Eugene Tang: We are photo cohorts from SAIC! Kat possesses a remarkable psychic ability. She can read through the work and re-

ET: In my mind, they are not a date; they reached out on Grindr and are willing to be a model. I always try to be clear that it’s a serious art project. Some guys might initially think otherwise given the platform. But when they see my overflowing cart of professional equipment—lights, cameras, the whole shebang—they realize it’s legit. Interestingly, a few have even been turned on by the artistic process, sharing their creative backgrounds

ET: This project is an intervention against the limiting and often fetishizing gazes directed towards Asian men in the Western gay community. Many Asian men feel a lack of agency in online dating, often fi nding themselves in situations where they either date other Asians or, rarely, people with a specific preference for Asian men. This paradox of being perceived as both undesirable and hypersexualized fueled my exploration of this identity and thinking about the concept of a “counter-gaze”—a way of challenging these dominant perspectives through photography. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Eugene Tang, MSG COURTESY THE ARTIST

Through 8/4: Wed-Thu 11 AM-7 PM, Fri-Sun 11 AM- 5 PM, DePaul Art Museum, 935 W. Fullerton, resources.depaul.edu/art-museum, free

e curatorial vision of Ionit Behar

The DePaul Art Museum curator punctuates her exhibitions with a comma rather than a period.

By ALLY FOUTS

Curators are like understated art world puppeteers, pulling at each of the strings that result in your next favorite exhibition. At the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), Ionit Behar exemplifies the crucial role a curator plays in Chicago’s thriving art community. Through her recent projects, unwavering curiosity, and earned expertise, Behar has become an invaluable pillar in the city’s abundant art scene.

Born in Israel and raised in Uruguay, Behar came to the U.S. in 2011 to pursue her master’s degree in art history, theory, and criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Growing up, she didn’t know precisely what a curator did outside of being involved with museums. Starting at six years old, she traveled extensively with her academic grandparents for research and conferences. During these travels, Behar’s grandparents prioritized taking her to museums, and she relished the independence she felt while she paced the museum halls, exploring the connections between di erent time periods and geographies. In high school, Behar realized curatorial work was her pursuit.

Not only did the art inside museums resonate with Behar, but the architecture itself became informative of how she shaped her curatorial practice. She approaches a new space with curiosity, first gaining an understanding of the institution that will house the exhibition and then working to transform it from within.

Rather than limiting herself to working only within institutions, Behar remains open and eager for independent projects. “Independent projects are important for my creativity,” she says. “I love understanding an institution and transforming it from the inside, but I need a connection to the outside world that independent projects give me. I am working with artists that I also work with in the museum setting or am hoping to, so I see both [institutional and independent projects] as integrated.”

Invigorated by her time in Uruguay, Behar

earned a PhD from the University of Illinois Chicago, focusing primarily on Argentinian artists making work under the dictatorship during the 1980s. Political art made during times of censorship strikes Behar as fertile ground for her insatiable curiosity of how artists maintain both the desire and duty to create, even when surrounded by tragedy.

This transformative approach to curating combined with her devoted interest in Latin American artists was deployed during her 2021 DPAM exhibition, “LatinXAmerican.” Focusing on shrinking the gaps of representation in DPAM’s collection, Behar brought the work of Latin American artists into the fold with urgency. An example of this is Behar’s choice to display a lithograph by Claudio Dicochea and a painting by Mario Ybarra Jr., retrieved from DPAM’s collection, positioned across from an installation by Karen Dana and a video series by Marisa Morán Jahn, both not a part of the collection.

Spring eater & Arts

the close of “LatinXAmerican,” Behar curated “Life Cycles” at DPAM. This exhibition continued the conversation sparked by “LatinXAmerican” by questioning the existing collection of the museum, with a focus on pairing missing or new voices alongside established artists.

Behar punctuates her exhibitions with a comma rather than a period. When they come to a close, the work lives on, ready to be broken down, stripped for parts, and eventually explored in a new way. Two years following

One work on view, Gertrude Abercrombie’s Split Personality, held personal meaning for Behar. The painting depicts a woman split in two; the two halves separate from one another disjointedly while casting a seamlessly connected shadow of the woman’s profile on the wall. When Behar visited DPAM for the first time in 2011, this painting was included in the same spot toward the entrance of the museum. Not typically moved this profoundly by a painting, Behar felt a bubbling admiration and connection to the museum. About 13 years later, Behar included it in “Life Cycles,” and it served as an encapsulated life cycle of her own. Behar is no stranger to collaboration. In 2021, she cofounded the curatorial and exhibition design agency Behar X Schachman alongside architect Andrew Schachman. Together, the two have embarked on a project of massive scale, “Del Otro Lado / The Other Side,” on view in the arrivals corridor at O’Hare International Airport. Over the course of two years, the duo curated an installation consisting of more than a dozen local artists who represent the diversity of the city’s art community. This past November, the project opened to eager viewers ready to encounter the di erent constructed worlds each artist presents within their allotted space.

The process included a high level of organization, beginning with artists submitting

proposals and Behar and Schachman working closely with each selected artist to shape their vision and build a cohesive exhibition representative of Chicago. Behar and Schachman had worked with a majority of the artists previously, which allowed a sense of trust to reverberate through the process.

Though this was Behar’s first time working with public art, it won’t be the last. She found the experience full of learning opportunities. Behar explains that a curator’s job is to consider the viewer’s experience, and when working in a space that people are not expecting to see art in, as with O’Hare, a different level of contemplation is required. According to Behar, “Del Otro Lado / The Other Side” will be on view for at least 25 years, which makes the structural integrity and physicality of the materials used in each piece imperative to the longevity of the exhibition. Not only are the material logistics important to Behar, the conceptual endurance carries equal weight, as she contemplated the relevance of each work in the decades to come.

Behar’s latest curatorial project is Selva Aparicio’s first solo museum exhibition, “In Memory Of,” which opened on March 14 at the DPAM. The exhibition is held on the first floor of the museum across three galleries, each transformed into a familiar, domestic roomlike environment. In harmony with Behar’s attentive consideration of architecture, Aparicio responds to the space by developing new site-specific installations. This new work is integrated alongside reconstructions of previous pieces, like Childhood Memories , which includes a rug made of negative space she hand-carved into the floor of the museum.

Behar gathered a collection of work that perfectly symphonizes Aparicio’s mastery of push and pull, as she interrogates weighted concepts of domestic violence and grief with intricate, ethereal materials such as lettuce leaves and dandelion seeds. “[Aparicio] is creating a healing space. She is not dwelling in the difficulty or pain, she is working with materials to turn this di culty into something else,” Behar explains. “This is the first time she presents her work in such a vulnerable way that everyone else can empathize with or experience.”

On view until August 4, “In Memory Of” provides an exemplary opportunity to witness Behar’s exceptional curatorial skill, dedication, and voice. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Top: Ionit Behar; Bottom: Selva Aparicio, Remains , 2023 COURTESY THE ARTIST

Spring eater & Arts

A group show centers the ties that bind global communities

Four local artists bring the genocide in Palestine into our collective psyche.

By WENDY WEI

On a corner in Rogers Park stands a former United States Postal Service office with banners of tan and white suede unfurling behind its storefront window. From the sidewalk peering in, one can make out black- and red-stitched Arabic script running across the “pages”—they record the names of 6,000 Palestinians killed (a partial list) by Israel’s assault on Gaza. The list crawls like sentences, then sections into paragraphs,

down perhaps a dozen strips. This is Ahmad Almahdi’s Palestine ‘Say Their Names’ (2023), which draws its title from the #SayTheirNames campaign to raise awareness of police killings of Black people. Almahdi’s layered sheets of durable suede serve as a curtain connecting Rogers Park to the latest show at the community space PO Box Collective.

Comprising the work of four local MENA and Palestinian artists, “Tending Responsibil-

“TENDING RESPONSIBILITY/BORNE RESPONSIBILITY”

By appointment, poboxcollective@gmail.com, PO Box Collective, 6900 N. Glenwood, poboxcollective.us

ity/Borne Responsibility” excavates the ties that bind global communities such as Chicago to an ethical duty for Palestinian life and liberation. In textile, sculpture, installation, and print media, Rama, Ahmad Almahdi, Fade Kareem, and Yasmeen Khayr bring a war unfolding thousands of miles away into a Chicago neighborhood and into our collective psyche.

Almahdi’s work is one of two pieces in the exhibition exploring commemoration through the form of lists. The other is Yasmeen Khayr’s they have names (2023), which is displayed within nine frames organized into 3 X 3 rows. Against nine sheets of ripped-out white sketchbook paper, linoleum block printing renders the petals of ruby-red poppies that hug the bristles of ink-black chrysanthemum blooms. Trails of loose jasmine flowers and Arabic text weave around their shapes. Collaged over this latticed pattern are thick, solid green olive tree leaves and branches. Upon closer look, they are composed by layering small strips of paper about one inch in length, each bearing the printed name of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces. A small table to the left displays a bowl of name strips cut in the same format, inviting us to “hold their names with us,” to feel with our own hands the delicacy of each individual, and to add them to a communal olive branch.

Khayr uses the visual language of cut flowers to transform the sterile, colorless lines of a victim list into a thing of organic beauty,

literally growing through the participation of the community. The action recalls the first half of the exhibition’s namesake—tending responsibility. As much as trees are part of the natural world, nurturing a fruitful harvest is very much a human endeavor, requiring consistent care, labor, and attention. Since 1967, Israeli authorities and settlers have destroyed over 800,000 Palestinian olive trees, a crucial part of the Palestinian economy. Since October 7, Israeli forces have barred access to olive groves, robbing families from tending to their main source of livelihood. Khayr’s miming of the olive tree harvest asks us, how does the definition of “responsibility” shift when the act of tending is made illegal?

Lists are documents of recordkeeping and often of control. Even the verb use of the word “list” roots back to enlisting in military service. But unlike the meticulously kept lists of military personnel of state-commissioned memorials erected after wars are over, Almahdi and Khayr’s lists are incomplete. Starting 100 days into the war in Gaza, the list of names in Khayr’s piece is now “devastatingly outdated,” she says. With each day, both lists represent a smaller and smaller proportion of the total Palestinian death toll.

Public memorials for victims have formed alongside many movements protesting mass atrocities, precisely for their continuous call to action. Kitty-corner from PO Box Collective, sheltered under el tracks, is a living

Window design by Olly Costello SARAH-JI (@LOVEANDSTRUGGLEPHOTOS)

memorial born out of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, just one of the movement’s worldwide constellations of community-driven murals to victims of police brutality. Every Sunday, PO Box Collective and Cheap Art for Freedom conduct communal maintenance of the site—wheat pasting another name and portrait, weaving Palestinian solidarity signs into existing scaffolding—reminding passersby that the fight isn’t over and people still care.

As much as responsibility is universal, the burden is not borne equally, nor in identical manners. Opening four months after the

start of the Israel-Hamas war, “Tending Responsibility/Borne Responsibility” includes artists’ existing work spanning years back, highlighting the breadth of work MENA activists and artists have done to keep Palestine on the agenda for over half a century— when it was on international news and when it was off.

In a corner, Rama has set up a cozy reading nook furnished with a plush and ornate rocking chair, a cozy bookshelf and console stacked with ceramic tea mugs. To the right is Fade Kareem’s wood sculpture Music is the Language of Silence (2023), fusing the neck

“CRITIC’S PICK! A sly and very likable comedy”

THE

Meet the object of her affection.

by NICK ROBIDEAU

directed by JEREMY WECHSLER

of a violin onto the carved body of a woman. While for many, bringing the politics of resistance into intimate, private settings is a new and uncomfortable experience, Rama and Kareem push the viewer to think about the uncomfortableness of having to remain silent in “safe” spaces.

I can’t think of two spaces more di erent from each other than the frenzied chaos of war and the carefully curated walls encasing an art gallery. Yet as I walk through PO Box’s space—its well-used tables sagging under the weight of its seed library, the corner refrigerator with stocked refreshments, the

whiteboard fi lled with phrases awaiting the evening’s ESL class for new arrivals—all of it is a drastic departure from galleries where the only living aspect is often a security guard reminding you of the art’s commercial value. So what does artmaking look like in times of war? It looks like this: bringing art to where people need it—emotionally and physically, integrating liberation into daily consciousness, and calling everyone to tend to the better future we all have the responsibility to bear. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

“I’ll Have What She’s Having”: The Jewish Deli is organized and circulated by the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, California. Photography © Kathleen Hinkel.

Spring eater & Arts

EXHIBITIONS

R‘Socket to sit in’ rouses spirits at Parlour and Ramp

The Pilsen gallery shows work by four ambitious local artists.

The spirit of Chicago’s young artist scene is alive at Parlour and Ramp, a funeral home-turned-art gallery in Pilsen that supports community-oriented programming. “Socket to sit in,” the gallery’s current exhibition, features four ambitious local artists carving out an eccentric, unashamed niche for their work.

Vibrant works play off each other through explorations of materiality and form. “Pimples” of plaster and textiles by CM Clemente sprout from the hardwood floors, with Pimple #25 (The Open Rose) tilting its head inward to face companion sculptures across the room. JohnClaud Valentine Ruder’s Pillow’s Parable series of wonderfully gaudy hanging assemblages, stuffed with everything from upholstery trim to raffia grass, dangle above Clemente’s protuberance. Together, the sculptures activate their corner with a creaturely charm.

Opposite this pairing, a ceramic puppet by Timnah Rosenshine entitled King Zed appears to dance on the wall—an animated spectator whose light tones complement the sculptures he faces. Elsewhere, a haunting graphite mural drawn on-site by Liv Sciford abates the crowding of more colorful works. Its depiction of a darkened doorway and overlapping figural shadows quietly extend the gallery and recall the past life of the home.

These pimples, pillows, puppets, and more live happily with one another while asserting their enthusiastic expression—forging their own socket to sit in. The exhibition is impressively cohesive and refreshingly energetic with its range of mediums and inspirations. Fostered by the dedication of the artists running Parlour and Ramp, the earnestness of “socket to sit in” is palpable, conjuring an exhibition full of character. —NATALIE JENKINS “SOCKET TO SIT IN” Through 4/5: open by appointment, parlourandramp@gmail.com, Parlour and Ramp, 2130 W. 21st St., parlourandramp.com

RMiranda Forrester fuses the painted with the real-world

The artist’s first solo exhibition in Chicago opens at Mariane Ibrahim.

Falling somewhere between figuration and abstraction, Miranda Forrester’s work is intentionally evocative. Her brushstrokes are delicate yet deliberate, ethereal yet precise. Her landscapes, illuminated with light, feature pale ink washes and a vibrant tapestry of colors—shades of green, red, and blue prevail as her subjects, predominantly Black queer women, come to life within and beyond the canvas. “Interiorities,” now on view at Mariane Ibrahim, has a dreamy quality.

The London-based artist brings feminine and non-binary identities and their absence throughout art history front and center. She presents them at ease—o en in domestic settings, engaging in leisure activities, experiencing parenthood, and sharing intimate moments, all with a Baroque twist. Created and situated in a palazzo in Brescia, Italy, where Forrester recently completed a residency, the paintings are infused with references to the region’s art and architecture, juxtaposing the beauty and opulence of Italian heritage with the artist’s critical engagement with its exclusionary histories. Amid grand architecture, lush vegetation, and nods to old master

artworks, her characters are both bold and tender—they radiate a sense of agency but also a serene calmness.

Employing polycarbonate—a clear, hard material—as her canvas, Forrester uses materiality to allude to the complexities and nuances of womanhood, femininity, gender, and sexuality. As lines and translucent brushstrokes wander through her work, o en spilling onto the wall around the frame, she weaves together intricate and evolving reflections on the essence of identity. By creating a dynamic interplay between the painted and the real world, Forrester’s work is a profound meditation on identity, belonging, and visibility that invites the viewer to reconsider their perceptions of beauty, identity, and space. Semitransparency suits her. —VASIA RIGOU “INTERIORITIES” Through 4/6: Tue-Sat, 11 AM-6 PM, Mariane Ibrahim, 437 N. Paulina, marianeibrahim. com/exhibitions/77-miranda-forrester-interiorities

RMegan Capps aims to amuse

There’s a lot more than bread at Cellar Door Provisions.

The hallmark of an exceptional art show is that it can be appreciated on many levels—from the simple gratification of a pleasant sight to a sublime state provoked by deeper realizations. Add a sprinkle of humor and you have a winning recipe. Megan Capps’s “amuse-bouche,” on view at Cellar Door Provisions until April 20, offers just that kind of experience.

Curated by Marissa Dembkoski as part of a collaboration between Apparatus Projects and the Michelin-awarded eatery, “amuse-bouche” is an ode to the extraordinary in the ordinary—as represented in Capps’s beautiful prints depicting the mystifying process of making the perfect pie crust. “These photographs are scans from a very old cookbook that was gi ed to me by someone special,” explains Capps, who doubles as a special ed educator for Chicago Public Schools. “If you

look very closely, you see the hal one dots, which is really important to me . . to distinguish the fact that it is from printed matter.”

A tough grip on reality seems to be a recurring theme in Capps’s work, which thoughtfully yet playfully references everyday objects such as bottles of wine and a Chemex coffee maker. Her exhibition blends seamlessly with the space, almost hiding in plain sight. But once you read the brilliant short story she wrote to accompany the show, it’s hard to pay attention to anything else. “I just wanted to play and give a lot of opportunities for the viewer to discover things and make meaning of them.”

—ISA GIALLORENZO “AMUSE-BOUCHE”

Through 4/20: Wed-Sat 5-11 PM, Cellar Door Provisions, 3025 W. Diversey, apparatusprojects.com

RNicki Cherry surrenders control

“I can be a woman for you” indulges in vulnerability.

A er Nicki Cherry began to struggle with chronic back pain, she started exploring the meaning of restraint, dependence, and repression and how they’ve contributed to a fragmented body and a lack of control.

In her new exhibition at Slow Dance gallery, “I can be a woman for you,” casts of Cherry’s body are attached to metal supports; they are the grab bars that we see in public toilets and trains. The supports resemble sterile extensions to the body, making movements easier, stronger, and more secure.

The cast body parts represent fractures that have created their own identity. In these fragmented arms, legs, and feet, Cherry has placed small pearls that appear like tiny iridescent lumps or cysts. Cherry said she thinks of the pearls as kidney stones, “a slowly made record of irritation, whether physical or emotional, that we claim as foreign despite being formed out of and inside our bodies.”

But the pearls, unlike kidney stones, aren’t necessarily exorcised from the body. Instead, they contribute

to the larger identity of a person. She’s negotiated with the irritants, with the identities, forcing them to come out of hiding and putting them on public display. The cysts are embedded in the knees, in the shoulder blades—they protrude and bubble and take their own individual shapes.

Cherry’s show is vulnerable and honest. It’s a self-portrait of bursting emotions and the embarrassment of being human. On display is a body that has kept score and the release that occurs when anxiety and desire are unleashed. —S. NICOLE LANE “I CAN BE A WOMAN FOR YOU” Through 4/21: Sat noon-3 PM and by appointment, info@slow-dance.space, Slow Dance, 319 N. Albany, slow-dance.space/upcoming

RKara Walker turns a new page

“Back of Hand” explores the challenges and enduring aspects of Black womanhood.

Through the glass windows of the Poetry Foundation, viewers are drawn into “Kara Walker: Back of Hand.” The front room opens to a graphite, watercolor, gouache, and sumi-e ink on paper work, where a dark hand extends from the frame, cradling a miniaturized Black woman at its center. This hand gesture echoes throughout the exhibition, resonating in two large-scale works and 11 typewritten pages.

Walker’s large-scale works on paper feature swirling words colliding in transitioning scales. Her typewritten pages, staged in glass boxes in the room adjacent to the main space, are marked with fluid watercolor and ink depictions of Black life, offering stark commentary on the problematized lineage of American monuments and the experiences of Black women in America. The typewritten pages titled 2015 Book, in particular, reflect Walker’s journey as a Black woman navigating the sociopolitical landscape of America. One page shows two Confederate soldiers on horses, fire protruding from the corner, with the words bleeding into one another.

In her large-scale pieces, Walker’s iconic silhouettes are placed amid reflections and questions about America’s recent racial reckoning. Here, with a linguistic maze that points viewers to words like slavery, empire, and stereotypes, she explores her relationship with the broader art world, questioning power dynamics and ownership. While Walker is renowned for her cut-paper silhouettes and installations, this exhibition showcases a transformation in her relationship with paper.

With its sensitivity to fleeting moments and attunement to ephemera, “Kara Walker: Back of Hand” offers a crucial exploration of the challenges and enduring aspects of Black womanhood, inviting viewers into Walker’s esoteric narrative.

—JORDAN BARRANT “KARA WALKER: BACK OF HAND”

Through 5/18: Wed, Fri, Sat 11 AM-5 PM, Thu 11 AM-7 PM, Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior, poetryfoundation. org/exhibitions/161786/karawalker-back-of-hand v

Miranda Forrester, “Interiorities” installation view COURTESY OF MARIANE IBRAHIM

Wine fountain 2 by Megan Capps CODY SHLABAUGH

Spring eater & Arts

A NEW VENUE FOR NEW VOICES

Fresh ground for Chicago theater—thorns and all

Bramble Arts Lo prepares to open in Andersonville.

By EMILY MCCLANATHAN

In Andersonville, the block just south of the Clark and Bryn Mawr intersection is quickly becoming a destination for arts-minded folks. The Understudy, a theater-themed bookstore and co ee shop, opened in March 2023 and has since hosted play readings, chamber music performances, drag shows, and its first fully staged production. This April, the Understudy gains a new neighbor with the opening of the Bramble Arts Loft, a venue that is home to the fledgling Bramble Theatre Company and aims to become a multidisciplinary arts hub. Located on the second floor of the historic Capital Garage building at 5545 N. Clark, the Bramble Arts Loft is a 7,700-square-foot space bathed in natural light from a 40-foot skylight. Most recently, Metropolis Coffee Company used the property for its roastery. Bramble’s renovation, designed by local architect Avram Lothan of Lothan Van Hook DeStefano Architecture, transforms the venue into three distinct performance spaces: the Beatrice, a 101-seat thrust theater; the Berry, a 48-seat modular black box; and the Cabaret Stage, a smaller area next to the lobby bar. Bramble Theatre Company intends to use the space for its own performances and as a versatile, a ordable rental venue for theater companies, artists from other disciplines, and private events. The Bramble Arts Loft is funded in part through a gift from the family of creative producer Matthew Lunt, who cofounded Bramble Theatre Company with artistic director Karissa Murrell Myers. The theater company recently gained 501(c)(3) status, while the Bramble Arts Loft is a for-profit LLC that will help support the nonprofit theater.

we decided to do this crazy thing.”

BRAMBLE ARTS LOFT

5545 N. Clark, second floor, brambletheatre.org

New work is at the heart of Bramble’s artistic vision, and the company’s name evokes the eponymous plant’s capacity both to nourish through its fruit and to challenge through its thorns. According to its mission statement, Bramble “seeks to create powerful new theatre that both nourishes and challenges our community to explore the question of what it is to be Human.”

During their training at Steppenwolf, the ensemble members took a master class with then artistic director Anna Shapiro. They were inspired by her saying that “the role of the artist is to be a thorn in the side of society.”

This young theater’s origin story begins in 2019 at the School at Steppenwolf, a ten-week residency that trains experienced actors in the ethos of the Steppenwolf ensemble. The 24 artists who participated in the program that year bonded so well that they decided to form their own theater company. Bramble o cially launched in February 2021 and has presented public readings and festivals at north-side venues including the Understudy and the Edge, Newport, and Raven theaters.

“The ensemble’s cohesion was something I had never experienced before,” Murrell Myers said of their early days at the School at Steppenwolf. “I just felt like, ‘These are my people. I want to continue making art with them.’ So,

Like many recent theatrical ventures, the pandemic disrupted their initial plans, but ensemble member Sébastien Heins came through with an idea that helped Bramble get o the ground while Chicago’s theaters were still closed for in-person performances. Heins is also a founding member of Outside the March, a Toronto-based immersive theater company, which premiered an interactive, telephonic show called The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries in 2020. Outside the March licensed the show to Bramble, and it became the Chicago company’s inaugural production in 2021.

“It was a beautiful moment in which our friends came out of nowhere and saved all of us,” Lunt said. “That was just so a rming. I’m often reminded of the phrase, ‘If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, bring your friends.’”

In 2022, Bramble presented its first annual Festival of Unfinished Work, featuring scenes from plays in progress by Chicago playwrights. The company also held a fall reading series in 2022 and 2023, with workshops of new plays culminating in public readings.

“It was such a great quote, but it also felt like only one half of that equation,” said Murrell Myers. “I think theater that is only challenging, or only provocative, doesn’t provide hope. So, we were like, ‘How do we kind of combine the duality of those ideas into one thing?’ And that’s a bramble for us.”

“When brambles grow, the branches actually lean on each other for support as they get larger,” Murrell Myers added. “It’s an organism made of many, many parts, which is kind of how our ensemble is.”

Another pillar of Bramble’s mission is to foster “an Artist-first culture that inspires hope and innovation.” Sustainable growth and a commitment to fairly compensating artists are key to this goal and have been built into the business model from the beginning, when 80 percent of the gross revenue from The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries went to the artists. The company also o ers actors a nominal fee for participating in callbacks, a step in the audition process that often influences the creative direction of a production regardless of who is ultimately cast.

“When I first started acting, it was 50 bucks at the end of three months and a box of donuts, and you’re like, ‘Wow, I got paid!’” said Lunt. “And it doesn’t have to be that way. Obviously, we’re in a position of great privilege, but that doesn’t mean that we have to take advantage of folks.”

“We came to the idea that, actually, we can make the most good by growing slowly,” Lunt

Karissa Murrell Myers (le ) and Matthew Lunt, cofounders of Bramble Arts Lo YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

explained. “We only have one full production a year because we want to pay every single artist $1,000 at least, no matter their role, and make sure everyone is paid equitably.”

In 2024, Bramble’s sole full-length production is Evil Perfect, a world premiere written by ensemble member Spencer Hu man. Slated for the fall, with dates to be announced, the play examines how well-intentioned people can become evil.

Before then, there will be plenty of opportunities for the public to visit Bramble’s new home. A ribbon-cutting ceremony and community open house are scheduled for April 6, followed on April 8 by a theater industry open house and a panel discussion with company leadership. On April 18, Hu man gives a Q&A about his upcoming play and his recent experience as a Fulbright Scholar in Budapest.

Rounding out its month of opening events, Bramble presents a staged reading of Beth Hyland’s new comedy, Cancelina, on April 29. (Local audiences may remember that Hyland’s Seagulls , an indie-rock adaptation of the Chekhov classic, played at Oak Park Festival Theatre last fall.) The 3rd Annual Festival of Unfinished Work follows in June.

Bramble is also launching a series of educational programs for artists. To begin, Murrell Myers leads a two-day master class on self-advocacy for theater artists on March 23 and 30. The course covers topics such as branding, networking, marketing, and self-care—themes that Murrell Myers also explores with her students at University of Illinois Chicago, where she teaches a class on the business of theater for graduating seniors.

“[Education] is something that we are very passionate about,” said Murrell

Spring eater & Arts

closed or are struggling financially, Bramble’s leaders are hopeful about the future. Starting a theater company during the pandemic hasn’t been easy, said Murrell Myers, “but I don’t think that starting a theater company in any time frame would necessarily be easy.”

“I think theater that is only challenging, or only provocative, doesn’t provide hope. So, we were like, ‘How do we kind of combine the duality of those ideas into one thing?’”

Myers. “The School at Steppenwolf was so ground-shattering for all of us that we’d like to be able to provide that for other people if they’re interested in coming in and learning with us.”

At a time when many Chicago theaters have

“Most people would agree that we’ve seen a rather large, seismic shift in the collective societal thinking in terms of how we relate to each other, our relationship to our work— whether it’s art or otherwise—and a lot more conversations surrounding mental health and burnout,” she said. “I think that starting a theater company with all those things already in

mind, we’re speaking to where we all are at as a society. We became changed as people, and that bleeds into our art whether we’re conscious of it or not, so it’s really exciting to be a part of this new movement of theater that we can’t name yet, because it’s so new, so fresh.”

The cofounders feel that their solid foundation as an ensemble has set them up for success, and they point to the company’s diversity as one of its strengths. Lunt was born in Belgium and raised on a ranch after his family immigrated to Arizona. Murrell Myers is originally from Boise, Idaho, and her mother immigrated from the Philippines. Other ensemble members hail from Australia, Canada, Fiji, Japan, and across the United States.

“We have people from literally all over and from very, very diverse backgrounds,” said Murrell Myers. “That’s one of the reasons that I felt like we were starting ahead of the game.

I believe theater should be for everyone and that people’s voices should be reflected, so starting out the gate with a very diverse ensemble feels like such a big gift.”

Lunt hopes to give back to the Chicago theater community and dreams big about ways to provide financial agency to artists. “It’s such a privilege to be able to add to [the theater community] and to do right by it too, because it’s been very good to me.”

“My goal is to provide the best facility possible at a subsidized rate and something that doesn’t price out the other things that are going on,” Lunt said. “My dad is a holistic rancher, and he always says, ‘You’re only as strong as your ecosystem.’ So, it’s my hope that we provide the best area to let things fallow and grow and then just see what happens.” v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Lunt and Murrell Myers at Bramble Arts Lo YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Spring eater & Arts

‘ e mis t toys of the mis t toys’

Puppetqueers creates space for all kinds of people and objects.

By MICCO CAPORALE

What constitutes a puppet depends on who you ask. Purists argue for strict definitions that favor objects embodying personas, but as a fringe, interdisciplinary art form, many performers are pushing puppetry’s boundaries to invite new attitudes about the medium. That free-spirited rush towards possibility is at the heart of the Puppetqueers, a fledgling troupe with a rotating cast whose March 28 show at Dorothy sold out in less than 24 hours. It’s only the group’s third show, but its success signals something of the city’s current appetite for puppetry—and the queerness of the medium.

Lindsey Ball, the group’s founder, never expected the momentum to build so fast. When they came to Chicago in 2020, Ball wasn’t even anticipating being a puppeteer. After working for ten years in Houston’s theater community—they did everything from acting to marketing and volunteer coordination for theater companies—they came to grad school at Columbia College Chicago to study what was then called European Devised Performance Practice. (The program has since been renamed Acting and Contemporary Performance Making.) Through a physical theater program that emphasized traditions like clowning, miming, and mask work, they were searching for a secret sauce that reinvigorated their taste for drama. One of their first classes was a puppet workshop taught by Tom Lee, the codirector of the Chicago Puppet Lab (a developmental program run through the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival).

“It was really lovely because it allowed me to pursue this weird form of art in a place where nobody knew me,” Ball explains. “I just felt free to explore—on top of having a new place to explore my queerness. . . . Truthfully, Chicago was the first place that I had ever seen puppetry created with adults in mind. I love that I have created puppet work for children, but there’s something so joyful about being able to create it for adults because you’re getting straight to the child side in all us adults.”

From there, puppetry grew to become a cen-

tral part of their practice. In their second year of grad school, they studied in Berlin, where they developed a puppet-heavy thesis and performed in festivals as well as parks where artists congregated. When they returned to Chicago in September 2022, they knew they wanted to start planting roots in Chicago’s puppet community. That same month, they attended Rough House Theater Co.’s Nasty, Brutish & Short, an adult-oriented puppet cabaret where people perform three to eight minutes of material, slam style. At the end of the show, they begged to get involved, even if it was just sweeping the stage. The next month, they were invited to be the box o ce manager for Rough House’s Halloween puppet show, House of the Exquisite Corpse, and from there, more and more opportunities came, including puppeteering.

By January, Ball was introduced to Whitney LaMora, the creative director of Dorothy. It’s an intimate lesbian bar in Ukrainian Village, but some of its events, like the open-mike night Fruit Salad, have a cultlike following. Ball had only been in Chicago a few months, but they’d been fantasizing about something like Nasty, Brutish & Short aimed at a queer audience. Not only did Ball recognize an abundance of queer puppeteers, but they also saw a desire to expand puppetry’s form.

“I think that puppetry is way more expansive than a lot of the community believes,” Ball says. “I truly and deeply believe that any sort of object moving through space can be puppetry—whether that’s a body, whether that’s a technological intervention, whatever. Some puppeteers reject crankie boxes [a box with an illustrated scroll stretched between two cranks] as puppetry because it’s a storytelling object, not a character . . . but I want to challenge this narrow thinking of puppetry as only being, like, a Muppet.”

In April, LaMora and Ball met to formalize what a show called Puppetqueers might look like, and on August 24, 2023, the project debuted with six puppet sketches appropriate for a late-night crowd. For its first iteration,

Ball invited people known to them through the puppet community—reliable enthusiasts and artisans who they trusted to deliver a fun, varied show. Performances were as unusual as live drawings manipulated and captured by a document camera, and as straightforward as a stand-up set from a three-foot-tall clit.

The talking clit was operated by Madigan Burke, who came to Chicago in 2017 to study comedy at Second City and never left. Since 2022, they’ve been experimenting with pup-

petry because it brings together so many skills they enjoy, like working with their hands, creative problem-solving, comedy, and teaching. Burke makes regular appearances in underground queer variety shows and aboveground puppet slams. They’ve distinguished themselves for using puppets to playfully educate people on everything from abnormal Pap smears to fisting.

“I think incorporating comedy is one of the best ways to learn or teach,” Burke says. “It

Lindsey Ball (puppet by Gabriel Hazuda) YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

makes people more relaxed and open to new ideas. And adding a puppet to the equation means that you’re one step away from the audience. I think that that offers both the performer and the audience a little bit more safety and protection in terms of how they’re interacting with you because the audience is experiencing the piece from the puppet, not necessarily ‘you’ directly. It changes how things can be shared and discussed.

“One time I performed with my clit puppet

in front of an audience that I think was mostly straight, cis people,” they continue. “It was such a stark contrast in terms of what jokes that group got or allowed themselves to laugh at. Like, I think a lot of the people in the room were learning for the first time that a clitoris grows when someone takes testosterone. I was like, ‘Am I bombing?’ But the reality is, there was too much catching up on trans education that needed to happen for those jokes to land. Performing feels so di erent when I’m

Spring eater & Arts

in a room with queer people who already have some of that context and baseline.”

The Puppetqueers’s second show happened on January 13. It was a pop-up to support a puppet exhibition called “Potential Energy” at Co-Prosperity curated by Grace Needlman and Will Bishop. Of the six people on the bill, several were first-time puppeteers who Ball worked closely with from conception to execution. Ball loves turning people from admirers to participants—like a tour guide through the Island of Misfit Toys. Over several months, Ball and their newcomers had phone calls, Zoom meetings, and text exchanges. Some people came in more confident in their abilities as performers while others felt more confident as makers. How could they realize such a disparate bundle of skills and ideas?

“A lot of it comes down to play,” Ball insists. “It’s hard to describe that without sounding a little wacky, but it’s the truth. Just play with the object, play with yourself in relation to the object, and a story will reveal itself. At its core, puppetry is fun. So if we’re not having fun,

how can we make it fun?”

One of those first-time performers was Mak Scheel, who’d come to Chicago in 2017 to study theater at Columbia College only to graduate and largely abandon acting.

“Acting requires a certain neutrality,” they explain, “and for very little money. I couldn’t be, like, super tatted with yellow hair and no eyebrows. There’s something about puppetry. It focuses on the story and these other things outside of myself, so I’m able to bring more of myself to the performance. And the community is so much less serious and competitive than theater—puppet people are much more playful.”

Scheel met Ball through the Puppet Lab. Scheel was volunteering to help someone with a show that Ball was also involved in and expressed interest in maybe doing their own someday. Did Scheel want to try Puppetqueers? Shortly afterward, Scheel was at a Rough House Puppets in Progress workshop where someone mentioned the idea of a magic eightball puppet. Scheel—with little to no

Kevin Michael Wesson (puppet by Grace Needlman) YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Grace Needlman (puppet by Needlman) YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Spring eater & Arts

continued from p. 31

visual art background—said, “Yes, that will be my puppet.” After a lot of feedback, exploring, and old-fashioned trial and error, they created an object eight feet in diameter involving a homemade die, a bedsheet, and lots of pool noodles that answered audiences’ most sapphic dating questions. Their eightball was called the DYKE (Deep Yearning Knowledge Engine).

“It’s so crazy to be very new to something and have someone invite you in and ask if they can help you with your work,” Scheel marvels. “I don’t like asking for help. To be a beginner and have no idea what you’re doing and have an entire community rooting for you—it’s really radical. I’ve never had cheerleaders like that.”

Anastar Alvarez was another first-time puppeteer who performed at the Co-Prosperity show. A stage manager by trade, they’ve worked behind the scenes on numerous puppet shows and appreciate how interdisciplinary puppetry can be—and that it requires acting, but you don’t have to be a great actor to be a great puppeteer. For their piece, a friend wrote a poem about a fox getting older

and exploring the world, and they made a fox puppet to accompany it.

“Puppetry is a way of creating theater that’s a little more, like, fantastic or magical,” Alvarez says. “And I think we need a little more magic.”

Needlman will be making their Puppetqueers debut at the upcoming Dorothy show. As codirector of the Puppet Lab and a company member of Rough House who spent over ten years working at Redmoon, Needlman is an extremely seasoned puppeteer. They feel like it’s a medium that meets people where they are in terms of their skills while inviting a lot of collaboration, and that’s kept them in a love a air with it.

“To me, Puppetqueers is unique in that there’s such an obvious clarity of vision,” Needlman explains. “Conceptually, it’s queering use—like this idea that objects are made for a certain purpose that then get remade or reenvisioned through playing with them to create a piece of puppetry. I think there’s a real alignment of identity and medium.

“Puppeteers are really the misfit toys of the misfit toys. Like the theater or art kids or musicians who always feel a little bit out-

side—those are who come to puppetry. Very few people set out to be puppeteers. It usually happens after a lot of searching,” they say. “You stumble on these weirdos who are really stepping out but no one’s taking themselves too seriously but they have a self-imposed sense of rigor. . . . It gives a real sense of belonging that I think feels very parallel to the search for queer community. Whether you’re queer or not, I think that experience of feeling like an outsider and then finding that space where everybody’s kind of an outsider can be exciting and resonate with people.”

Is Chicago in the midst of a puppet renaissance? Are the inmates running the asylum?

Everyone interviewed for this article expressed noticing a local uptick in puppetry, but no one is sure if their proximity to the community has created a situational bias or whether puppets really are popping o . One thing to note is that the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has gone from biannual to annual, suggesting growing support for and interest in the medium.

Alvarez thinks some of this owes to the pandemic forcing not only a sense of resourcefulness while people were in lockdown but

also a desire for more play, imagination, and community when vaccines were introduced. Needlman believes the growing visibility means there are enough institutional resources and DIY opportunities to garner attention and encourage innovation. Scheel shares Alvarez’s belief that puppetry is magic at a time when it feels more necessary. Ball thinks it’s similar to clowning, in that it requires an energy exchange between the performer and audience as well as a suspension of disbelief. It’s hiding behind something— face paint or an object—to reveal truth, beauty, and laughter.

“As queer people, we know what it is to have to hide behind something and find ways to channel joy indirectly,” Ball says. “There’s such an inherent joy in puppetry, no matter the content, and I think people are drawn to that. In a time where we need so much mutual aid and we’re witnessing genocide, we have to love, celebrate, and support each other as fi ercely as we can. . . . I just feel so honored and humbled to help facilitate more joy in the world.” v m

From le : Summer Slime (puppet by Kevin Michael Wesson); Jacky Kelsey (puppet by Kelsey); Gabriel Chalfi n-Piney and Amira Hegazy (puppets by Chalfi n-Piney) YIJUN PAN FOR CHICAGO READER

“FELDER HAS CHICAGOANS EATING OUT OF HIS HAND”

Chicago Tribune

“THERE IS NO DENYING FELDER’S CONSIDERABLE TALENT.”

“GLORIOUS where classical meets Broadway”

Chicago Sun-Times

“INVITING AND ABSORBING full of vibrant life” The San Diego Union-Tribune

“HERSHEY FELDER DOES CHOPIN THE RIGHT WAY”

San Diego Reader

“FASCINATING from begining to end” BroadwayWorld

847-242-6000

Spring eater & Arts

A Lifeline to great storytelling

The 42-year-old Rogers Park company adapts to the times.

By KERRY REID

Like a lot of Chicago theater companies, Lifeline Theatre’s origin story begins with a group of college friends deciding to form their own ensemble to produce off-Loop shows. In 1982, five recent Northwestern grads—Meryl Friedman, Suzanne Plunkett, Kathee Sills, Sandy Snyder, and Steve Totland—created Lifeline. In 1985, they moved into an old Commonwealth Edison substation in Rogers Park on Glenwood Avenue, where they’ve been ever since.

But, like a lot of Chicago theater companies, Lifeline has faced its share of challenges over the past 42 years. Their current season features fewer productions than in the past—a response to the realities of budget shortfalls after the 2020 pandemic shutdown. Yet they’re still holding fast to the mission that evolved from that first group of artists. (Of the founders, only Snyder and Plunkett—the latter now a veteran theater photographer— remain part of the 35-member ensemble.)

The company started out, as former artistic director Dorothy Milne puts it, “just trying to get the latest hot thing out of New York. And they could never get the rights, of course. But you know, Northwestern has that adaptation thing in their training, in their blood.” (Northwestern’s performance studies program, focused on bringing nontheatrical texts to the stage, and headed by the late Frank Galati for many years, also helped foster acclaimed adapter-director Mary Zimmerman and Lookingglass Theatre.) “And so they started doing that, which gave them the opportunity to do famous titles, and for free.”

Lifeline’s literary adaptations sometimes focused on 19th-century classics, often with an Anglophile bent, such as work by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Wilkie Collins. But they also mixed in more contemporary titles, including a 2007 adaptation of Crossing California by Rogers Park native Adam Langer and— my personal favorite—ensemble member Christopher Hainsworth’s note-perfect 2014 adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous

Regiment. Original musical adaptations were also on the menu—sometimes in the mainstage shows, sometimes as part of Lifeline’s parallel KidSeries season of family-friendly programming.

Pre-pandemic, they were staging three mainstage and three KidSeries shows each season. They also took over producing the popular Fillet of Solo Festival from Live Bait Theater in 2010. Along the way, Lifeline has nabbed dozens of Je Awards (including one for pre-Hollywood Harry J. Lennix for 1988’s Caught in the Act). This season includes two mainstage shows: a revival of ensemble member John Hildreth’s adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle last fall and the upcoming Native Son , adapted from Richard Wright’s novel by former Chicagoan Nambi E. Kelley, which was first produced at Court Theatre in 2014. Currently onstage (through April 7) is the KidSeries production of Skunk and Badger, adapted by Alan Donahue from Amy Timberlake’s book.

Current artistic director ILesa Duncan joined Lifeline in that capacity in January 2019 when Milne, who joined in 1992, stepped down after 19 years on the job. Duncan, who is also the longtime executive and producing director for Pegasus Theatre Chicago, had previously directed Lifeline’s 2018 production of Neverwhere (adapted by company member Robert Kauzlaric from the Neil Gaiman original, and first produced by the company in 2010) and 2010’s The Blue Shadow (adapted from various folktales by Kelley) for the KidSeries.

Duncan’s own adaptation (with David Barr III) of Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage was onstage at Lifeline when the shutdown hit.

“At the time we thought, ‘Oh, we’ll be back in a week. We’ll be back,’” says Duncan. “So we spent a lot of that [shutdown] time trying to figure out how to stay connected to our audience. We did a lot of digital work.” (Lifeline’s digital production of Pride and Prejudice was one of the more successful online shows I saw during the shutdown; they also presented virtual versions of Fillet of Solo for two years.)

She adds, “We spent a lot of time angsting about learning how to do this new thing, and then thought that we would be continuing it. We thought, ‘Oh, we’ll at least continue audio dramas. Or if we can do more virtual production, there’s a way for us to reach lovers of Lifeline and build new audiences globally.’ And we didn’t see that response. People got weary of virtual production pretty quick. I felt like we just spent a lot of time figuring out how to manage the new world that we found ourselves in—and I think we’re still in it.”

But there had been warning signs of choppy waters ahead before COVID-19, says Duncan. “I remember sitting in a meeting with our then managing director, Allison Cain. Roche Schulfer [longtime Goodman Theatre executive director] got up and talked about the fact that doom and gloom was happening [for midsize theaters] and what are we going to do?”

“The pandemic— it was not just the shutdown,” Duncan points out. “It was also We See You, White American Theatre. We had already, when I was brought on, been part of a fiveyear DEI plan to expand the stories we tell to diversify the ensemble. But some of what we’re seeing in companies shrinking and pulling back [on the number of productions] is pay equity. There’s work-life balance. There’s all these other things that mean people want to be taken better care of in a theater. And we were very aware that we were having people basically work for free, for peanuts. And that is not something we ever were happy about, but we just tried to figure out ‘How do we do this in the size space we have with a limited number of seats?’” (Lifeline seats 99 patrons.) The company’s current payroll comprises 72 percent of annual expenses, as compared to 58 percent in the last pre-pandemic season.

“Something that not a lot of people might know about is our in-school residencies that we do in our neighborhood. We have a really robust arts education program. We have many teaching artists that are active in the schools every single day doing residencies at multiple grade levels throughout Rogers Park.”

Lifeline has always fostered writers within the ensemble, but they’re also making moves to develop voices from outside their core group. In July, they’re presenting the third annual Adaptation Workshop and Showcase, featuring BIPOC writers creating original adaptations.

Jay D. Lenn, vice chair of Lifeline’s board, says, “I feel like our long-term audience has shown a lot of enthusiasm for this programming that we’re expanding into. They’re all rah-rah in that direction, but what’s hard for them to understand is, why are we doing fewer

shows? What does that mean? Does it mean you’re going out of business?”

The temporary contraction in the season appears to be a way to bolster a future that includes more long-term diversity and growth. Duncan (whose work with Pegasus includes that company’s long-running Young Playwrights Festival), says, “Before the pandemic, we wanted to expand the stories and expand who’s in the ensemble. We’re always looking for new voices to be involved because when you get to a certain age, then life changes, you know? So you still need an infusion of new voices and new blood in the company.”

In January, Lifeline hired Elizabeth Rupp as managing director. For Rupp, who worked as managing director of Children’s Theatre of Elgin for four years, Lifeline’s connection to the greater Rogers Park community is an important component of their mission.

Lifeline’s leadership is betting that the evergreen hunger for “Big Stories, Up Close,” as their longtime motto puts it, will carry them into the future. v

m kreid@chicagoreader.com

LIFELINE THEATRE

The exterior of Lifeline Theatre’s Rogers Park home COURTESY LIFELINE THEATRE

Spring eater & Arts

Stages in bloom

Our critics offer some of the most promising live performances of the season.

By SALEM COLLO-JULIN, IRENE HSIAO, AND KERRY REID

It feels like we just did the winter performance picks and now it’s spring (even if the weather has been playing all kinds of tricks on us). Along with the da odils and tulips, great performances are popping up all over the place. Here are just a few of the best options for the months ahead.

COMEDY (Salem Collo-Julin)

Bianca Del Rio: Dead Inside

I cannot think of Bianca Del Rio (the longtime drag persona of comedian, actor, and costume designer Roy R. Haylock) without thinking of Haylock’s voice as Bianca emoting, “She’s a man with one eye!” as an aside in the musical theater episode of Bianca’s winning season of RuPaul’s Drag Race ( Shade: The Rusical : season six, episode four). This sort of reaction has got to be both a blessing and a curse for Haylock, who has described Bianca as “Don Rickles in a dress” and “the Joan Rivers of drag.”

I’ve seen Bianca perform in smaller venues (hosting in New Orleans pre-Katrina, doing a guest spot in Chicago at Roscoe’s) where her crowd work really shines, but she’s one of a few drag performers that can command both attention and put a tinge of fear into an audience as big as the capacity at the Chicago Theatre. Truly, making an audience feel like they’re witnessing a hilarious back-alley version of the Dozens is a hard thing to translate to hundreds of people at the same time without leaning on tropes, but Bianca’s ability to turn on a dime, improvise, and find common ground by throwing herself into the jokes is the thread that links her to Rickles, Rivers, and all the great bitchy drag queens (“drag clowns,” as she would say) before her. Fri 3/29, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, msg.com/the-chicago-theatre. $43.50-$53.50, all ages (but adult themes and profanity are to be expected)

DANCE (Irene Hsiao)

Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival

The Dance Center of Columbia College presents the first Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival, fea-

turing works by distinguished Chicago dancemakers Ayako Kato, J’Sun Howard, SJ Swilley, and Erin Kilmurray and Kara Brody in works that expand the footprint of performance beyond the stage. Kato’s ETHOS IV: Degrowth/Cycle/Rebirth, created in collaboration with Indigenous artists Billie Warren and Dave Spencer, dance artists Asimina Chremos, Rosely Conz, and Carl Gruby, and artist-writer-performer Andy Slater, travels through outdoor landscapes and indoor spaces, including the Chicago lakefront.

The second week of the festival, a performance installation by Howard invites the

ourselves. J’Sun, SJ, Erin, and Kara are setting their works within an exploration of the Dance Center itself in collaboration with the remarkable musicians who provide the live accompaniment for the classes here. We’re celebrating our whole name by centering what’s special about dance at Columbia College through the vast imaginations of Chicago artists.” 4/19 6 PM, 4/20 1 PM, 4/26-4/27 7:30 PM; Dance Center Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan, 312-369-8300, dance.colum.edu, free-$30 (Ethos IV is free/by donation, week two performances free to Columbia students, $50 festival two-week pass, $30 single ticket, or choose your own donation amount)

THEATER AND OPERA (Kerry Reid)

La decollazione di San Giovanni Battista Haymarket Opera Company scores a coup with this one-night-only presentation of Maria Margherita Grimani’s 1715 oratorio in its first-known performance since the early 18th century. (Thank god for Women’s History

audience to explore the entire Dance Center building, Kilmurray and Brody explore a ferocious range of power dynamics and movement vocabularies in their work-in-development Knockout , and Swilley offers a premiere. (Howard and Kilmurray are both alumni of the dance program at Columbia.)

“What we’re most looking forward to is how these five Chicago artists are exploring dance environmentally—and freeing dance witnessing from its expected outlines,” say Dance Presenting Series artistic director Meredith Sutton and producing director Roell Schmidt. “With Ayako, we’re taking an embodied journey from the lakefront to the Dance Center reintroducing us to ourselves in nature and asking us to reconnect with nature in

Love Song

Back in 2006, John Kolvenbach’s sweet, quirky romance made its world premiere at Steppenwolf, starring ensemble members Ian Barford and the late Mariann Mayberry. Now Remy Bumppo revives the story of misfit Beane and his sister Joan, a seemingly hard-charging corporate executive, whose lives are both upended by Beane’s romance with carefree Molly. Artistic director Marti Lyons stages this revival just in time for spring fever, with a cast that includes Terry Bell, Sarah Coakley Price, Isa Arciniegas, and Ryan Hallahan. 3/21-4/21: Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, remybumppo.org, $10-$52

The Good

When a solo performer can deliver three words that still ring out in your head decades later, you know you’re in the presence of a genius. That’s the case with Curious Theatre Branch cofounder Jenny Magnus, whose impassioned delivery of the line “Dear Gene Hackman!” in a show back in the early 90s somehow has never left my brain (and who has created too many other pieces for me to remember all of them). Magnus doesn’t perform solo as often these days, which makes this world premiere (directed by Stefan Brün, with Julia Rhoads of Lucky Plush providing movement consultation) all the more notable. In The Good , Magnus loosely riffs o Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations to explore the concepts of being, well, good. 3/29-4/21, Chicago Dramatists, 798 N. Aberdeen, curioustheatrebranch.com, pay what you can ($20 suggested donation)

The Thanksgiving Play

ful tale of Salome and John the Baptist for this “dramatically macabre” work. Only a single manuscript survives, housed at the Austrian National Library in Vienna, from which musicologist Vanessa Tonelli created this new performing edition for Haymarket. Haymarket founder and artistic director Craig Trompeter conducts the chamber ensemble of period instruments, with mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron in the title role and soprano Kristin Knutson Berka as Salome. Fri 3/22 7:30 PM (pre-performance lecture 6:45 PM) Gannon Concert Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center at DePaul University, 2330 N. Halsted, 773-325-5200, haymarketopera.org, $55-$85, $12 students with valid ID

Sure, the title sounds like it should be done in the fall, but Steppenwolf’s production of Larissa FastHorse’s 2015 comedy feels both long overdue for its local premiere and just in time for our ongoing ludicrous debates about “wokeness.” A quartet of well-meaning theater artists try to create an elementary school holiday pageant that won’t o end anyone and that will “lift up” Native Americans—even though Indigenous people aren’t involved in the project. Along the way, FastHorse (a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation) delves into the dirty side of national mythmaking. Jess McLeod directs a cast that includes Steppenwolf co-artistic director Audrey Francis, Tim Hopper, Paloma Nozicka, and Nate Santana. 4/25-6/2: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1646 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $20-$86 v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival at Dance Center Columbia College Chicago WILLIAM FREDERKING

Month, eh?) Grimani chose the bloody, venge-

Spring eater & Arts

PREVIEWS

A spring full of lm in Chicago

From Palestinian stories to climate justice, from experimental to silent film, explore the city’s upcoming series and festival offerings.

By READER CONTRIBUTORS

Asian Pop-Up Cinema

Asian Pop-Up Cinema is returning for its 18th edition through April 21. The festival focuses on a different region each week, with this year’s edition featuring an inaugural partnership with Northwestern University, with special screenings and guest lectures.

Highlights include the opening night film Ru , which follows a young Vietnamese girl and her family as they struggle to adapt after fleeing Saigon for Quebec in 1975, and closing night film We Are Family, a comedy about the (mis)adventures of a rent-a-family troupe.

“Continuing with the spirit of o ering our audiences a diverse selection of films, this year’s 18th edition of Asian Pop-Up Cinema presents four international premieres and nine North American premieres of films in multiple genres,” said Sophia Wong Boccio (王曉菲), founder and executive director. “We proudly continue to bring new perspectives and new artists to Chicago audiences.”

Many of the films will also have appearances from the cast and crew, with new films available via streaming each week.

—ANDREA THOMPSON 3/20–4/21, locations vary, virtual screenings available, asianpopup cinema.org

Film Girl Film Festival

End Women’s History Month with a celebration of women in film at the Film Girl Film Festival, taking place from March 23–31. Founded by Reader contributor and film critic Andrea Thompson as the Milwaukee Women’s Film Festival in 2016, the festival continues its tradition of showcasing the talents of women in the film industry.

The exclusive opening night will feature Asmae El Moudir’s documentary The Mother of All Lies, winner of the Best Director prize in Cannes’s Un Certain Regard. This documentary intimately unfolds personal and national history. Following The Mother of All Lies is

another poignant film by El Moudir, Mångata, which follows a child named Ayla and her father as they cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa to Europe. The Film Girl Film Festival wouldn’t be complete without an opening day after-party, so be sure to join in at the Music Box Lounge after the screenings.

The second day of the festival showcases the Chicago Shorts Block, spotlighting the creative prowess of local filmmakers. From awkward coming-of-age tales to stories of estranged husbands and more, these shorts o er a diverse range of narratives. Attendees can enjoy these shorts in person on March 24 and online from March 29–31, celebrating the talent of women filmmakers within the community.

On the 31st, audiences can anticipate the screening of Egghead & Twinkie , touted as the first feature film crowdsourced on TikTok. Additionally, the fest will showcase SRY, LOL, a comedy depicting the journey of two best friends embarking on a cross-country adventure to meet a love interest from the Internet.

—ARIEON WHITTSEY 3/23–3/31, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, virtual screenings available, filmgirlfilm.com

The Sound of Silent Film Festival

In the Sound of Silent Film Festival, silent film is something of a misnomer. The 11 films being screened on April 4 at 7:30 PM at the Music Box Theatre do not have dialogue nor sound e ects, but each short film is set to an original score commissioned for each film, performed in real time by a live orchestra.

“This is not normal film scoring where the composer is subservient to the director,” notes Seth Boustead, founder of Access Contemporary Music, which produces the festival. “This is the only film festival I know of where the composer and director are equal partners.”

The Sound of Silent Film Festival is in its 19th year. This year’s lineup includes Land-

mine of Mine by Kevin Landry with music by Lynn Bechtold; Marie. Eduardo. Sophie by Thomas Corriveau with music by Adam Cole; Detektive Thumb and the Infinity House by Preston King with music by Gene Pritsker; Coloring by Francisco Javier Landin Jr. with music by Milica Paranosic; Heirloom by Marilynne Lamontagne with music by David Saperstein; #MESSYKIDNAPPING by Greg Emetaz with music by Victoria Malawey; Reciprocity Failure by Ben Westlake with music by Boustead; Rock Pools by Bianca Caniglia with music by Charles Coleman; Demi-Goddesses by Martin Gerigk with music by Adam Reifsteck; Inside Looking Out by Cooper Hardin with music by Nailah Nombeko; and Falling for Greta by Gustavo Arteaga with music by Ledah Finck. Past festivals have featured films that were Academy Award contenders, including Michaël Dudok de Wit’s winning Father and Daughter (2001) and others that loomed large

on the film festival circuit.

“The directors are getting younger,” Boustead observed, “so we are seeing expressions about things young people are concerned with, such as gender expression. There is a lot of creativity.” —DONALD LIEBENSON 4/4, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, acmusic.org/ events/sound-of-silent-film-festival-2024

Onion City Experimental Film Festival

The Onion City Experimental Film Festival returns with in-person screenings from April 4–7, with the films available virtually from April 8–14. This year’s festival includes four special events, beginning with an opening night screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center of Chantal Akerman’s Toute une nuit which captures people looking for love over the course of a night in Brussels. The following nights o er a live performance at Public Works

Top: Good Autumn, Mommy, part of the Asian Pop-Up Cinema festival ASIAN POP-UP CINEMA

Bottom: Egghead & Twinkie, showing March 31 at the Film Girl Film Festival FILM GIRL FILM FESTIVAL

exploring “expanded cinema,” and showcases of the work of filmmakers Shellie Fleming and Tom Rubnitz at the Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema.

According to festival programmer Nicky Ni, the program is full of “filmmakers’ keen responses to current affairs, navigating the post– Roe v. Wade era, vocalizing collective memories of a community, or addressing one’s rights and experiences in a climate not very kind to them,” and films from “exemplary filmmakers from or making works about Chicago.” Among the films responding to the reversal of Roe is Lynne A. Sachs’s Contractions , a powerful impressionistic portrait of a clinic in Memphis, Tennessee, that can no longer perform abortions.

The films by Chicagoans vary significantly. This Train Is Invisible Until It Crashes , made up entirely of drawings creator Oona Taper did while on the CTA, is alternately cute, funny, and disconcerting. The experimental documentary in the interval by Northwestern PhD candidate æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil combines home video, social media posts, and more to create a film that’s equal parts personal poem and broad indictment of the treatment of Black trans femmes.

Of course, the experimental film festival also has films for those interested in the purely abstract, including cameraless experiments and films that require photosensitivity warnings. “Experimental” remains a large tent, and Onion City welcomes all. —KYLE LOGAN 4/4–4/14, locations vary, onioncityfilmfest.org

Chicago Latino Film Festival

The Chicago Latino Film Festival (CLFF) celebrates 40 years with a program of nearly 100 short and feature-length films from Mexico, Central and South America, Spain, Portugal, and the United States. Half of the 50 features programmed are debuts, “a testament to the vitality and vibrancy of 21st-century Iberoamerican cinema,” says Pepe Vargas, executive director and founder of CLFF’s organizer, the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago.

The festival opens on April 11 with The Wingwalker , the feature-length debut from Mexican filmmaker Alonso Álvarez-Barreda. The Wingwalker follows Julian, a man whose misdemeanor and subsequent deportation to Mexico separates him from his ailing daughter. Chicago actor and Teatro Vista ensemble member Max Arciniega cowrote, co-executive produced, and acts in the film, and will appear alongside Álvarez-Barreda and lead actor Omar Chaparro at the opening night gala.

Milonga , the first feature from filmmaker and founder of La Uruguaya Films Laura González, will close the festival on April 22. Chilean actress Paulina García stars as Rosa, a woman grappling with the fallout of an abusive relationship.

“It felt right to open and close our anniversary celebration with two films that not only speak to the times that we live in but which call attention to and celebrate a new generation of filmmakers,” says Vargas. Both presentations begin at 6:15 PM at the Davis Theater,

Spring eater & Arts

with post-screening receptions at Dank Haus German American Cultural Center.

Regular screenings at the Landmark Century Cinema include eight world premieres, nine North American premieres, and one U.S. premiere representing 12 countries. Additionally, a special screening of Violeta Salama’s Alegría starring Cecilia Suárez—a veteran of Chicago’s theater scene—will take place at Instituto Cervantes on April 17. —DANIELLA MAZZIO

4/11–4/22, locations vary, virtual screenings available, chicagolatinofilmfestival.org

One Earth Film Festival

One Earth Film Festival is returning for its 13th year as the midwest’s premier environmental film festival showcasing films based on sustainability and climate change.

The festival is put on by One Earth Collec-

A screening of The Falconer at the 2023 One Earth Film Festival ONE EARTH FILM FESTIVAL

Spring eater & Arts

continued from p. 37

tive, a community that started in 2010 in Oak Park. The goal of the festival and the collective is to energize the public through education, conversation, and activism.

By hosting post-film discussions, having a young filmmakers contest with up to $1,000 in scholarships, and featuring award-winning films, One Earth brings issues from around the world to the big screen. In 2023, the film festival brought in 4,500 viewers, both virtually and in person, and this year it’s sure to do the same, if not more.

With this year hailing as one of the warmest winters the midwest has seen, with temperatures reaching highs in the mid-70s in late February, the festival puts the spotlight on a very present warming world.

One Earth director Ana Garcia Doyle notes, “This season, we have five days of in-person screenings that will activate community audiences, followed by two nights of virtual screenings that folks can engage in from home and connect with people from all over.”

The opening launch party on April 17 kicks off at 6 PM with a screening of the Emmy Award–winning short film Taking Flight , a behind-the-scenes look at the lineup, a short program, plus ra es and prizes.

For the following five days, One Earth will screen films ranging from Upstream, Downriver , which explores the battle to reduce water pollution, to Patrol, which follows the illegal cattle ranchers and miners who are ruining the Indio-Maiz Biological Reserve in Nicaragua. —S. NICOLE LANE 4/17–4/23, locations TBA, virtual screenings available, oneearthfilmfest.org

CineYouth

CineYouth kicked off its inaugural programming nearly 20 years ago in 2005, quickly establishing itself as a powerhouse for young filmmakers in Chicago. This year, Cinema/Chicago will host the 19th edition of the festival, debuting yet another impressive catalog of short films from creators aged 22 and younger sourced from around the globe. The event will take place in person at Facets from April 19–21, followed by an online extension from April 22–28.

Since its inception, CineYouth has been a nurturing ground for young talent, encouraging creative expression and o ering platforms for their work to be seen and celebrated. Alongside the screenings, the festival enriches the filmmaking community with workshops,

live Q&As, and more. Highlighting its significance, select award-winning films from CineYouth are featured at the Chicago International Film Festival’s Best of the Fest screening. Free and open to the public, CineYouth stands as a testament to the vibrant potential of young filmmakers and the ongoing support of Cinema/Chicago for their artistic journeys.

Each screening is free with advance sign-up, starting April 2, inviting attendees to explore a rich selection of genres, including drama, comedy, animation, horror, thriller, music video, and experimental. Above all, the festival champions the voices of the next generation of filmmakers. —MAXWELL RABB 4/19–4/21, Facets, 1517 W. Fullerton, virtual screenings available, chicagofilmfestival.com/cineyouth

Juggernaut Film Festival

The Otherworld Theatre Company’s Juggernaut Film Festival has been a home to independent animation, fan films, and genre shorts and features for over a decade. That momentum continues in the festival’s 12th year, which is shaping up to be a weekend of back-to-back indie film goodness with a few special o erings.

“Juggernaut is very much tied to the theater—we produce science fiction and fantasy performances,” says Otherworld Theatre Company artistic director Ti any Keane Schaefer. “I fell in love with all of these short films that I was seeing online. I was sad that there was no place to view these with my friends.”

Schaefer adds, “Juggernaut is older than the theater company itself. It was one of our very first fundraisers.”

Schaefer’s idea has since germinated into a globally recognized genre film festival, with this year’s slate featuring more than 50 films from over 18 countries.

“Filmmakers from all over the world come together to celebrate genre, science fiction, and fantasy filmmaking,” Schaefer says. “One of our big features that I’m excited about . . . kind of hits all of our boxes—it’s called The Fate of Cysalion . It’s a fantasy musical from Germany, and it’s three hours long.”

Anyone not immediately hooked by a threehour German fantasy rock opera can enjoy a lonely weekend of saltine crackers and reruns of The Mentalist. For all the fun people, tickets to the Juggernaut Film Festival are on sale now, with all proceeds going to support the Otherworld Theatre Company. —JONAH NINK 4/19–4/21, Otherworld Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, juggernautfilmfestival.com

Chicago Palestine Film Festival

More than 20 feature-length and short films present a diverse and cultivated platform of Palestinian cinema at the Gene Siskel Film Center next month. As the longest-standing film festival of its kind in the U.S., the Chicago Palestine Film Festival (CPFF) renders programming with an extensive scope.

The festival lineup includes films by Palestinian directors, as well as films portraying Palestine and Palestinians for international audiences. The opening film, Bye Bye Tiberias, is a coproduction between Palestine, Belgium, France, and Qatar. The director, Lina Soualem, recalls the story of her mother, the Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, who leaves her home in Haifa to pursue an acting career in France. The film was nominated for Best Documentary Film at the 2023 Chicago International Film Festival and received the Grierson Award for Best Documentary at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival. An opening reception at 6 PM will precede the film.

Most of the films were completed within the last few years. Many, including most of the shorter films, were completed in 2023. In them, the camera often assumes agency, almost becoming a character. Mar Mama and The Reality That Surpasses Me take a meta approach wherein the films surround the creation of a film. Three Promises is composed of home video recordings by the mother of director Yousef Srouji.

The featured films attest to perspective, historical memory, and the practice of witnessing. They prompt a self-consciousness inherent in the film medium’s a ectivity. All

is within view: individual lives and the events that shape them, the insides of homes, and the camera itself.

The CPFF will run from April 20 through May 4, with virtual screenings taking place in the weeks leading up to the showing as a part of Falasteen Film Fridays. Included in the programming is a Q&A session with the director of one of the films, TBA. —NORA PAUL 4/20–5/4, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, virtual screenings available beforehand, palestinefilmfest.com

Chicago Critics Film Festival

Diving into its 11th year, the Chicago Critics Film Festival stands ready to enchant Chicago with a lineup of films plucked from the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Each year, the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) handpicks the high-profile programming, making the annual event the only critic-run festival. Taking place at the Music Box Theatre from May 3–9, the festival has a storied history of bringing groundbreaking cinema from festivals like Sundance, the Toronto International Film Festival, and South by Southwest directly to Chicago’s doorsteps. In 2023, the festival premiered several of the year’s cinematic hits, including Past Lives, Theater Camp, and Master Gardener.

At the heart of the festival is a mission to bridge a connection between Chicago’s film scene and the global festival circuit. Brian Tallerico, president of the CFCA, told the Reader in an interview last year, “We want Chicagoans to be proud of our film scene and be a part of the conversation on these movies from the

A still from Bye Bye Tiberias , the opening fi lm at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival FRIDA MARZOUK/CPFF

Spring eater & Arts

start.” Passes offer unlimited access to this curated lineup, with tickets available for individual films throughout the weeklong festival. A special presentation of Ghostlight—a film about a construction worker joining a production of Romeo and Juliet—directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, is also planned. —MAXWELL RABB 5/3–5/9, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, chicagocritics filmfestival.com

Chicago Horror Film Festival

Trailing blood and guts and more or less delighted shrieks, the Chicago Horror Film Festival (CHFF) is staggering boldly into its 25th year of full-grown monstrosity. Festival director CJ Vecchio takes the helm again for his second year, after increasing ticket sales by 300 percent in 2023, so the corpse, far from looking desiccated, is more unsettlingly lively than ever.

Exploitation horror twists its head all the way around to look back at an earlier period of cinema, when you drew people into the theater with transparent shock headline gimmicks rather than relying on franchise nostalgia. To scroll through the trailers on display is to encounter a cornucopia of cheerfully transparent trash, from vampires to evil mommies to bad children and worse bosses. For the dedicated goremonger and the casual horror fan alike, it’s a lovely, terrible lineup at which to cheer, hoot, and, of course, scream. —NOAH BERLATSKY 5/4–5/5, Facets, 1517 W. Fullerton, chicagohorrorfilmfest.com

HUMP! Film Festival

For 19 years, fans around the world have come together to celebrate where kinky meets creativity at the amateur erotica film festival HUMP!

The festival will return to Chicago on May 10 at Music Box Theatre, which has hosted the two-day event since 2014. HUMP! is a bold celebration of sexuality that aims to challenge and destigmatize the way people create and consume pornography. Ideally, this would make sex work a safer, more regulated industry.

Starting as an experiment in 2005, sex advice columnist-podcaster Dan Savage invited readers of Seattle’s The Stranger to submit homemade sex tapes anonymously. Since then, HUMP! has been dedicated to an open-minded approach and diversity from both performers and content. “There’s an anticipation in the audience because this is such a unique program—you don’t know what you’re going to see until it’s up onscreen,” said the Music Box’s marketing manager Buck LePard. “Seeing this program in person, in a packed theater, with an enthusiastic audience is the best way to experience these films.”

For 2024, more than 500 films have been submitted from around the world. Those selected to screen at CHFF include Sean Haitz’s Cannibal Comedian , about a serial killer turned dad-joke-poisoned stand-up comic (“of corpse you like that one”); Jessey James Nelson and Dani Barker’s short film, AI Artist, about a failed incel creative who takes revenge by embracing AI and by (inevitably) murdering people; and Scout Pertofsky’s short, Overtime, in which an o ce worker has to stay late . . . and then maybe has to stay forever.

This year has two distinctive lineups months apart, both approximately 90 minutes. Volume one will be exclusively in theaters from February until May; volume two will show from September through November. Streaming information will be announced at the end of those respective dates. Viewers must be 18 years or older to attend, and captioned screenings are also available.

Come one, cum all, and enjoy all that the HUMP! Film Festival has to o er this spring.

—KYLIE BOLTER 5/10–5/11, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, humpfilmfest.com v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Catch Kombucha! at the Chicago Horror Film Festival. CHICAGO HORROR FILM FESTIVAL

Spring eater & Arts

Just a woman at Doc Films

A retrospective of Japanese actor and filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka screens this spring.

By KAT SACHS

“Ithought better of you,” says Reikichi (Masayuki Mori) to Michiko (Yoshiko Kuga). [Note: all Japanese names in this piece will adhere to Western naming conventions, with the given name first and surname second.] Reikichi has pined for Michiko since before the war, but she has been revealed to have had a child by an American soldier, something not uncommon during the post–World War II occupation of Japan but taboo nevertheless. “You were proud,” he says. “I respected you. But I was wrong. You’re just a woman.”

The aforementioned scene from Love Letter (1953), the directorial debut of Kinuyo Tanaka, encapsulates the tension between the traditional values imposed upon women in Japan and the often paradoxical realities they faced, a theme that permeates Tanaka’s body of work and was experienced by Tanaka herself as she sought her place in the director’s chair. She was also one of Japan’s most well-respected actresses both domestically and abroad, owing largely to the postwar films she made with Kenji Mizoguchi. She’s sometimes referred to as the country’s first woman film star, esteemed for her roles as either the demure naif or the long-su ering epitome of traditional Japanese womanhood. Her career ultimately spanned half a century, with more than 250 film and television credits to her name. She became the second Japanese woman to direct a film with Love Letter, following another Mizoguchi collaborator, Tazuko Sakane, and her

now lost film New Clothing (1936). Tanaka was the only woman filmmaker active in the postwar Golden Age of Japanese cinema and was particularly distinguished for working within the commercial studio system, something very few women filmmakers in the world were doing at the time. (An analog might be someone like Ida Lupino from the United States.)

The scrutiny directed at Michiko mirrors the conflicting and hypocritical responses that Tanaka and her films generated, especially in the beginning of her directorial career. As scholars Irene González-López and Michael Smith write in the introduction to the book Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity , “In line with the reinvigorated attention paid to women in the public sphere, [her first two] films were heavily promoted as the work of a ‘woman director’ and as such were expected to be di erent. Simultaneously, Tanaka’s authorship was called into question by the contribution and support of male directors,” referring to Japanese filmmakers Mikio Naruse and Yasujirō Ozu, in some of whose films Tanaka had starred. (Ozu would also provide Tanaka with the script for her second film as director, The Moon Has Risen [1955].) Ironically, when she applied to the Directors Guild of Japan to direct a film, Mizoguchi—who had gained renown for his socially conscious films depicting the adversities faced by Japanese women in a historically patriarchal society— actively campaigned against her, believing that women had no place in the director’s chair.

The six films Tanaka directed between

1953 and 1962 comprise the majority of the series Kinuyo Tanaka, Actress and Auteur. Programmed by Kathleen Geier, this series will be screened in new 4K DCP restorations at the University of Chicago’s Doc Films over the next nine Thursdays at 7 PM, starting on March 21. Often labeled as melodramas (a common categorization for films focused on women and their emotions), these films form a powerful sextet depicting strong women defying expectations and striving to overcome misconceptions about their various struggles. They will be accompanied by three other titles in which she starred: Ozu’s Dragnet Girl (1933), and Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Baili (1954).

While she was not expressly a feminist, there’s no denying that her compelling star power, groundbreaking directorial work, and status within a male-dominated industry were trailblazing examples of women’s empowerment. The theatrical exhibition of these films, once exceedingly di cult for the average person to see, especially on a big screen, will be quite a treat.

Love Letter centers on Reikichi, who eagerly looks for his long-lost love Michiko after his repatriation following the end of World War II. In the meantime, he takes a job transcribing the love letters of yopan, Japanese sex workers who serviced Allied troops during the occupation and now write to their former paramours in hopes of receiving money. Reikichi exhibits marked sensitivity toward the women, forming tentative friendships with his

clients. However, when he crosses paths with Michiko and discovers her lamentable fate, he reduces her from an ideal to a standard, minimizing her to that lowest of the low, “just a woman.”

Tanaka’s direction is remarkably assured. The script was adapted by filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita from a novel by Fumio Niwa; working with fellow director Naruse (several of whose films Tanaka also appeared in and who took her under his wing as an aspiring director), he and Kinoshita selected the film’s crew on Tanaka’s behalf, which led some to be skeptical of her role as director. Yet in the aforementioned book on Tanaka, GonzálezLópez and scholar Ashida Mayu note that the studio emphasized her gender, referring to promotional materials for the film showing Tanaka folding laundry and hugging a child in addition to directing. “What the composition of this photo spread conveys . . . is not a rejection of hegemonic gender roles, but rather the expectations laid on Tanaka to perform what was considered man’s work while permeating it with feminine sensibility; and at the same time it effectively suggests the seeming impossibility of uniting both in one image.”

Ozu’s influence on Tanaka’s second film, The Moon Has Risen , is undeniable, yet it transcends mere imitation. It revolves around a father (played by frequent Ozu collaborator Chishū Ryū) and his three daughters as they navigate significant life changes symbolizing Japan’s modernization and transition from rural to urban sensibilities. The film initially focuses on the middle daughter, whom the youngest daughter and a family friend attempt to match with a mutual acquaintance, but then it presents a slight bait and switch as the apex of the film’s drama shifts to the youngest daughter, who soon thereafter experiences a potentially liberating romance of her own.

The Moon Has Risen departs from Ozu’s filmmaking style most distinctly in the overt humor with which Tanaka characterizes the youngest daughter, Setsuko. (She’s played by Mie Kitahara, then an up-and-coming “it girl” at Nikkatsu, the studio for which Tanaka made the film.) In contrast to the existential complacency often found in Ozu’s films, the humor here aligns more with that of a romantic comedy. Kitahara’s performance is delightful, exhibiting a spunky and energetic presence that aptly represents the trend toward modernity not just in Japan at large but specifically among young Japanese women. Tanaka herself appears in the film as a servant

Love Letter (1953) DOC FILMS

KINUYO TANAKA, ACTRESS AND AUTEUR

3/21 –5/ 16, Thursdays at 7 PM

Doc Films, 1212 E. 59 th, Ida Noyes Hall, University of Chicago $7 general admission, $ 40 quarter pass docfilms.org/calendar/Spring_ 2024/thursday-1

whom Setsuko convinces to impersonate her sister on the phone to arrange a meeting with her crush.

Described as being “Tanaka’s first personal film,” Forever a Woman (1955) indeed stands out as the first of her directorial e orts that may be considered a masterpiece. A Japanese newspaper reported at the time that “unlike her previous two films which received a great deal of support from those around her, [this] was a self-motivated project that happened because ever since she read the book [on which it was based, Akira Wakatsuki’s The Eternal Breasts , which is an alternate name for the film], she has felt deeply sympathetic towards the poet, and long wanted to make it into a film.” The poet in question is Fumiko Nakajō, whose first collection, Losing My Breasts, was published just a month before her death from breast cancer. Tanaka enlisted feminist screenwriter and playwright Sumie Tanaka to adapt the script, certifying it even more as a veritable “woman’s film,” made by women, for women.

The film opens with Fumiko (Yumeji Tsukioka), a mother of two, grappling with challenges within her marriage. Her husband is having an a air and eventually leaves her for his mistress. A hobbyist poet, Fumiko also maintains a close social circle, including her mother and a couple who are her closest friends from school. Soon, Fumiko receives a devastating diagnosis of breast cancer, which metastasizes to her lungs, rendering her condition terminal. Concurrently, her tanka poetry begins to garner recognition, attracting the attention of a Tokyo journalist (based on Wakatsuki) who comes to interview her in the hospital. A tentative romance develops between the two, leading to the fulfillment of sexual desire that Fumiko had long suppressed.

Visually, Forever a Woman demonstrates significant growth from Tanaka’s previous efforts. The establishing shots of nature are hauntingly beautiful when juxtaposed with the increasingly modernized world inhabited by the characters; they serve as a constant against which progress unfolds. The sensuality later depicted in the imagery mirrors Fumiko’s own journey toward embracing her desires. Especially potent is a scene in which Fumiko is bathing and her friend accidentally catches a glimpse of her nude body, the shock of seeing her mastectomy scars evident (though the scars are not made visible to the viewers). Gripping the edge of the wooden bathtub, Fumiko appears to speak directly

to the camera, imploring her friend to acknowledge the wounds, a bold recognition of her corporeal being. In another scene, she wantonly implores the journalist to make love to her. This moment is framed as if viewed from beneath a glass table, with the back of his head visible while Fumiko lies on top of him. In framing it this way, Tanaka centers Fumiko and her agency, highlighting both her strength and vulnerability in this moment of awakening.

Another “definitive woman’s film made by all women,” The Wandering Princess (1960) was adapted from Hiro Saga’s 1959 memoir Vicissitudes of a Princess by female screenwriter Natto Wada. Saga, on whose life the film is based, is a fascinating historical figure: she

Spring eater & Arts

All of this is depicted in Tanaka’s sweeping historical epic.

was a Japanese noblewoman who married the younger brother of the ruler of Manchukuo (a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in northeast China, otherwise known as Manchuria, formed during the Second Sino-Japanese War). Their union, seemingly resulting in a happy marriage and two children (though in the film, only one daughter is depicted), was also intended to strengthen relations between their respective countries. However, when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria, Saga and her husband were forcibly separated. Her journey involved traversing great distances amidst the chaos of Chinese communist forces, who captured her and her companions. Eventually, they were repatriated back to Japan.

Tanaka took a break from directing to continue her acting career between Forever a Woman and The Wandering Princess , the latter being her first film in color and widescreen. Machiko Kyō, known for her vampish sex symbol persona, portrays the character based on Saga, named Ryuko here. The collaborative e orts of the director, writer, and star invigorate the narrative of a single woman navigating the tumultuous currents of fate. The mise-en-scène is sumptuous, with rich colors and intricate production and costume design filling the widescreen frames with visual splendor. This historical saga is just as potent—arguably, it may actually be more so—because it’s also about a woman, by women, and for women.

that is unwelcoming to women like her, leading to reactions ranging from suspicion to outright assault. As it examines society’s punitive attitude, the film also highlights positive aspects, such as the sense of community formed by the workers and Kuniko’s condemnation of society—not sex workers themselves—as the root of her problems. There is a notable symmetry with Tanaka’s first film in how it exposes this hypocrisy between society’s attitudes toward women and the circumstances that put them there in the first place. Additionally, the correctional home features a portrayal of a woman expressing desire for another internee, which is considered one of the earliest queer roles in Japanese cinema.

Her next film, Girls of the Night (1961), written by Sumie Tanaka, once again centers on a single woman as a means of commenting on a larger societal trend. While their first collaboration, Forever a Woman, focused on a woman embracing her sexual desires, this one delves into the attempted rehabilitation of sex workers through the Prostitution Prevention Law, enacted in 1956 and aimed at mitigating prostitution through reformation rather than punishment. The story revolves around Kuniko (Chisako Hara), who is soon to graduate from a group home for former sex workers. Throughout the film, she encounters a society

Love Under the Crucifix (1962) marked Tanaka’s final film as director. Set in late 16th-century Japan, it depicts the forbidden love between the daughter of an esteemed tea ceremony master and a married Christian daimyo (feudal lord). Their relationship is complicated by various factors, including her marriage to another man, a powerful daimyo’s demand that she become his mistress, and her love’s forthcoming exile after the government adopts an increasingly anti-Catholic stance. Tanaka’s second color film, its aesthetic is more subdued than that of The Wandering Princess , conveying a sense of inevitability rather than hope. At one point it shows a young woman being taken to be executed for refusing to enter into an affair with a lord; though certain death awaits her, she appears happy and fulfilled with her decision. In Tanaka’s other films, perseverance often leads to a sense of fulfillment. Here, however, such fortitude ultimately leads to the heroine’s demise—a proud but somewhat somber perspective on the consequences of resisting societal expectations.

Not for nothing was Tanaka described as being “the very personification of grim determination” in her most renowned film roles, in which she frequently portrayed women being undermined and overburdened by society. Though not necessarily grim, this determination also shines through in her directorial endeavors. In her films, the protagonists often transcend archetypes to embody complex individuals torn between a conservative, time-honored past and a rapidly modernizing present and future. With this perspective, the designation of “just a woman” might just appear to be extraordinary. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

The Wandering Princess (1960) DOC FILMS

FILM

NOW PLAYING

RArthur the King

Simon Cellan Jones’s Arthur the King (based on a nonfiction book by Mikael Lindnord) is a standard Hollywood sports drama, with one exception. Halfway through, we learn that the main character is a dog.

The challenge/competition in this iteration of the familiar story is an extreme sports Iron Man race over 400 miles through the (breathtakingly filmed) jungle of the Dominican Republic. Michael (Mark Wahlberg) is a washed-up athlete bringing a ragtag bunch of etc., etc., back for one more time, etc., etc. Loving wife at home, interpersonal tensions, a relative’s dying wish—you know the drill.

And then there’s the dog. In the middle of the grueling competition, a scraggly, abused mutt pops out of the jungle and into the hearts of our equally scraggly competitors. They name him Arthur and give him meatballs, and then (as dogs will) he follows them literally everywhere, becoming their secret weapon, their moral center, and also their not-so-secret weakness.

I wouldn’t say that anything that happens a er Arthur rears his furry muzzle is exactly unexpected. But there are lots of cute dog reaction shots, and unlike many of the film’s peers (like, say, The Boys in the Boat), Arthur the King really does seem to believe its own hype when it insists that winning is less important than caring about, and for, your family, found and otherwise. If you think pets are irritating, or if you can’t stand watching animals in danger, you should probably skip this. But if, like me, you have a so spot for dogs, watching Arthur the King grab this meatball of a film in his jaws and scurry off with it is a surprisingly pleasing way to spend an hour and a half.

—NOAH BERLATSKY

PG-13, 90 min. Wide release in theaters

Imaginary

A brief list of scary phrases written on the walls in crayon throughout Imaginary, PG-13 horror auteur Jeff Wadlow’s newest Blumhouse movie: “We love 2 play”; “a peez ov you”; “Chauncey’s super fun!” The Chauncey in question is technically a teddy bear, in the same sense that Imaginary is technically a movie, but more accurately he’s an imaginary friend, or maybe a creativity-eating entity who lives in a realm (Chauncey’s word, not mine)

called the Never Ever. Things get a little fuzzy when we get into logistics or detailed explanations, which is what constitutes most of the film, but what Imaginary makes crystal clear is that childhood trauma can be pretty darn tough, and mental illness is no joke!

Nobody understands this better than Jessica, a thirtysomething children’s book author who moves back into her childhood home, unaware that her repressed memories are about to manifest themselves all over again in the form of her stepdaughter Alice’s imaginary friend. Chauncey’s behavior rapidly goes from odd (hiding under Jessica’s bed) to disturbing (convincing Alice to puncture her hand on a nail) to grumpy (speaking through Alice like a ventriloquist: “Big Mommy always leave. Big Mommy bad. Big Mommy mean!”).

Of course, as is essential to any self-respecting Poltergeist/Insidious/The Conjuring clone, it all builds to a face-off. In this case, it’s in the aforementioned Never Ever, which one character enthusiastically describes as “a kingdom of our imagination,” but which I would personally describe as a bad Escher painting covered in tacky checkerboard tiling (the scariest kind of flooring). Is any of this redeemable? Why did an eight-year-old girl give her imaginary friend a name fit for a 19th-century coal baron? Will I ever get these 104 minutes back? Use your imagination. —JOEY SHAPIRO PG-13, 104 min. Wide release in theaters

RKung Fu Panda 4

Naturally, skepticism creeps in by the fourth installment of any saga. It’s a feat that even the most beloved franchise struggles to overcome. Still, DreamWorks never fails to overstuff their audiences—Shrek Forever A er and Penguins of Madagascar both come to mind. Kung Fu Panda 4 is no exception, and it’s likely to be one bite too much for most audiences.

That said, a er letting loose a little, Kung Fu Panda 4 is a fun trip down memory lane, hearkening back on the glory that propelled the treasured panda Po, voiced charmingly as ever by Jack Black, into our hearts. Even as our hungry hero has gotten comfortable as the Dragon Warrior—fighting off a devious, pig-eating stingray in the first sequence—he retains his playful side. And his obsession with dumplings. This time, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) tasks Po with his most daunting challenge: selecting a successor so that he can ascend to a spiritual leader in place of Grand Master Oogway.

Po refuses, or at least protests this task, claiming he isn’t ready to lead anyone with wisdom. He’d rather stick with what he knows best: “Skadoosh.” Then, he meets Zhen, a fox thief played by the ever-divisive Awkwafina. From here, the film is erratic. Many lessons

Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies

and jokes are packed into the 94-minute runtime, and it’s hard not to feel like you’ve overeaten your serving of DreamWorks humor. But Kung Fu Panda 4 does deliver the franchise’s best villain since Tai Lung: the Chameleon, voiced by Viola Davis. The power-hungry sorceress can shape shi into anyone, but she lacks the fighting skills to back up her appearance. Her eyes are set on the Staff of Wisdom and the spirit realm, plotting a scheme that tests Po’s leadership, the strength of his friendships, and the core of his identity.

All in all, Kung Fu Panda 4 packs a punch. For a fourth installment, it’s arguably one of DreamWorks’s most well-realized. It’s nice to see Po’s full arc—and while Po’s dads’ side odyssey nearly tips the scale into “doing too much with too little time” territory, James Hong and Bryan Cranston add to the overall charm of the movie. We might not have needed another order of Kung Fu Panda; this final course was fun. That said, I’d take the check. —MAXWELL RABB PG, 94 min. Wide release in theaters

R Love Lies Bleeding

Love Lies Bleeding is the queer moment. Set in 1989, the film centers on the romance between shy gym manager Louise (“Lou”) and ambitious bodybuilder Jackie (“Jack”) in a one-horse town where Louise’s family exercises a criminal stronghold. Critic Cat Zhang said it best in the Cut when celebrating the film for letting leads Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian “be gay, do crime,” with others heralding it as a pulpy thrill ride. It lives up to the hype by delivering all the elements you could want in a sexy gay thriller: Stewart in cut-off shirts behind the wheel of a powder-blue pickup, closeups on O’Brian’s glistening biceps as she does curls, half a jaw dangling from the crushed melon face of a wifebeater, and more. But the movie’s real triumph is how it mines the queer cultural archives to create a richly contemporary text.

If you want to get more out of Love Lies Bleeding

check out Pumping Iron II: The Women, the sequel to the documentary that made Arnold Schwarznegger a star. (It’s available free on a certain streaming service popular with Minecra players, obscure record lovers, and flat-earthers.) While the doc focuses on women competing in a bodybuilding contest in 1983, it’s really about defining femininity in bodybuilding—and the gender trouble posed by hulking butch powerli er Bev Francis. In the 80s, Francis redefined women’s bodybuilding by presenting new ideas about how women could build out their physiques, but she’s also a visual touchstone for transmasculinity. Knowing this helps reveal some of the gender complexities buried in Love Lies Bleeding that situate the movie as part of an expanding cinematic scope on transness and genderfuckery.

The movie is loaded with gender play and queer historical references. Shortly a er meeting, Lou introduces Jack to steroids, which interact with the body like a high dose of testosterone. Jack pulls down her training shorts so Lou can inject her ass—one lover penetrating another to kick off a body-altering journey that reaches its emotional height when, much later, Jack anxiety-vomits onstage while being compared to other women. Shortly a er injecting Jack, the couple fucks to Patrick Cowley, a pioneer of the hi-NRG sound whose highest output was soundtracking 70s gay porns. Jack trains to Gina X Performance, a genderfluid German synth band with lyrics like, “Call me Marlene / Call me Gino,” and “Wanna be a great dark man / Nothing but a lesbian.” Lou reads Macho Sluts, a canonical collection of BDSM-infused lesbian erotica published in the late 80s by Pat Califia, arguably the most famous leather dyke (well, a er Joan Jett) and a historically significant trans man. On one level, the movie works as something in the tradition of Thelma and Louise and Bound On another, it’s a sweaty, sensual, dangerous romp that defies gender conventions as much as genre. For that, it’s a must-see. —MICCO CAPORALE R, 104 min. Wide release in theaters v

Love Lies Bleeding A24

MUSIC

CITY OF WIN

Cunty MeMe is genderless and genreless

This uncategorizable nonbinary musician creates their own lane—and everyone’s welcome in it.

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.

In the 1970s, New York City gave birth to two progressive and influential music cultures: punk rock and hip-hop. Though they’re often treated as opposites on the musical spectrum, they have plenty in common. Both genres were born when poor and working-class communities invented a sound that defied the respectable music of the time. Black and Puerto Rican teenagers in New York breakdanced on cardboard and tagged public property, while teens in the UK thrashed in clubs with electric guitars, but both subcultures subverted the norms of the ruling conservative paradigm. Today, uncategorizable Chicago-born musician Cunty MeMe stands astride the intersection of punk and hip-hop, pushing those subcultures to embody their radical roots and proving they can both still challenge patriarchy and capitalism.

“I’m genderless as well as I am genreless,” says MeMe (pronounced “mee-mee”). “My understanding of hip-hop has always been tied to that community aspect. . . . Punk and rock are like its cousins. I like raw, I like nasty, I like gritty, and I like hard, because that’s kind of just been life to me as I see it. I’ve had it sweet in a lot of ways, but at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of ugliness in this world. Those gritty sounds allow me to really speak authentically and truly from my own heart.”

MeMe offers their April 2023 release “Enemy” as an example of their overall style. The song’s dark and brooding production blends with MeMe’s fierce, confident raps to send a clear message: “I’m not one to be fucked with.” With slick references to anime, MeMe challenges anyone who’d dare make an enemy of them: “Bakugo with this fucking flow / Ichigo at yo’ fucking throat / Eyes cold turning foes to stone / If you ain’t know, now you know.”

“I’ve had it sweet in a lot of ways, but at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of ugliness in this world,” says Cunty MeMe. “Gritty sounds allow me to really speak authentically.” THOUGHTPOET FOR

MeMe’s most recent single is a new remix of October’s “Bleed 4 Me” by Charlot Laveau, aka final grrrl, that peels away the distorted guitar of the original to reveal melancholy piano. This stripped-down, vulnerable performance is entirely sung, a departure for MeMe—these days they usually mix rapping with singing. They haven’t stuck exclusively to the latter since their four years in the Chicago Children’s Choir (now called Uniting Voices Chicago), which ended in 2013. They quit the choir (and music altogether) due to a traumatic experience at the hands of their abusive stepfather, but in the years that followed they discovered social activism and found solace listening to punk and grunge. Communities are complex and difficult to define. MeMe is nonbinary, but they’re often perceived as a woman—and they’ve experi-

enced enough misogyny in hip-hop spaces that they’ve chosen to self-produce the majority of their music. The punk scene has been more tolerant of MeMe’s gender expression, but its overwhelming whiteness means a Black performer will still encounter racism. Even in spaces created by and for social outcasts, MeMe has been ostracized simply for being their authentic self.

“I like raw, I like nasty, I like gritty, and I like hard, because that’s kind of just been life to me as I see it.”

“I feel like I’ve done a really good job in creating my own lane and having mentors take me under their wing and protect me,” MeMe says. “The hell I have to go through just to get tracks out—you have to deal with very fragile egos of men in this industry and in the di erent scenes. It gets to a point where it’s, like, either I quit or I just have to bulldoze and push down all the doors—especially being queer and being trans.”

After moving from Chicago to the DMV region around Washington, D.C., in 2014, they met Norfolk-raised rapper Sima Lee. In 2017, Lee founded a community center called Maroon House, and MeMe was intimately involved. The house was equal parts creative and social hub and mutual aid center, providing free clothing, food, water, and other essential supplies. Active till 2020, the house hosted a lot of cannabis-centered events, and access was often donation based. MeMe continues this act of service by only agreeing to perform at shows that promise to give back to the communities they serve.

“That was just an important way for always making sure when we gather, it’s intentional and not just for pleasure,” says MeMe. “Every time someone tries to book me, I’m like, ‘Hey, can we do some type of donation at the door?’ Of course, as artists we need to eat. And there’s always a balance with that, but for me personally, if I am in the right space where I can sacrifice that and it means being able to

CHICAGO READER

Cunty MeMe in guillotine earrings THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

put clothes on people’s backs, I’m down for that.”

Many of MeMe’s mentors have been connected to the Black Panthers and the larger Black Power movement, notably late rap activist Nehanda Abiodun, who was living as a fugitive in Cuba when the two of them got in touch. MeMe traveled to Cuba twice, in 2017 and 2019, living in and absorbing the workings of its socialist environment. They credit that experience with inspiring them to return to music making, this time professionally—they released their first song to streaming in early 2019. In Cuba they also learned about the importance of mutual aid and the necessity for artists to use their platforms to create sustainable spaces for healthy communities.

MeMe returned to Chicago after their sec-

“Either I quit or I just have to bulldoze and push down all the doors—especially being queer and being trans.”

ond stay in Cuba, in 2019, and stayed until they relocated to Baltimore in October 2023. But they come back here frequently to take care of their mother. They’ll be in town next month, and their visit includes a show called “Whorecore” at Chicago gallery Evoke on Saturday, April 20. That month they’ll also drop the EP Bleed 4 Me, which takes the recent single as its title track—and later this year they’ll follow it with another EP, Jezebel Diaries 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

Midwest emo becomes a meme

Shitposts riffing on 90s emo can’t teach you what the music actually is now, but their in-jokes might put more new fans on the trail of the vital present-day scene.

By LEOR GALIL

In 2021, Indiana PBS station WTIU debuted Flyover Culture , a webseries about midwest pop phenomena. Flyover Culture began its third season in January, and its second episode was about midwest emo. This subgenre—a regional strain of scrappy, melodic posthardcore that arose in the 90s—has long been an obsession of mine. In August 2013, the Reader ran my story “Midwestern emo catches its second wind,” a snapshot of an emerging fourth-wave emo scene that bore the influence of 90s bands from downstate Illinois, suburban Chicago, and Wisconsin.

That story helped shift the attention of the indie music press toward a genre it once reviled (or simply ignored). I could see the change happen almost overnight. A couple weeks later, Pitchfork ran Ian Cohen’s review of the debut album by the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Whenever, If Ever , which hyperlinked to my story. My piece apparently has some miles left in it even now, though emo has evolved radically in the intervening decade: Flyover Culture host Payton Knobeloch quoted it in the midwest emo episode. I took note of the episode mostly because it was the first time I’d seen anyone in media admit to learning about midwest emo through TikTok memes.

in on the joke. You’d probably have to spend the equivalent of a couple weeks on r/emo to recognize the kind of genre purist satirized by the “Real Emo” copypasta, first posted in 2017. This dogmatic diatribe, peppered with ALL CAPS, sounds just like a hair-splitting

Know Your Meme traces the copypasta to a Facebook page called “Memelords against furries and fake emo.” But it feels older than Facebook. It sounds like something ripped from Fourfa, a sparsely designed Web 1.0 site dedicated to emo’s underground history that hasn’t changed much since 2001. I could imagine it appearing in the letters section of HeartattaCk, the crucial 1990s zine that Kent McClard launched after Maximum Rocknroll founder Tim Yohannan announced in the January 1994 issue that the “punk bible” would cease reviewing emo records (as well as major-label releases and any other music deemed not su ciently punk).

Memes can be a great indicator of a subculture’s popularity. After all, a meme’s success depends on how many times it’s shared or remade, and for it to spread, lots of people have to be

argument among superfans: “What is known by ‘Midwest Emo’ is nothing but Alternative Rock with questionable real emo influence.”

Like any good meme, the Real Emo copypasta has traveled widely and long. Two of my favorite Instagram accounts dedicated to evangelizing about emo with memes—RealoEmo and the now defunct real_emo_ only_ consists_of_the—took their names from it. The former has since become a record label and partnered with boutique printmaking company Low Grade on a line of shirts that adds the Real Emo copypasta to an approximation of the label for Dr. Bronner’s soap, whose cartoonishly dense text takes a similarly wild-eyed tone.

The TikTok memes Knobeloch discusses in Flyover Culture can express more complex jokes by dint of the video medium. During the most distressing stretches of the pandemic, I spent a lot of time with the inventive and funny emo duets I found on TikTok: a user would record a twinkly, mathy arpeggiated guitar part evocative of fourth-wave emo, fitting it to another clip from TikTok or TV where somebody is yelling or crying or otherwise getting emotional in such a way that makes it sound like they’re in an emo song. One of my favorites, by chain-mail–wearing rapper and emo artist Joe Mulherin (who performs as “nothing,nowhere.”), features a weepy Tim Robinson from I Think You

The “American Football house” in Urbana is the most memed image in midwest emo. This photo appeared on the cover of American Football’s 1999 debut album, and it’s since been re-created and parodied uncountable times. CHRIS STRONG

MUSIC

THU APR

SOMEBODY

+

SAT

+

SAT

SAT

AMERICAN

Graveyard

TUE

+

THU

@

/ 8PM / 18+

/

/ 8PM /

continued from p. 45

Should Leave: “I just don’t want to go home. What’s waiting for me at home is really bad.”

My favorite videos encapsulate my ambivalence about the fetishization of cathartic expression in emo vocals. I could write a small book unpacking the history of this fetishization, but it’d be easier to just show you one of the cluster of TikTok duets that all pair somber, wistful guitar with a guy screaming about a scorpion falling on his head while he’s on the toilet. I can quickly find several tagged with “midwest emo.”

As much as memes help give midwest emo a new subcultural portability, they also tend to flatten the idea of it. That’s evident in the Flyover Culture episode, which makes “fourthwave emo” interchangeable with “midwest emo revival.” There’s some truth in this— fourth-wave bands definitely took inspiration from 90s midwest emo—but it erases the ways that the fourth wave innovated and incorporated new sounds.

Chicago critic, zinester, and podcaster Miranda Reinert wrote about TikTok’s flattening of “midwest emo” in her newsletter a year ago. “I see a lot of videos that are listing o a certain kind of band or referencing a certain kind of band and calling it ‘Midwest Emo,’” Reinert wrote, “but they’re mostly the kind of bands getting posted about on Tumblr in 2014.”

Memes create a web of in-jokes and associations, of course, and none of that depends on factual accuracy to propagate. I wrote about the midwest’s influence on fourth-wave bands, and I can recognize my observations in meme-ified form in TikTok’s simplified idea of midwest emo. But the fourth wave also expanded beyond the throwback sound of quintessential midwest emo—I’d have found the World Is a Beautiful Place a lot less interesting if they’d limited their ambitions to reimagining American Football’s “Never Meant” or Cap’n Jazz’s “Oh Messy Life.” TikTok’s midwest emo memes present the style as trapped in time—they’re 2024 jokes that rely on a 2013 reinterpretation of a twinkly guitar loop from 1999.

Emo has changed considerably since 2013. We’re now roughly five years into emo’s fifth wave, guided by a more openly queer and experimental class of young musicians who’ve made better use of the Web than previous generations. The pandemic more or less guaranteed that these musicians would have to rely on the Internet to form a community, and they got good at it: fifth-wave emo cheerleaders are savvy about using digital tools to spread the

word. Home Is Where front woman Brandon MacDonald created one of the defining documents of the fifth-wave scene in March 2021, when the Home Is Where Twitter account posted several charts attempting to describe the scene’s various subsets. MacDonald has done a better job than almost anyone at using the Internet to welcome interested newcomers into fifth-wave emo.

Fifth-wave emo does have some roots in the midwest. Chicagoan Tyler Odom leads the band Your Arms Are My Cocoon, an inventive home-recorded screamo project that’s the lodestar for an entire class of bedroom skramz musicians. Missouri label Honeysuckle Records is one of the primary outlets for bedroom skramz, and its catalog also includes collaborative compilations made with RealoEmo; as much as memes can flatten the idea of emo, some of the people behind them are also responsible for helping expand the idea of what it can be.

One of emo’s most indelible images appears on the cover of American Football’s 1999 self-titled debut album: a photo of the facade of a drab white Urbana house, looking upward toward a second-story window that glows brightly from within against what looks like a murky green dusk. The house has become a symbol of midwest emo and a tourist destination. In May 2023, American Football and their label, Polyvinyl, announced that they’d bought the house as part of a larger consortium, ensuring that the site remains intact for future emo pilgrims.

I’ve seen the American Football house visualized as a building in the video game Animal Crossing for a 2020 chiptune album of American Football covers by c h point. I’ve seen people post photos where they give the house the finger, and they usually get the angle right. In December 2023, a new screamo band called Captain Jazz released a self-titled album whose every detail lampoons emo history. It features songs named “Oh Sussy Life” and “The World Is a Marketable Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Sell,” and on the cover, the American Football house is engulfed in flames. Ian Cohen named Captain Jazz one of his favorite emo albums of the year at Uproxx, and I’m inclined to agree. Shitposting culture and smart-ass memes may have saturated the emo scene, but if anything, this is a sign of vitality—and the self-awareness that drives that sort of humor bodes well for the future of the music. v m

MUSIC

CHICAGOANS OF NOTE

Ishmael Ali, cellist and cocurator of Elastic’s Improvised Music Series

“There could be an exchange in general with all of the arts. I wish it would be more like a summit of sorts, rather than just, you know, ‘Concert tonight!’”

As told to PHILIP MONTORO

Improvising cellist and guitarist Ishmael Ali moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago in 2013 to study music at DePaul, and he’s lived here ever since—except for a brief stint in New York that ended early in the pandemic. Like most improvisers, he plays in lots of different ad hoc combos, but his steady groups include omnivorous fusion band Je’raf, vocals-and-strings ensemble Akjai, and improvising trio Hearsay (with drummer Bill Harris and turntablist Allen Moore). He’s

recently recorded and performed as a guest with Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, and he has a trio in the works with Harris and multiinstrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay.

Ali and Harris collaborate offstage as well. Since 2020, Ali has helped run Amalgam Music, the record label Harris launched in 2015, and in 2020 they cofounded West Loop studio Marmalade, which they both operate as part of a larger crew.

Most germane to this interview, Ali shares the role of curating the Improvised Music Series at Elastic Arts with Angel Bat Dawid, Molly Jones, and Ben Zucker, an arrangement that’s been in place since the beginning of 2024. On Thursday, April 25, at the Hungry Brain, Ali plays a release show with the Double Helix Quartet, a group started by saxophonist Fred Jackson that also includes drummers Avreeayl Ra and Bill Harris.

The curators of the Elastic series have kind of left it open-ended, where as a default we each have a week. We just first-come-first-served claim dates, but we also collaborate. We have a Slack channel, and we communicate to the best of our ability. We’ll be like, “Hey, there’s this person I want on this day. I see you have this thing—I think it would be a good pairing.” For me, that’s a goal in this whole thing—bringing together multiple sides of improvised music.

Shortly after [I came to Chicago,] I had run a couple of DIY spaces briefly. Orotund Music eventually became Outer Sound after I moved

“I like juxtapositions that seem foreign on the surface but are actually very similar.”

to New York, and through that I met a bunch of people in the improvised-music scene, in the free-jazz scene, but also in DIY communities. At Orotund we would have have a lot of concerts that were very much like genre mashing. And I really enjoyed that aspect of curation.

The way it’s working at Elastic kinda reminds me of that, because we’re all coming from overlapping but different worlds. And that really is an interesting thing, because a lot of those communities individually have a lot in common, but they don’t necessarily associate or communicate as much.

Personally, I bounce around in between them and take aesthetics from everything that I can, because I appreciate all of them. I think the other three [curators] would feel the same way. Angel [Bat Dawid] is in the spiritual-jazz world, I guess you would say. Ben [Zucker] has more of a new-music kind of thing. And then Molly [Jones] has recently been involved in a lot of electronic music. She has a new series over at Experimental Sound Studio [called Chicago Creative Machines].

PETER GANNUSHKIN

SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT

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 SHED

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT

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 SHED

UPCOMING SHOWS

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT 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 SHED

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT 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 SHED

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

APR 11 JEFF ROSENSTOCK WITH SIDNEY GISH AND GLADIE

SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

MAR 29 & 30 LANY ................................. THE SHED WITH CONOR BURNS AND JUNIOR VARSITY

APR 2 & 3 BENSON BOONE ......................... THE SHED

APR 20 WAXAHATCHEE .......................... THE SHED WITH GOOD MORNING

APR 26 STRFKR ............................... THE SHED WITH RUTH RADELET

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

MAY 3 ATMOSPHERE ........................... THE SHED WITH HEBL AND NO FUN!

SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT 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 SHED SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

ON SALE NOW

SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED

SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT

MUSIC

continued from p. 48

And that’s not even mentioning a lot of the DIY folks. Ben Billington, he’s the assistant director at Elastic—he’s deeply rooted in the DIY community here. I frequently ask him for advice, because he has a nice perspective on everything overall that happens.

It’s less about what we want to define and more about bringing audiences that already exist into the same world. And then introducing them to each other and introducing audiences that wouldn’t listen to this particular kind of improvisation without it being on the same bill as something they would listen to.

Maybe [it’ll be] a saxophone-electronics thing, along with a more traditional free-jazz ensemble or performance art. Especially since the pandemic, there’s been a lot of amalgamation of performing arts with music, and that’s been a great boon to both communities. It’s also been really interesting what Cristal [Sabbagh, organizer of multidisciplinary series Freedom From and Freedom To] is doing. The DIY community has been doing it for a while with visual stu , projections, you know. What [Cristal’s] doing is bringing a lot of these communities together, from pretty different places, and it’s nice—you can build these connections.

That being said, we’re also trying to build off what [former Improvised Music Series curator] Dave [Rempis] was doing. That series was so successful for so long, and it was like a pillar. And we also want to still prop up that community without alienating anyone.

It’s March right now. So we’ve only had January and February, which are traditionally slow months in general. But we have people coming through from out of town. We’re hosting the Bridge—it’s a free-jazz exchange from France to Chicago. There’s this violinist from New York coming up, Joanna Mattrey.

That’s one of the things that probably makes our job easier than Dave’s was—there’s four of us that get to respond to emails, rather than one person doing it all. It’s been just an incoming barrage, from people from all over, not just from the city.

That’s where our particular curation is gonna shine or assert itself, because I individually might balance that di erently than Molly or Angel or Ben would. There are a lot of people in the city that I’ve spoken to who haven’t played the Elastic Improvised Music Series before. I’ll be talking to them, and I’ll be like, “That’s crazy to me. You’re as much as part of

the scene as anyone else is.” I’ve gotten a lot of those recently, where it’s like, “Oh, it’s my first time playing there.”

It’s a balancing act trying to get everyone involved with highlighting people from out of town—because I frequently travel and meet people, and there’s music I care deeply about that is not in Chicago. I’ll be having a late-night conversation at the [Hungry] Brain and somebody’s like, “Oh, you’ve never heard of this before? Check this out.” And then vice versa. I’ve learned so much from hearing people come through and having those conversations.

Icame at improvisation through a compositional lens at first. When I first was starting groups, I would write pieces, sometimes abstract, sometimes specific, and it would lead into these open sections with loose parameters. I had this group Zebec that played maybe 2014 to ’16. At that time I actually played guitar—cello is a fairly recent pickup of mine. That’s that’s been my focus for maybe five years now. Me and Bill [Harris] and Eli Namay also had this trio that was kind of math-rocky but had some 20th-century harmonic things, called Errata.

the Whistler. I was like, “What the hell is this?” He makes copies of records, hand- casted copies of records, out of nontraditional materials—not vinyl. And so when he drops the needle on it, it’ll get into these warbly locked loops that are just very odd and arrhythmic and changing. On paper, what do turntables and free improvisation have in common? Maybe not that much. But in that specific sense—I think that’s why that trio works so well together. Abstractly, they’re like the same thing—a nonmetric repeating rhythmic idea.

“We’re all coming from overlapping but different worlds. . . . A lot of those communities individually have a lot in common, but they don’t necessarily associate or communicate.”

I place aesthetics highly on the totem pole of how I particularly experience and appreciate music. Sometimes it’s a process of discovery when you’re listening to something, where you’re like, “Oh, this thing right here is interesting, because it relates to so-andso musical concept in this sort of way that I do.” But it’s also sometimes the challenge of, “I like this thing—how can I fit into that world or bring it into my own?” I have a friend in Columbus, Ohio, Abhilasha Chebolu, who’s doing a lot of harsh noise. And I recently did a few-date tour with her where the discovery was the challenge of, “How do I fit in my own electronics and cello with harsh noise?”

even without bringing “new” people in. There could be an exchange in general with all of the arts. I wish it would be more like a summit of sorts, rather than just, you know, “Concert tonight!” [Laughs.] When [the four curators] meet, we’ve talked about taking feedback from others. So if anyone who’s reading this has an idea, please shout out! Tell us what to do.

I first heard improvised music when I was studying . . . very not that. [ Laughs. ] And I didn’t really understand it. But there’s so many di erent types of “improvised music.” It’s such a large umbrella term—there’s plenty that I don’t like. Based o the individual artist’s approach to that particular thing, it could sound more like something that’s not improvised at all. Or it could sound like—there’s shared aesthetics within the experimental world in general. Personally I’m trying to wear down those barriers, because I feel like Chicago particularly has this more segregated view, like, “Oh, I’m not gonna go to this show. These are the free-jazz cats. I don’t want to hear jazz tonight.” Or, like, “Oh, that’s a little too noisy. I don’t want to hear that noise.”

But maybe a solution that Angel posed during a meeting—she was talking about having workshops. This is actually something we used to do at Orotund a little bit—having open workshops where we discussed the process and discussed artists’ approaches, because they’re so different from group to group and person to person. So maybe more open communication? Maybe that would interest audiences in musicians’ approaches to that sort of music.

I like juxtapositions that seem foreign on the surface but are actually very similar. Hearsay is kind of based o this idea.

Before we played with Allen [Moore], Bill and I would get together—he’s one of my first frequent collaborators, just playing free. We had a lot of conversations about approach. We both do this thing when we’re improvising with each other where we’ll get into a repeated rhythmic form without being in a locked metric time. Maybe just a repeated sequence of events, of timbres or notes or something, but it’s still recognizable without being completely repetitive. It’s like a janky version of Steve Lehman’s concept of nonrepetitive grooves. [Laughs.]

I think I heard Allen for the first time hosting at Orotund, and after that he was playing at

It’s not like people are just creating these things [out of thin air]. [In Chicago] we’re also building o a pretty rich history, between the AACM, the Art Ensemble, and then later Fred Anderson. And then you’ve got Mike Reed and Ken Vandermark and Rempis and the whole Umbrella crew. But then you also have, like, Ono. There’s been a lot going on here where it makes it easy to have these mash-ups. It’s been happening for a while—I feel like it’s just more coming into this world now.

I feel like the visual-arts world, there could be more of an exchange [with improvised music]. I don’t know how. I’ve had some friends work at galleries, and I’ve gone to those shows—I feel like there’s a lot of shared personality there. But there’s plenty of audience, and I think [the audience for improvised music] can expand

You can get into sort of a Pauline Oliveros zone when you’re going to concerts, but that’s not the particular mood that I’m personally in sometimes, especially with the background noise at a lot of venues. It’s more like, everything fits into a context. I’ve thought about this a lot over the past few years. I feel like the world’s noisier. You know what I mean? Everything’s so noisy, there’s something constantly going on, where having that mental quietude is just—not of this time right now.

You kind of notice who’s at what shows from di erent subcultures. If after a year, five years—however long I’m doing this thing—if those audiences start to merge and you see a more open-ended audience and more collaboration between these things that were maybe separate when we started, I would be happy with that. v

m pmontoro@chicagoreader.com

AX AND THE HATCHETMEN

+ CAPITAL SOIREE

+ VAN GO GO

LA LOM

IN THE ROUND

GLASS BEACH

+ ARCADIA GREY

+ FLEECE KAWASAKI

JAMMING OFFLINE WITH CALEB HEARON AND ANNIE DIRUSSO

GIRLSCHOOL

+ LILLIAN AXE + ALCATRAZZ

TWRP

DIGITAL NIGHTMARE 2024 TOUR

+ TREY MAGNIFIQUE + NELWAR

KITCHEN DWELLERS + CRIS JACOBS

SASHA COLBY

STRIPPED TOUR

RUSTON

MANNEQUIN

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

69 LOVE SONGS 25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

GIANT ROOKS

SIERRA FERRELL

SHOOT FOR THE MOON TOUR

+ CAT CLYDE

GOOD KID

THIS CAN’T BE THE END

+ ADAN DIAZ

PERPETUAL FLAME MINISTRIES PRESENTS REVEREND KRISTIN

MICHAEL HAYTER

+ DAVID EUGENE EDWARDS

HELADO NEGRO

+ MAREM LADSON

KNOWER

THE STRUMBELLAS

+ CECE COAKLEY

ASH

+ FELUKAH

TEENAGE FANCLUB

TY SEGALL

+ SHARPIE SMILE

DONNY BENÉT

+ OTNES

KAMASI WASHINGTON

FEARLESS MOVEMENT TOUR

WILD CHILD

+ OH HE DEAD

HEMANOS GUTIÉRREZ

YELLOW DAYS IN THE ROUND + THE JACK MOVES

JOHN GARCIA

(PERFORMING KYUSS, HERMANO, AND SLO BURN)

+ JARED JAMES NICHOLS

+ TELEKINETIC YETI

+ LEFT LANE CRUISER

KATIE PRUITT MANTRAS TOUR

PRATEEK CHAD

SILHOUETTES TOUR

FERN BRADY

I GAVE YOU MILK TO DRINK

THE LONGEST JOHNS + SEAN DAGHER

BLOODBATH

+ PRIMORDIAL

+ ARCHGOAT

+ SEVERE TORTURE

+ CARDIAC ARREST

× MARYLAND DEATH FEST

LADYTRON

+ HIROKO YAMAMURA DJ SET

GUIDED BY VOICES

+ KIWI JR.

CAMERA OBSCURA

+ PHOTO OPS

CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON

ALLIE X

VALEBOL

IN THE ROUND RECORD RELEASE SHOW

SINCE 1892

Shanta Nurullah brings the sitar to the Black avant-garde

From her early years with Phil Cohran through cofounding Samana and now leading Sitarsys, this musician and storyteller keeps finding new paths for her artistry.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

Last year I went to see grooving Tuareg guitar band Etran de L’Aïr at Constellation, and the opener was someone I hadn’t heard of before: Shanta Nurullah. Her calming set was 180 degrees from Etran de L’Aïr’s ecstatic trance rock, but it shared the same devotional spirit. I was immediately drawn in by her sitar playing, wise storytelling, and gently illuminated vibe.

During Nurullah’s set, I had an intuition that I was watching someone with a long and illustrious history that I didn’t yet know. I had a momentary vision of the subject of the very first Secret History of Chicago Music back in 2005, the divine Kelan Phil Cohran— and it turns out Nurullah played in his Black Music Workshop ensemble for years in the 1970s. When I interviewed her for this piece, I learned much more, and it exceeded even my expectations.

Nurullah’s grandfather Simeon Neal Sr. ran a tailor’s shop on Greenwood Avenue in

Tulsa, Oklahoma, better known as “Black Wall Street.” He and his family narrowly escaped the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, when white mobs looted and burned more than a thousand homes and businesses in the Greenwood District and killed hundreds of Black people.

“During the assault on that area, one of Neal’s white customers hid the family under the hay in his wagon and drove them out of town to safety,” Nurullah says. “In the wagon were my grandparents Simeon and Susan, their toddler Marjorie, and infant Simeon Jr.—my dad.”

The family’s journey ended far from Tulsa. “They made it first to Saint Louis, then to Chi-

cago, where Grandpa Neal reestablished his business on 47th Street,” Nurullah says. “My father also became a tailor and had a shop on 63rd Street. He lost his clientele when readymade suits became available in department stores. He then pivoted to doing alterations for a chain of dry cleaners, while remaining self-employed.”

Born as Velma Patrice Neal on June 16, 1950, in the south-side neighborhood of Park Manor, Nurullah moved with her family to nearby Chatham when she was eight. The community was newly integrated, but that didn’t last long. “By the time I went to Hirsch High School in

’63, the neighborhood was all Black,” Nurullah says. “White flight left a profound impression on me.”

Nurullah graduated as valedictorian of her class in January 1967—the same night, she says, as the city’s infamous worst-ever blizzard. After working a clerical job with Illinois Bell for a few months, she began attending Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where her freshman class increased the total number of Black students to 24. “I was very unhappy at Carleton,” Nurullah remembers. “After a failed attempt to transfer, I heard about the India program and applied—not

STEVE KRAKOW

APRIL AT SYMPHONY CENTER

MAR 28-APR 2

The Music of Bach

APR 4-6

Klaus Mäkelä & Yuja Wang

APR 6 & 20

Once Upon a Symphony:  Goldilocks and the Three Bears

APR 11-13

Mendelssohn Elijah

APR 14

Yefim Bronfman

APR 18-21

Chopin & Tchaikovsky

APR 19

Gateways Festival Orchestra featuring Take 6

APR 24

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

APR 25-27

CSO x Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis

APR 28

BRSO Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Monday Night Foodball

The Reader’s weekly chef pop-up series at Ludlow Liquors. @chicago_reader@mikesula

March 4: It’s the all-indigenous return of Ketapanen Kitchen @ketapanenkitchen

March 11: Desi smoke with Dhuaan BBQ @dhuaanbbq

March 18: Get to the Greek with Meze Table @meze.table

March 25: Beeria sandos with Milo’s Market @milosmarket

April 1: Pierogi Papi lives! @pierogipapichi

April 8: The Glowing Revenge of Sauce and Bread Kitchen and 18th Street Distillery @sauceandbread @18thstreetdistillery

April 15: Indonesian with Minahasa @minahasachicago

chicagoreader.com/foodball

The

MUSIC

continued from p. 52

because of any particular interest, just as a means of escape.”

Nurullah described that moment in a 2013 interview with Tides, the online magazine of the South Asian American Digital Archive. “I was at lunch one day; we had these communal tables. There was a news bulletin. I picked it up and it said the deadline for the India program is tomorrow. So I was like, OK! I applied for the program. A few months later, [I was] in Pune.”

As a child, Nurullah had taken ten years of piano lessons from a great-aunt and learned tap dancing from an old friend of her father’s. But when she arrived in Pune, a large city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, she didn’t think of herself as an aspiring musician. She had no clear sense of what she wanted to do with her life, and she intended to pursue a project in political science. About a week in, though, she saw her first sitar concert. “I fell in love and lobbied successfully to change my study topic to music,” she says. “I got an instrument and a teacher, Sri Bhaskar Chandavarkar.”

Chandavarkar, a sitar player and composer, had studied with the great Ravi Shankar and created music for dozens of films in several languages. Over a six-month period, he helped Nurullah learn the basics of Hindustani music, one of the two major Indian classical traditions. It uses frameworks called raga and taal (or tala) to guide a piece’s melodic and rhythmic qualities, respectively, and there are hundreds of each. She especially liked the rupak tala, whose internal cycles and subdivisions add up to the equivalent of a 7/4 meter—which also sometimes occurs in progressive jazz.

“When I got back to the States, well I had gotten kinda spooked out by people in India telling me there’s no way you can play this instrument,” she told Tides. “You have to study everyday for five years before you know anything. But I had found a way in with the blues and spirituals, that’s what I was playing on my own for figuring out stu .”

By her senior year, Nurullah had given herself over to creative pursuits. “I had done my English-major independent study on the Black Arts Movement and longed to get involved in it,” she says. “I had enough credits to skip the spring term at Carleton before graduation. I returned home and was going around to classes and conferences. It was such a vibrant, exciting time.”

Nurullah soon discovered the Kuumba Workshop (also called the Kuumba Theatre Company), which the late Val Gray Ward

in, I haven’t studied enough.’ [He said,] ‘Sister, that instrument came from Africa and so did you. Bring it!’ And that was my permission.”

The sitar isn’t generally thought to have African roots, except in the sense that all musical instruments do because humans evolved there. But Nurullah also learned to play several instruments that definitely arose in West Africa, including mbira, djembe, four-string harp, and reed zither. She’s been a lecturer and teacher since 1971, and in the late 70s she wrote frequently about music, race, and gender for Chicago-based periodicals such as Ebony Jr! (in print from 1973 till 1985) and Black Books Bulletin (which ran from 1971 till 1980).

“I had gotten kinda spooked out by people in India telling me there’s no way you can play this instrument . . . . But I had found a way in with the blues and spirituals.”

Nurullah loved the sights, sounds, and smells of India, but her Blackness often made it an isolating experience. “I had this huge afro at the time, and walking down the street people would run in their house and get all of their relatives to come and see me,” she told Tides. “I’d get on the bus and . . . the whole bus would turn around and start cackling at this strange person.”

Indian classical music is a demanding discipline that nobody can master in half a year, and Nurullah doesn’t pretend that’s what she plays. She developed her own distinctive approach to the sitar by using Black forms.

founded in her south-side home in 1968. Writing for Tides, Satya Gummuluri describes Kuumba as “an influential black experimental theater group presenting plays and ‘rituals’ which exercised the principles of spontaneous expression and improvisation within a formal framework.” Nurullah picked up the bass while with Kuumba, taking lessons from genius guitarist Pete Cosey.

Cosey had yet to begin his famous 70s stint with Miles Davis’s electric band, but he was already an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a veteran of Phil Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble. Through Cosey, Nurullah met Cohran, who’d helped found the AACM in 1965. She joined this kindred spirit in his Black Music Workshop group from 1972 till ’76, though she initially brought her bass. “Phil welcomed me and asked what else do you play,” Nurullah told Tides. “I said, ‘Well, the sitar.’ ‘Well you should bring that.’ I said, ‘No, I can’t bring it

During those years Nurullah also blossomed as a storyteller, sharing African and Black American folktales, personal narratives, and historical lore. (She legally changed her name in 1973.) She’s given talks at schools, arts and community centers, libraries, museums, parks, colleges, churches, prisons, and festivals, including the National Storytelling Festival and nine iterations of the National Black Storytelling Festival & Conference. As she raised her four children, it was those gigs that paid her bills—only since she started teaching at the Old Town School in 2009 has music provided the majority of her income.

In the 1970s, Nurullah began playing in ensembles she’d helped assemble herself. She cofounded the short-lived Insight in 1977, and the following year she joined Sojourner—a groundbreaking group of Black women who played harp, sax, flute, electric bass, sitar, percussion, and more. (Surely a recording exists somewhere. Anyone?)

In 1991, Nurullah cofounded Samana, probably the best-known band of her career. The other founders were multi-instrumentalist and dancer Maia and flutist Nicole Mitchell, who’s since become a world-renowned improviser and composer. The group’s name was built around the three core members’ first initials, but its fluid lineup could get as big as nine instrumentalists, vocalists, and dancers. Samana were the first all-woman band

under the AACM banner, and even in that progressive context they had to confront sexism—including the belief that women shouldn’t play hand drums. (In the 2000s, Mitchell would serve as copresident of the AACM for a few years.) Samana performed as part of HotHouse’s Women of the New Jazz Festival, Steppenwolf’s Traffic series, and Hillary Clinton’s 50th birthday celebration. They also had the distinction of being the first all-woman band booked at the Chicago Jazz Festival; for their 1997 set, their lineup included Aquilla Sadalla on clarinet and Coco Elysses on percussion. The group split up in 1999 but has occasionally reunited.

Nurullah cofounded the band Classic Black in 2013, which lasted till 2020. She’s been part of the AACM (and its Great Black Music Ensemble) since the mid-90s, and her own current groups include ShaZah (a duo with her wife, vocalist Zahra Baker) and Sitarsys (her first experience as a bandleader, not as part of a collective). “Sitarsys” is a play on “the sister with the sitar,” which is how people used to refer to her during her time with Cohran when they couldn’t remember her name.

Nurullah has played with leading lights of jazz in Chicago and beyond, among them Ben LaMar Gay, Junius Paul, Dushun Mosley, Amina Claudine Myers, Ganavya Doraiswamy, Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang, Douglas Ewart, and Tomeka Reid. She also runs her own label, Storywiz Records, which she launched in the mid-1980s. It released the debut Sitarsys album, Sitar Black , in 2017.

Nurullah describes her aims as a storyteller on her website, and I think I’ll let this righteous elder have the last word with that mission statement: “I want to spread love and joy; to stimulate the imagination in ways that technology doesn’t; to challenge racial stereotypes; to stimulate curiosity and interest in other cultures; to contribute to the perpetuation of an age-old art; to make connections across communities; and to validate each person’s life stories and memories as worthy of telling.” v

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-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.

Spring into the new season with activities for everyone!

Sign up for classes today at

oldtownschool.org

Discover endless delights at Chicago’s premier lakefront destination. Our calendar is packed with exciting events all year round. Immerse yourself in the world of art at EXPO CHICAGO. Enjoy seasonal festivities with family and discover FREE weekly programs. Plan your visit at navypier.org

MUSIC CLASSES FOR ADULTS & KIDS

LINCOLN SQUARE

LINCOLN PARK

SOUTH LOOP & ONLINE

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of March 21

MUSIC

Rockford trio Frail Body release the year’s best new screamo album

THURSDAY21

Ana Tijoux 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $35, $30 in advance. 18+

It’s been nearly a decade since we last heard from rebel-rouser Ana Tijoux. Her fifth album, January’s eclectic Vida, couldn’t have come at a better moment—her defiant music feels made for times like these. Protest songs are Tijoux’s medium, and the unyielding rapper and singer has spent more than two decades mastering the art. Born in France to Chilean parents who’d fled their home country a er the 1973 coup d’état that brought Augusto Pinochet to power, Tijoux moved to Chile in 1993 as the country transitioned back to civil rule. By the late 90s, she had risen to prominence as a member of Chilean rap group Makiza, who railed against the former military dictatorship.

After Makiza split up in 2006, Tijoux charted her own path, and each of her solo albums reflect her commitment to feminism and anti-capitalism. She explores those topics and more with a broad world view informed by her family’s story and the circumstances that sent them into exile and back, which have deepened her poetic grit and transgressive musical spirit. Her efforts have drawn an international audience—she’s earned Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations, and her 2014 song “Universos Paralelos” won the Latin Grammy for record of the year. She’s also attracted musical collaborators such as Tom Morello and Julieta Venegas.

Tijoux continues her beautiful trajectory on Vida . The 15-track epic has all the hallmarks of a good Tijoux album: equal doses of jazz fusion and R&B with hearty Latin percussion and staunch lyrics. Its backbone is fortified by longtime producer Andres Celis, who worked with Tijoux on 2014’s celebrated Vengo and continues to tap into her artistic DNA, bringing out the best of her talent while ushering her into more diverse explorations. The record also features guest spots from Talib Kweli, iLe, Pablo Chill-E, and De La Soul’s Plug 1, and their wordsmithing adds emphasis to Tijoux’s songs. On

Fri 3/29, 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $25, $20 in advance. 17+

ON THEIR NEW second album, Artificial Bouquet (Deathwish Inc.), Rockford trio Frail Body play screamo with the intensity of a spacecraft streaking through a 5,000-degree atmospheric reentry. Sometimes it sounds like these guys aren’t just sheathed in flames but might actually be burning themselves up, and that makes Artificial Bouquet feel even more tense and precarious. Thankfully, Frail Body know how to control

their combustion, and they use the calmer passages on “No Resolution” and “Devotion” (among other songs) to o er momentary shelter from the shock waves of guitars and constant rhythmic thunder. Paradoxically, these respites also prove that Frail Body can summon the feral power of the wildest moments on Artificial Bouquet whenever they want—and that they can control that energy even from within the fire. —LEOR GALIL

FRAIL BODY, PAINS, KNOLL, BLACKWATER SNIPER, STAGHORN, CROWNING, LOWER AUTOMATION, BIRD LAW

ANGEL TUMALAN

Ana Tijoux INTI GAJARDO

MUSIC

the big-beat charmer “Tu Sae,” she trades barbs with Talib Kweli and Plug 1 in a fantastic bilingual matchup.

Vida strays from Tijoux’s prior work in important ways too. It shares new perspectives and emotional reactions, particularly around the personal arcs of life that filled Tijoux’s time away from the scene. Among the revelations populating her newest material are the joys of becoming a mother and, on the softhearted “Tania,” the heaviness of losing her sister to cancer in 2019. Other highlights include the dark, swaggering rap manifesto “Dime Qué” and the self-reflective “Busco Mi Nombre,” with its sweeping, cinematic piano and orchestral layers. That song starts with a speech from Argentinian human rights activist Enriqueta Estela Barnes de Carlotto, connecting Tijoux’s personal reflections to the broader fight for justice and liberation in a way that beckons listeners to find a similar path.

—SELENA FRAGASSI

FRIDAY22

Jessica Ackerley See also Fri 3/29. Jessica Ackerley performs solo and in a trio with Tim Daisy and Mai Sugimoto as part of the Pleiades Series. 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15. b

Put an obstacle in front of Jessica Ackerley, and they’ll come up with a new creative strategy to surmount it. The Canadian musician attended college with the intent to become a straight-ahead jazz guitarist—an aspiration that’s reflected to this day in their nimble technique. But after encountering misogyny in class and on the job, they tilted toward more welcoming communities. After moving to New York City in 2013, Ackerley performed in no wave–inspired rock duo ESSi and delved into free improvisation with the likes of Sandy Ewen and Tyshawn Sorey. These experiences inspired Ack-

noise group hardwire their muscle-bound guitars and steely club percussion to jack up your adrenal system. These ceaselessly propulsive components of Health’s sound feel grimy and deviant whenever the synths enter—the keys’ otherworldly tones act like washes of blinding light that cast every ragged edge in sharp relief. Jake Duzsik’s vocals add another layer of contrast, because instead of the urgency or anger you’d expect in this kind of music, they communicate a detached, chilly serenity that’s almost blissful. That subversion makes it feel like something is irrevocably wrong or “off” (but strangely alluring) about wherever we are—a sensation conveyed most acutely by the slow-boil drama of “Ashamed.” As wretched as Health’s world sounds, I don’t want to leave it. —LEOR GALIL

Gucci Mane, Cam’Ron, Trina Part of Spring Powerjam. Sean Mac, DJ Pharris, Ydot Gdot, and Nomii also perform. 8 PM, Credit Union 1 Arena, 525 S. Racine, $49-$229. b

the late 90s a er appearing on Trick Daddy tracks such as “Nann Nigga” and “Shut Up.” She went on to release a stream of her own raunchy projects, influencing a generation of baddies in the process. Trina has since done some reality television (she costarred with Trick Daddy in VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: Miami in 2018), and she continues to release quality music, most recently her seventh album, T7, in 2022.

erley to broaden their approach to include puresound expressions and intuitive structures in addition to their initial clean-toned, harmonically minded playing.

When COVID hit in 2020, Ackerley began playing outdoors with multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, which ultimately yielded the reflective 2021 album Friendship: Lucid Shared Dreams and Time Travel (577 Records). They also pursued remote recording projects such as Nervios Calavera en Roja Cinta en una Noche en Bruma Galda, a Bandcamp release with Uruguayan guitarist Federico Musso, whom they met on Instagram. Since 2021, Ackerley has lived in Honolulu, where they’re pursuing a PhD in music composition with a focus on Asia. Though that city isn’t noted for its improvisational music scene, they return to the mainland regularly, and their three concerts here are part of their first midwestern tour. On Wednesday, March 20, Ackerley will improvise with guitarist Mark Shippy and violinist Alex Cunningham at West Loop studio Marmalade. On Friday, March 22, they will appear as part of Elastic Arts’ Pleiades Series; Ackerley will play solo, then in a trio with drummer Tim Daisy and saxophonist Mai Sugimoto, and finally in a jam session that welcomes femme, trans, and nonbinary musicians. And on Friday, March 29, Ackerley will collaborate with vibraphonist Ben Zucker. First, the duo will jointly realize their respective compositions, and then violinist Billie Howard and multiinstrumentalist Robbie Hunsinger will join them to play a set of recent graphic and text-driven compositions.

—BILL MEYER

Health Pixel Grip and King Yosef open. 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2051 N. Milwaukee, sold out. 17+

Few bands these days sound as single- mindedly determined to manifest the club scene from the first Matrix movie as Health. On December’s Rat Wars (Loma Vista), the Los Angeles-based industrial-

Rappers who enjoy long careers often diversify their skill sets. Dipping a toe into acting, book writing, motivational speaking, or political activism isn’t uncommon for a tenured word-slinging entertainer. But those who’ve made their most significant cultural impact through their music will always have fans eager to queue up to hear their classic tracks. And that’s the joy of Spring Powerjam, whose insane turn-of-the-century lineup includes trap forefather Gucci Mane , original “baddest bitch” Trina, and multihyphenate icon Cam’ron.

Gucci (aka Radric Davis) is a bona fide hip-hop GOAT—most contemporary trap stars can trace their roots back to his music. He’s parlayed a feverish mixtape and album run and chart-topping singles into a means of introducing the world to a new universe of southern rappers and producers, including Plies (who appeared on his 2017 hit “Wasted”), Future, Metro Boomin, and Rae Sremmurd. Born Katrina Laverne Taylor, Trina blew up in

Rounding out Powerjam is Cameron Giles, better known as Cam’ron . Some folks may know him primarily as a successful sports analyst with his own widely watched online show, It Is What It Is , but his music career stretches back to the mid-90s, when he was a member of Harlem’s Children of the Corn. In the early 2000s he cofounded New York’s Dipset crew, dropped hits such as 2002’s “Hey Ma” and “Oh Boy,” and taught guys how to be gangsta while wearing pink. Thanks to his legendary 2003 The O’Reilly Factor interview with producer Damon Dash and a frustrated Bill O’Reilly, he also popularized the perfect taunt: “You mad?” Spring Powerjam is a show for the ages, providing an opportunity to see three of the most important rappers who’ve had a hand in the robust hip-hop culture we all enjoy today—don’t sleep on it.

—CRISTALLE BOWEN

WEDNESDAY27

Colin Stetson See also Thu 3/28. 8:30 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery Cathedral, 5255 N. Pulaski, $30. 17+

Breath is fundamental to life—in aerobic creatures, each respiratory cycle allows the continuation of existence for a few more seconds or minutes. Canadian American musician and composer Colin Stetson transcends this notion. When he plays saxophone (or any of a number of other reed and brass instruments), he builds entire worlds within a single exhalation.

A disciple of Peter Brötzmann’s fiery free jazz

Jessica Ackerley ANABELLE ELLWEIN

4544

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW!

5/2 Pallett

6/5 Okkervil River & The Antlers

6/14 Loudon Wainwright III with Wesley Stace

MONDAY, MARCH 25 8PM

El Perro del Mar

with special guest NOIA In Maurer Hall

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27 8PM

Altan in Maurer Hall

SATURDAY, MARCH 30 8PM

Andrew Sa / Jake Blount In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, APRIL 11 8PM

Paula Cole In Maurer Hall

SATURDAY, APRIL 13 3PM & 6PM

Ladysmith Black

Mambazo In Maurer Hall

SATURDAY, APRIL 13 8PM

Cheryl Wheeler with special guest Kenny White In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, APRIL 14 7PM

Omaru Sangaré In Maurer Hall

THURSDAY, APRIL 18 8PM

Graham Parker with special guest Ralph Covert In Maurer Hall

THURSDAY, APRIL 18 8PM

Joe Pug In Szold Hall

FRIDAY, APRIL 19 8PM

Joe Pug's 40th Birthday Show with special guests In Maurer Hall

SATURDAY, APRIL 20 8PM

The Weight Band

Girlschool ADAM KENNEDY

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY

continued from p. 57 OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG

and Roscoe Mitchell’s minimalist collages, Stetson traverses the realms of experimental music and art-pop. He employs techniques rooted in improvisation—slap- and flutter-tonguing, vocalization through the horn, circular breathing—and amplifies the sounds through a lattice of contact microphones positioned on his instrument and his body. He’s a titan of the bass saxophone—a hulking horn that less athletic musicians often support with a stand to play—and watching him at work you can imagine the instrument as a natural extension of his dogged physicality. Years of wrestling have molded his muscles, and his veins pop with every breath.

Stetson is performing two consecutive nights at Chicago’s Bohemian National Cemetery Cathedral, and the serene sepia-toned rotunda is a fitting setting for an artist supporting an album plumbing the depths of grief and loss. His latest full-length, 2023’s When We Were That What Wept for the Sea , transmutes the sudden loss of his father into a fairy tale, replete with harrowing trials, whimsical encounters, and the lights of fireflies against open skies. He employs grief as a prism, illuminating new perspectives; on the title track, he brightens his signature phantom notes and tangled horn fractals with sprightly tones. He also delves into drone poetry on a suite of tracks called “Lighthouse,” and on “Writhen” he channels a newfound cinematic intensity.

Whatever transformations Stetson may have endured as a person in the events leading up to Wept for the Sea, the record has ushered in a new era for him as a showman. He was already known for his meticulously orchestrated live spectacles, but he’s added immersive new layers to his concerts on this tour, introducing intricately programmed automation that synchronizes projection and lighting cues with the nuances of his sounds and movements. As Stetson explores human emotion and physicality, he invites the audience to walk alongside him in his grief and encourages them to discover the new beginnings that emerge in the wake of loss.

—SHANNON NICO SHREIBAK

THURSDAY28

Colin Stetson See Wed 3/27. 8:30 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery Cathedral, 5255 N. Pulaski, sold out. 17+

FRIDAY29

Jessica Ackerley & Ben Zucker: Duo & Ensemble See Fri 3/22. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $5 livestream. b

Frail Body See Pick of the Week on page 56. Pains, Knoll, Blackwater Sniper, Staghorn, Crowning, Lower Automation, and Bird Law open. 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $25, $20 in advance. 17+

SUNDAY31

Glass Beach Arcadia Grey and Fleece Kawasaki open. 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $25, $270 opera box (seats six). b

In January, west-coast emo group Glass Beach dropped Plastic Death (Run for Cover), the followup to their 2019 debut, The First Glass Beach Album. That gap has felt even longer than five years, and not just because the pandemic made it hard to tell what day it was. It’s also seemed like a long wait because The First Glass Beach Album has become an important document for emo’s burgeoning fi h wave, a heavily queer, URL-savvy community that celebrates stylistic experimentation and overlaps with shoegaze, bedroom pop, and chiptune. Glass Beach’s first album is an invitation to join in the fun of that scene, and it feels as though every fi h-wave emo project to emerge since owes some debt to

the band’s quasi-symphonic whimsy. Their debut also prepared the way for the fifth-wave scene to receive Plastic Death, a double LP that’s constantly swinging for the fences. Glass Beach have nurtured their ambitions, and now they even sound a bit like Radiohead—a description applied to vanishingly few emo bands over the past four decades. (One exception would be the Appleseed Cast, but that’s another story.) This boldness lets them use choices as simple as the order of songs to make aesthetic statements—the moody, proggy “Slip Under the Door,” which closes with a temperamental freak-out, leads into the gentle, elegiac “Guitar Song.” I suspect that in five years’ time, Plastic Death will have a reputation as sterling as its predecessor’s among fi h-wave fans; I certainly won’t mind listening to it for that long, just to be sure. —LEOR

GALIL

TUESDAY2

Girlschool Lillian Axe and Alcatrazz open. 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $35, $300 opera box (seats six). 17+

From the vantage point of the present, it’s difficult to appreciate just how few women were playing in hard and heavy bands in the late 70s and early 80s. Despite groundbreaking artists such as Fanny, Heart, Suzi Quatro, and the Runaways, the notion of an all-woman rock ’n’ roll group was largely dismissed by a male-dominated music industry, while music journalists o en seemed to be paraphrasing English lexicographer Samuel Johnson in his denigration of woman preachers: “Sir, a woman’s shredding is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” That’s all to say it took major huevos for the four women behind Girlschool to launch their metal outfit in 1978.

Between 1980 and 1982, the Londoners dropped a trio of excellent albums—Demolition, Hit and Run, and Screaming Blue Murder—that established them as major players in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Their stripped-down, punk-inflected music was devastatingly effective, and though their profile certainly benefited from the friendship and patronage of Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, he’d be the first to admit they didn’t need him. (The two bands joined forces as Headgirl in 1981 and released the EP St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which was certified silver in the UK thanks to their scorching cover of “Please Don’t Touch” by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates.)

Girlschool have soldiered on ever since, enduring lineup changes and losses, including the departure of original bassist Enid Wilson in 2019 and the death of original lead guitarist Kelly Johnson from cancer in 2007. Last year, they released their 14th studio album, WTFortyfive? , their first since 2015’s Guilty as Sin , and you could say they came back with a bang. The record is fierce and clean, with a timeless sound that speaks to their early classics but could fit neatly into any era of their 45-year run.

Ever since I heard that Girlschool are retiring from the tour circuit following this string of U.S. dates, everything on WTFortyfive? sounds to me like a reflection of a job well done—if not always fairly appreciated. “It Is What It Is” is defiantly resigned, the spooky gothic vampire tale “Cold Dark Heart” is sinister and romantic, and “Barmy Army” (named

feat. former members of The

and Levon Helm Band In Maurer Hall

for the band’s original fan club) is a heartfelt thankyou to the legions who’ve followed them all these decades. Guitarist Joe Stump, who plays with Los Angeles metal greats Alcatrazz (Girlschool’s current tourmates), makes a guest appearance on “Are You Ready?”—and yes, yes he is! They close the album with a cover of Motörhead’s “Born to Raise Hell,” which features Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell, Saxon singer Biff Byford, and Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan. This just may be Girlschool’s final Chicago appearance, so make it a priority.

—MONICA KENDRICK

WEDNESDAY3

Erika de Casier Contour opens. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $22. 18+

Erika de Casier knows yearning can be complex. The Danish songwriter and producer pulls from 90s R&B, neosoul, and downtempo while subtly untangling classic tropes to weave complicated scenarios. On the skittering “Busy,” a highlight from 2021’s Sensational (4AD), she sings about doing everything she can to remain successful. The song feels like it’s in dialogue with Artful Dodger’s 1999 twostep classic “Movin’ Too Fast,” though de Casier isn’t telling a lover to slow down; she has no time for intimacy at any speed. Instead, she’s meditating and swallowing vitamins as she longs to get a handle on her everyday grind—let alone her love life. Still, the brilliance of de Casier’s music lies in her nuanced portrayal of modern courtship. “I liked you from the first time I saw you were online,”

she sings on 2021’s “Someone to Chill With.” It’s a genuine sentiment that’s accompanied by worry about reciprocation, and she conveys the uncertainty and distance of Internet romance by imbuing the track’s syncopated percussion with anxiety.

De Casier’s vocal delivery renders each track prismatic. On 2019’s “Good Time,” she repeats a single lyric with slight variations, revealing that what she says to a lover doesn’t quite match how she feels. She has an incredible knack for writing such polysemic phrases in a way that captures the emotional roller coaster of infatuation. That comes through on her new album, Still (4AD), whose lead single, “Lucky,” combines a spectral backbeat with the phrase “I need ya another night.” Rather than communicating pure desire, though, it’s full of ambiguity—simultaneously desperate and detached, insecure and content.

De Casier’s understanding of love as something in flux feels refreshingly frank. She knows that commitment is hard, and on “Test It” she frames hooking up with a new partner as sampling a treat while deciding whether to buy. The shuffling groove and seductive keys offer something like Afrobeats for loungy comedowns; de Casier isn’t here to blow minds, but to become an integral part of someone else’ life. She o en sounds ineffably cool; the spoken-word chorus on “Ooh” embraces the ecstasy of lust against slinking beats that recall Timbaland. But de Casier is just as memorable when she’s completely unguarded. On the diaphanous ballad “The Princess,” she warbles as if on the verge of tears. She wants love, yes, but she also wants to make money and be a mother. It’s a succinct portrait of de Casier: in all her songs, she’s in search of totality.

—JOSHUA MINSOO KIM v

Erika de Casier COURTESY THE ARTIST

EARLY WARNINGS

APRIL

THU 4/4

Alan Sparhawk 8:30 and 10:30 PM, Constellation, 18+

FRI 4/5

Willis, Toledo 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

SUN 4/7

Conservative Military Image, No Guard, and more 12:30 PM, Cobra Lounge b

THU 4/11

Gully Boys, Mila La Morena, Yada

Yada 8 PM, Sleeping Village

TUE 4/16

Libianca 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

WED 4/24

Qwanqwa 8 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music F

SUN 4/28

Sadie Jean 7 PM, Chop Shop b

MAY

SAT 5/4

Ash, Felukah 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

Lime Garden 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

MON 5/6

Tei Shi 8:30 PM, Sleeping Village

FRI 5/10

Kamasi Washington 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

SAT 5/11

Giggs 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+

THU 5/16

Joyner Lucas, Millyz 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b

FRI 5/17

Say Anything, AJJ, Greet Death 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+

SAT 5/18

Levitation Room 9 PM, Chop Shop, 18+

UPCOMING CONCERTS TO HAVE ON YOUR RADAR b ALL AGES

Early Warnings newsletter: sign up here

Chicago Blues Festival day three featuring Southern Avenue, Vanessa Collier, and more noon, Millennium Park F b

SUN 6/9

MON 5/20

Bad Religion, Social Distortion 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+

FRI 5/24

Passion Pit 8 PM, the Vic b

SAT 5/25

Get the Shot, Life Cycles 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Passion Pit 8 PM, the Vic b

THU 5/30

Drain, Terror, Angel Du$t, Twitching Tongues, Mindforce, End It, Cosmic Joke 5 PM, Metro b

FRI 5/31

Drain, Terror, Mindforce, God’s Hate, Angel Du$t, End It, Cosmic Joke 6 PM, Metro b Spectral Wound, Antichrist Siege Machine, Spirit Possession 7:30 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 17+

BEYOND

SAT 6/1

Melt-Banana, Babybaby_explores, Flying Luttenbachers 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

TUE 6/4

Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon, Woes 8 PM, Schubas, 18+

THU 6/6

Chicago Blues Festival day one featuring Shemekia Copeland, Ronnie Baker Brooks 6 PM, Ramova Theatre, 18+ F

FRI 6/7

Chicago Blues Festival day two featuring a centennial tribute to Jimmy Rogers, Mr. Sipp, Corey Harris, and more noon, Millennium Park F b

Tank, Keri Hilson, Carl Thomas 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b

SAT 6/8

Beyond the Gate featuring Kim Gordon, Irreversible Entanglements 6 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery (outdoors) b

GOSSIP WOLF

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

Chicago Blues Festival day four featuring Buddy Guy, the Cash Box Kings, and more noon, Millennium Park F b Of Montreal, Godcaster 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

TUE 6/11

Róisín Murphy 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b

FRI 6/14

The Amours 7:30 PM, the Promontory

SUN 6/16

A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, NLE Choppa, Dess Dior, Luh Tyler 8 PM, Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b

SUN 6/23

Grlwood 7:30 PM, Park West b

SUN 7/21

311, Awolnation, Neon Trees 6:30 PM, Salt Shed (outdoors) b

SAT 7/27

Guerilla Toss 9 PM, Empty Bottle

SAT 8/24

Dillinger Escape Plan, the World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, No Men 6:30 PM, Salt Shed (outdoors) b

SAT 9/14

Fletcher, Maude Latour 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom b

THU 9/26

La Luz 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+

FRI 9/27–SUN 9/29

Cold Waves XII featuring Clan of Xymox, Drab Majesty, A Split Second, SRSQ, and more Metro, 18+

SAT 10/5

Meghan Trainor, Paul Russell, Chris Olsen 6:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

FRI 11/15

Front 242, Kontravoid 8 PM, Metro, 18+

SAT 11/16

Front 242, Kanga 8 PM, Metro, 18+ v

LAST WEEK , Chicago multi- instrumentalist Chaepter Negro dropped his second solo album, Naked Era . Chaepter, who records and performs under his first name, grew up in central Illinois and started playing cello and piano at age six. “It was originally something I really loved to do, but nothing that I ever thought would be something I could pursue fully,” he says. “Then I moved here in 2019 for the music scene.” Chaepter knew only one Chicago band when he moved to the city: a poppy rock group called the Red Scarves. “They pretty much helped me figure out how to get integrated into the world here—how to book shows, how to meet people and stuff,” Chaepter says. “They also have a few members that play with me.”

COVID prevented Chaepter from playing out much for years, but he was well-equipped to make music on his own. In October 2022, he self-released Kicking the Cat, a hushed and contemplative home-recorded album nourished by his pop and R&B experimentation. In comparison, the new record feels bigger and bolder. “This was my first time in a real studio,” Chaepter says of the Naked Era sessions. “I’ve always been very DIY minded, just in every aspect of it. But this was my first time working with other engineers, which really helped. It was my first guitar record; I wrote everything on guitar. That allowed me to try different paintbrushes, try different sounds, and work with engineers who have a lot more experience with recording drums or recording louder instruments and stuff than what I’m used to in a bedroom, living room, or closet.”

On Thursday, March 21, Chaepter headlines Schubas with a full band to celebrate Naked Era . Fruitleather , Gerfety , and Drumset open; tickets cost $15 ($13 in advance), and the music starts at 8 PM.

LAST MONTH , Virginia label Beach Impediment released Someone Else’s Dance , the second album from Chicago underground supergroup Canal Irreal . Guitarist Scott Plant, who also mixed the new record, plays riffs that blow through its chill postpunk like an icy wind, sometimes exploding into brittle shards to complement the scabbed barks of front man Martin Sorrondeguy. Drummer Lupe Garza and bassist Fernando Anteliz provide a relentless churning drive that heats the album’s frigid atmospheres to boiling. Gossip Wolf particularly digs “Chicago,” in which Sorrondeguy meets someone in a bar

who wants to quiz him about the World’s Fair and famous Chicagoans—he replies by praising the city’s long history of counterculture art and music. It’s probably the best punk song ever to shout out Smart Bar’s Queen! series.

EARLIER THIS MONTH , Chicago fourthwave emo band Mush dropped their first full-length in five years, Mush With Benefits Front man Erik Czaja says he shi ed his focus away from music a few years before the pandemic, which has changed his approach to songwriting. “I was definitely burned out from trying to make it in the music industry, and I think that this approach has made it much more appealing and much better for me,” he says. “But then again, I have friends who talk to me and say, like, ‘You write so much music— how do you do it?’” Czaja also maintains his other bands, Pet Symmetry and Dowsing , and the latter released No One Said This Would Be Easy in December.

Mush With Benefits is lighthearted and reflective, and Czaja’s lyrics spoof the music industry’s grindset economy (“Pay 2 Play”) and offer sweet homages to the local scene (“Subt Downstairs”). This wolf is soft on the album’s third single, “Going Dutch,” because it mentions the Freeze in Logan Square (Mush shot most of the song’s video at the shuttered ice cream spot). Czaja appreciates his bandmates’ laissez-faire approach to his writing. “They let me say whatever I want and make funny things happen,” he says. “Sometimes they don’t even know what the songs are about until they see it. Like, we’re in the studio doing whatever, and they’re like, ‘You can’t say that. What are you doing?’”

Mush welcome Mush With Benefits into the world with a record-release show at a Wicker Park DIY space on Friday, March 29; email joeshadidmusic@gmail.com for details.

CHICAGO INDIE ROCKERS Gorilla Tuesday play zippy, upbeat songs with an undercurrent of sorrow. Earlier this month they released the single “Summer Scaries,” whose chipper hooks sound a bit like XTC. On Thursday, March 21, they headline Gman Tavern to celebrate their brand-new EP, Sorry I Dropped Your Fortune Cookie . Hollow Bastion opens; tickets cost $15 ($12 in advance), and the show starts at 8:30 PM. —LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

Libianca performs at Bottom Lounge in April. DANNY PROTAS

CLASSIFIEDS

JOBS

Clinical Research Associate – Northwestern University (Chicago)

• Oversee the full life cycle of multicenter randomized clinical trials including study design and implementation; data collection tool development; data quality assessment and ongoing monitoring; regulatory reporting; statistical analysis; interpretation of results and manuscript writing.

• Engage in both ongoing studies and grant proposal development, including the pursuit of funding for NIH supported data coordinating center opportunities.

• Teaching Master-level data analysts and physicians, PhD, and pre-doctoral scientists in data analyses and data interpretation.

• Managing and analyzing large datasets, such as RNA sequencing libraries.

• Participating as a co-investigator on ongoing randomized clinical trials and longitudinal observational studies and planning randomized clinical trials, including participating in Zoom meetings to discuss preparations for NIH and other grant proposals and to discuss data analyses, outcome measures, manuscript development for proposed and completed studies. Must have a master’s degree in statistics or a related field. Must have one year of experience in conducting sophisticated statistical analysis including longitudinal data analysis and survival analysis Must have one year of experience providing statistical support and presenting outputs within a clinical research team Must have one year of experience programming with SAS and/or R Health Care Service Corporation seeks Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to work as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. REQS: This position reqs a Bach deg, or forgn equiv, in Tech or Bus Admin or a rel fld + 2 Yrs of exp as a proj mgr, sys analyst, or a rel position. Telecommuting permitted. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil.com, search [Business Analyst / R0026599. EOE].

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Senior Infrastructure Engineer (Chicago, IL) to

participate in the design and build of repeatable patterns (Build-Kits specific to End User Computing environment) to improve deployment times for non-prod and prod environments.

REQS: This pos reqs a bach deg, or forn equiv, in comp sci, MIS or a rel fld + 5 Yrs of exp in Info Tech or rel occ. Telecommuting: Telecommuting permitted 1 day a week. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil. com, search [Senior Infrastructure Engineer / R0023494. EOE.].

Quantitative Researcher Aquatic Group is seeking a Quantitative Researcher in Chicago, IL. Apply statistical & data science techniques to alternative datasets in order to construct features predictive of stock returns. Must live w/in normal commuting distance of worksite. 20% remote work allowed. Email res to HR@ Aquatic.com & ref code 40555 in subject line.

Morningstar, Inc. seeks a Senior Software Engineer in Chicago, IL to work with core business partners in Sales, Finance, and Marketing to understand business requirements and provide Salesforce solutions in a timely manner. BS in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or rltd field & 5 yrs of relevant engr. exp req’d. In alternative, MS & 3 yrs of relevant engr. exp req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-043374.

Gelber Group LLC seeks Software Eng in Chicago, IL to coordinate w/ multi dept to create & implement app. by overseeing their architecture, design, develop, deploy. Reqs. 4yrs of post-bacc. exp. as a software eng or rel. Exp must incl 2yrs utilizing C#, WPF, WCF. Email Resume to: recruiting@ gelbergroup.com.

Manufacturing Engineer, Monee. Implement/improve manufacturing processes; analyze data, designs, methods to improve efficiency. Manage/recommend equipment, machines, processes. Develop audits. Bach in indust./ manufact. engineering + 4 yrs exp. Manufact. Engr. required. Mail res., cov.

let. to J. Kahn, Whiting Corp., 26000 S Whiting Way, Monee, IL 60449.

Software Development Engineer III wanted by Egencia LLC in Chicago, IL. Apply knowl of s/w dsgn principles, data structures and/ or dsgn patterns & cs fundamentals to write code that is clean, maintainable, optimized & modular w/ good naming conventions. Must have a Bachelor’s deg in Cs, or rltd field plus four (4) yrs of rel exp. May work from home within commuting distance to office. Salary range: $123,614$178,500 E-mail resume to: job.application@ amexgbt.com & refer to Job Req# J-66167

Kenway Consulting, LLC Kenway Consulting, LLC seeks Validation Engineer in Chicago, IL for rmdtn actvties invlvng asesmt, rsk idntfctn, & mtgtn plng by usng strtgc plng & CAPA. Reqs BS in Engrng or clsly rltd fld + 24 mnths exp in rltd ocptn. Reqs 24 mnths exp w/ fllwng: Strtgc plng, CAPA, prdctn & prcss mthd vldtn; Sftwr vldtn & prdct cmplnce, tstng & trblshtng; Systm dev mthdlgs & tchncl wrtng (Veeva, SDLC, TrkWse); Dta analsys & vldtn. Telecommuting is avlbl. Mail resumes to Sarab Weiss at 200 North LaSalle Street, Suite 1850, Chicago, IL 60601.

Home Partners of America seeks Application Architect in Chicago, IL to design cloud-native software architecture that supports dvlpmt of APIs, integrations w/ prtnrs, & other business critical web apps. BS in Comp Sci, MIS, Info Tech, rltd field, or frgn equiv & 7 yrs of exp in software dvlpmt. In alt, we will accept MS in Comp Sci, MIS, Info Tech, rltd field, or frgn equiv & 4 yrs of exp in software dvlpmt. For position details & to apply, visit: www.homepartners. com/about/careers.

Senior Solutions Engineer Amount, Inc seeks a Senior Solutions Engineer in Chicago, IL. Work on API configurations. Remote work available. Apply @ https://www. jobpostingtoday. com / Ref #20398.

Endocrinologist Sinai Medical Group seeks Endocrinologist in Chicago, IL to provide care to patients whose conditions require a specialist in disorders & diseases of the endocrine system. Requires medical degree or equiv., IL physician license,

Go to classifieds.chicagoreader.com

completion of internal medicine residency & endocrinology fellowship.

Worksites: Mount Sinai Hospital, Schwab Hospital & Holy Cross Hospital. Email CV to F. Copeland at fran. copeland@sinai.org.

Multiple Openings Arcus Technologies, Inc. dba Kattech Systems, Inc. in Arlington Heights, IL has multi open’gs: A)

Software Developers to sup’rt & dvlp webbased Java/J2EE apps, & web svcs. Trvl & relo possible to unanticipated client sites w/in U.S. B) Software Test Engineers to be involvd in dvlpmnt & execut’n of SW tests.

Reqs periodic trvl to client sites in the U.S. Send resumes to: hr@ kattechsystems. com

NBCRNA National Board of Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetists (NBCRNA) seeks Business Intelligence Analyst in Chicago, IL to assr vrs NBCRNA Dta Systms are in-sync & cnstnt. Reqs BS in Math, Econ or Stat, or a clsly rltd fld + 24 mnths exp in a rltd ocptn. Reqs 24 mnths exp w/ the fllwng: SQL Srvr Rptng Srvcs (SSRS), SQL ldr; Prgrmng lgc; Dta intgrty, dta vldtn, dta cnsldtn, rsrch dta analsys, dta pipln crtn; Dta mngmnt; Cmnctn skls to trnslte dta into dta insgts & clct tchncl req for rprts; & Mcrsft Office, Tablu, PwrBI. Telecommuting is avlbl. Mail resumes to Leah Cannon at 8725 W Higgins Road, Suite 525, Chicago, IL 60631.

Software Web Developer JSSI is seeking a Software Web Developer. Dvlp web-based applications or tools specific to the needs of company using advanced Frontend (HTML, SCSS, Typescript, React and Angular) & backend (C#, .NET) tech stacks including systems for tracking maintenance records, managing inventory, displaying aircraft data, or generating reports. Pos is 100% remote. May live anywhere in the U.S. Apply online at https:// jetsupport.com/careers/.

Software Engineer

II Law Bulletin Media seeks a Software Engineer II in Chicago, IL, to Coordinate directly with subject matter experts and/or end users (within Law Bulletin), to identify and document process, role, and technical requirements and definitions as a function of systems delivery. Apply at https:// www.jobpostingtoday. com/Ref #21648.

Senior Product Manager, Platform (SMB) Enova Financial

Holdings, LLC seeks Senior Product Manager, Platform (SMB) in Chicago, IL to ld prdct rdmp dvlpmt. Telecomm. (remt wrk) prmtd. Apply at jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref #15856.

Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Enginee r Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Engineer to lead projects on highly scalable & dynamic web system that supports integration w/ multiple search engines/ clustering technologies & client component interaction through web services using many of the newest/cloudbased technologies. Remote work option. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 249003 in the subject line.

HOUSING

ONE BEDROOM Apartment Near Diversey & California ~800sf, 2nd floor (2-flat), satellite & WiFi ready, wood & tile floors. $1,280/mo. + gas/heat. Contact: Chad 630-776-4030

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning. com

MATCHES

All romantic dates women wanted romantic fun dates all requests 24.7 Call (773) 977-8862 swm

Gossip Girl at Chicago Public Library

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@gmail.com.

SAVAGE LOVE

You’re the top!

By DAN SAVAGE

Q: I’m having a weird reaction to someone I’m involved with. I find myself wanting to punish him for the slightest transgressions and scold him or give him the silent treatment until he apologizes. The poor guy hasn’t done anything very wrong (nothing “wrong” wrong). He’s just failed to meet my unreasonably high expectations for him.

To make matters worse, we seem to have fallen into some sort of roleplay, verbally at least, where I order him around. He seems to want me to punish him and give him orders. I’m doing both, but I’ve never been a Dom or had a sub or whatever it is we’re doing.

Honestly, I’m confused about what we’re doing but he seems to be inviting it somehow. How do I navigate this? —PROBLEMS UNDERSTANDING NUANCES IN SITUATIONSHIP HERE

a : “This situation reminds me of the kinkster classic Secretary,” said the Funny Dom. “It’s a fascinating look at a Dom and a sub who don’t fully understand their identities or how to pursue the dynamic functionally. It’s sweet and hot watching Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader fall into a problematic spanking scene, but in real life we know better.”

The Funny Dom is the pen name of a 44-year-old Daddy based in Melbourne, Australia. A longtime kink practitioner and educator, the Funny Dom has been “holding lighthearted (but stern!) space” for Doms, subs, and switches online since the start of the pandemic.

dynamic escalating in ways that make you feel uncomfortable about your actions— identifying what it is you’re doing will help contain it.

“It sounds like these two have developed a kind of Dom/sub dynamic,” said the Funny Dom. “PUNISH should think of it like a particular kind of dance they’re both loosely following. And while it’s all well and good for her to say he’s inviting it, it takes two to tango.”

Maybe your boyfriend already knew he was a sub when you met and he’s subtly training you to dominate him—by rewarding the punishing behaviors he wants to see from you. I’m guessing your boyfriend is just as confused about the dynamic you’ve both stumbled into. But since you seem to enjoy punishing him, PUNISH, and since your boyfriend seems to enjoy being punished by you, this sounds less like a problem and more like the beginning of a beautiful (and very hot) relationship.

“It’s obvious from the way PUNISH and her boyfriend respond to each other’s behavior that D/s resonates for both of them,” said the Funny Dom. “They have a real opportunity here to explore a big juicy part of their identities. But to take those steps, they need to have a conversation about the moves they’ve both been pulling— and what those moves mean to them—and then discuss whether they’d like to pursue this dynamic further. And if so, how they can pursue it mindfully.”

One of you needs to say, “Hey, what are we doing here?”, and since you’re the one who wrote to me first, PUNISH, I think you’re the one who needs to say it. And if you’re concerned about where this is heading—if you’re worried about this

Right now, PUNISH, you’re punishing your boyfriend and kinda sorta hoping he likes it as much as you think he does. Once you’ve talked about it, you’ll be able to punish your boyfriend with confidence that he likes what you’re doing. And remember: this conversation isn’t just about identifying your boyfriend’s limits as a sub, PUNISH, it’s also about identifying your limits as a Dom.

“To start the conversation they can watch a decent kinky movie together,” said the Funny Dom, “something like Secretary or Love and Leashes (a much less problematic and even sweet depiction of a male sub dynamic). Then they can talk about what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what, if anything, reflected what’s happening between them. They can also grab a how-to book—and there are many— and look for a kink class or workshop to attend together and independently.”

Two how-to books you might want to pick up and read with the boyfriend: The Funny Dom’s Guide to Kink (volumes one and two), which are available now.

“PUNISH and her boyfriend—really, all couples who are interested in kink—need to remember that kink is a big, big, hot, transformative, messy, wonderful adventure,” said the Funny Dom. “And it shouldn’t be done in a non-conscious vacuum, folks.”

In other words, PUNISH, you gotta talk about it. Or as we like to say here at Savage Love, Inc., you gotta use your words v

The Funny Dom on Instagram: @thefunnydomreturns. Download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love.

m mailbox@savage.love

Anna

Samita Sinha, Tremor

ON STAGE: RESONANCE SPRING PERFORMANCE SERIES MAR 28–MAY 11, 2024

MCACHICAGO.ORG /RESONANCE

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO

Photo: