Chicago Reader print issue of September 19, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 33) by Chicago Reader

FRONT

04 Readers Respond

04 Editor’s Note From Chicago to the world

CITY LIFE

06 Shop Local A typewriter store opened in the suburbs.

Fall eater & Arts

FOOD & DRINK

08 Feature Josh Noel aims to demystify Malört in his new book about the history of Chicago’s signature spirit.

09 Reader Bites Shallot-infused ten-year Shaoxing cocktail in Minyoli

NEWS & POLITICS

10 Elections The ﬁrst-ever vote for school board in Chicago

12 Community landmarks Vintage signs have become beloved community landmarks.

14 Public transit The plan to merge the CTA, Metra, and Pace

COMMENTARY

16 Isaacs | On Culture The fall opera season opens at Lyric, COT, and Haymarket.

ARTS & CULTURE

18 Gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey reﬂect on their 20-year run.

20 Preview Federico Solmi transforms the Block into a giant video installation.

22 Review “Radical Cra ” illuminates Hull-House’s history of innovative arts education.

23 Comic Hu o ng Ngô makes space for electronics factory workers.

THEATER & DANCE

24 Preview CIRCA Pintig launches the Chicago Filipino American Theatre Festival.

26 Stages of Survival Aguijón Theater Company, the oldest Spanish-language company in Chicago, turns 35.

27 Plays of Note The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon East Texas Hot Links Henry V, and more

29 Feature Subtext Studio Theatre and Forest Park Theatre bring drama to the near west suburbs.

30 Feature Giggle Hour combines live lit and comedy with diverse lineups.

32 Preview picks Our critics suggest a few promising options in theater and dance.

FILM

34 Feature The Chicago International Film Festival celebrates its 60th anniversary with citywide retrospective programming.

42 Moviegoer On the underground 43 Movies of Note The Killer’s Game is a bigbudget action win, My Old Ass is a surprisingly deep comedy, and Transformers One is a refreshing animated prequel.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

45 The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago Its 12 free shows, spread out over ten days, oﬀer curious listeners dozens of opportunities for discovery.

54 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including the Englewood Jazz Festival, Powerplant, Caterina Barbieri, and Femdot.

62 Gossip Wolf Vocalo sends oﬀ summer with a top-shelf Chicago lineup, and Golden Egg takes applications for its ﬁrst round of retirement-support grants for musicians.

CLASSIFIEDS

61 Jobs

61 Housing

61 Professionals & Services

BACK

63 Savage Love Finally talking about porn a er 19 years together

ON THE COVER

ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE READER BY VERONICA MARTINEZ (TOP HALF) AND ARIANNA UNABIA AQUINO (BOTTOM HALF)

MARTINEZ’S ART FEATURES DESNEVAR AND LA MEMORIA DE LOS SESILES IN DESTINOS: SEVENTH CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL LATINO THEATER FESTIVAL. AQUINO’S ART FEATURES HAIL MARY/MARIA, DARYO’S ALL-AMERICAN DINER, AND THE BUTTERFLY OF CHULA VISTA IN THE CHICAGO AMERICAN FILIPINO THEATRE FESTIVAL.

WITHIN THE ILLUSTRATION CONNECTED TO THE PLAY THE BUTTERFLY OF CHULA VISTA, AQUINO INCLUDED THE TAGALOG SLANG TERM “BAKLA,” WHICH HISTORICALLY IN THE PHILIPPINES HAS BEEN A PEJORATIVE TERM AGAINST LGBTQ+ PEOPLE. IN RECENT YEARS, FILIPINX LGBTQ+ PEOPLE HAVE RECLAIMED THE TERM AS A POSITIVE MARKER OF BOTH GENDER AND SEXUALITY (MUCH LIKE THE JOURNEY OF THE WORD “QUEER” IN AMERICAN PARLANCE) AND IT IS IN THAT SPIRIT THAT THE TERM IS INCLUDED ON OUR COVER.

MORE FROM MARTINEZ CAN BE FOUND AT VEROMARTINEZART.COM OR ON INSTAGRAM @ VEROMARTINEZART. MORE FROM AQUINO CAN BE FOUND AT ARIANNAUA.COM ON INSTAGRAM @ ARIANNAUA.

COVER PULL QUOTE SAID BY GINGER LEOPOLDO IN “CIRCA PINTIG LAUNCHES INAUGURAL CHICAGO FILIPINO AMERICAN THEATRE FESTIVAL” BY ANNA ROGELIO JOAQUIN, P. 24

CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES

EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN

MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE

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ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING

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MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO

CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD & DRINK TARYN ALLEN

CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS, LITERARY ARTS KERRY CARDOZA

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newly renovated exterior of Bridgeport’s Ramova Theatre

BREAK CYCLES TO BUILD FUTURES

EDITOR’S NOTE Reader Letters m

Re: “Riverbeast alert,” written by Leor Galil and published in the August 22 issue (volume 53, number 29)

I take exception to [Galil’s] comments about me, the gentleman who opens the ﬁlm with some comments about the ferocious Riverbeast and how it can be very frightening. Mr. Galil mentions that I have a Boston accent, which I do—and I’m proud of it! What is wrong with a Boston accent?

According to Mr. Galil, “The host’s voice also sounds a little muddy . . . as if calling from the Ted Williams Tunnel.” In one sentence he disparages my voice and the Ted Williams Tunnel. I think Mr. Galil may have played the movie on some defective equipment. And when the greatest hitter who ever lived (aka the “Splendid Splinter”) is thawed out, I hope he does not read this critique.

A er my wife saw Galil’s comment about the scenery behind the host appearing cluttered, I spent the next six hours decluttering the room. Not that it was ever cluttered, so thank you Mr. Galil for that f***ing uncalled for comment! I had some pictures of my grandchildren on a table!

And I’ll have you know that covering one’s eyes and then spreading one’s ﬁngers is a gesture that is well-known in the Boston area. Sort of like Dirty Harry and the “Make my day” line.

For a low-budget ﬁlm, Mr. Farley and Mr. Roxburgh produced a future classic. —William Reilly, “the card-carrying AARP non-actor, aka Alistair Cooke,” via email

Leor Galil responds . . .

I must rebut a point Mr. Reilly made in his letter that suggested I watched Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! on “defective equipment.” I repeatedly watched his scene on two diﬀerent machines that are fairly new and in good working order: a ﬂat-screen Roku TV my sister-in-law purchased for me and my wife in 2020, and an M1 MacBook Air from that same year. When I saw Riverbeast at the Music Box garden screening last month, Reilly sounded just as muddy as I’d witnessed in my home.

I apologize for calling his room “cluttered,” since my home oﬃce is much more disordered in comparison—though I am not about to put my habitat in a Matt Farley ﬁlm.

Editor’s note: Judge for yourself! The Music Box Theatre hosts another screening of Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! on Monday, September 23 at 9:30 PM. See musicboxtheatre.com for details.

Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader threads.net/@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

We’ve been presenting seasonal issues devoted to the arts in the last few years. We’ve covered breakdancer crews, new film festivals, premiere showings of major artworks, and even Chicago’s burgeoning puppet scene.

But perhaps you didn’t notice? Similarly, we’ve given you in-depth previews and unique insight into global music artists performing in Chicago for the first time under the auspices of the city’s longtime-running, always free, and (in my opinion) ridiculously good World Music Festival. In some years, we were the both the ﬁ rst and the only local outlet to ﬁ nd the backstories on the bands and musicians and to give our readers more context and more reasons to head out to World Music Festival events.

But again, maybe it didn’t register for ya. Let’s face it, if you’re reading this very note, you’re one of our “clean plate club” group of gold star Reader readers, and you most likely read the entire thing, cover to cover in print and take in as many posts as possible online. You not only share our headlines with your friends, you discuss the topics that we tackle. You know the names of our writers and you look for the latest from each of them. You let us know when a Reader box is empty because you’re looking for more to read.

You’re part of the group that perhaps didn’t notice our “special packages” because you know we always go above and beyond in covering the arts in Chicagoland. So perhaps you didn’t realize what was going on, because you’ve grown to expect this kind of cover-

age from us. We’re one of very few general focus newsrooms nationally that publishes on a regular basis about dance, theater, and yes—puppetry.

Chicago boasts some of the most innovative and skilled practitioners of these arts. They’re teaching in our schools, our colleges, and even at the Park District. They’re creating new plays (a new play! in the year 2024! When decades ago, people said that theater was dead!) and pushing the genres forward. We brought back art gallery reviews to the paper in the last few years and regularly feature craft workers not because analytics told us to, but because there’s a whole new world being created in the museums, galleries, and workshops, and you, our readers, need to know about it. We focus on the insanity of riches that Chicago o ers in its screening rooms, so that you can decide any given weekend to go see the independently created experimental film at the theater, or check out the many Chicago-connected offerings online and on what we call television these days. It’s all being made here, and you need to know about it.

And we all know that music is not just a pastime in Chicago, but a way of life, right? That’s why you’ll see us write about concerts happening all over the city, with music that originates all over the world. Enjoy this issue’s special arts package and then go out and support the artists, musicians, and venues that help make our city great. v

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

The various parts of a Hammond 1918 Multiplex typewriter as disassembled by Lucas Dul of Typewriter Chicago. LUCAS DUL

September 8, 2024–July 27, 2025

CITY LIFE

Type Z

A younger generation embraces vintage machines.

By TEA KRULOS

It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and Lucas Dul is behind the service counter of his shop, Typewriter Chicago, helping a customer ﬁgure out her situation for a writing project she’s working on. The customer’s machine is an IBM Selectric III from the early 1980s, a beast of a device that weighs almost 50 pounds (about ten times the weight of an average laptop computer).

The Selectric “had a common issue—a cracked central hub—and that’s an expensive repair, so it turns out it was a few bucks cheaper for her to buy a machine that’s been serviced and take that home instead,” Dul

explains later. He’s able to provide her with a similar model. With both parties satisfied with the deal, Dul sits at his Olympia SG1 typewriter, and with a clack clack clack he types the customer a receipt, turning a crank to pull it free of the platen (the roller that holds the paper). Next to the typewriter is the store’s phone—an old rotary hooked up to a landline. A shop like Dul’s in 2024 seems as anachronistic as can be, but Dul says he has no shortage of work—he currently has a waiting list of about 80 typewriters he needs to look at. On a workbench behind the counter are three more of Dul’s pending work orders. There’s a shiny Underwood Champion from the 1930s, which

has an issue with the top halves of the letters not printing.

“The bad thing about the Underwood portables is they’re hard to service, because the mechanics were not well designed for service people. So I have to rip o the entire back end of the machine just to make one little adjustment,” Dul explains. Next to the Underwood is another clunky IBM Selectric. Dul says this machine works fine; it just needs thorough cleaning. The last typer on deck is a World War II era–Royal KMM that Dul is ﬁxing for a friend. The trouble with this machine is that it has a custom-made carriage (the part that moves the platen back and forth), so Dul’s having trouble finding the right parts. With older, rarer machines, this sometimes means he must fabricate new pieces of the puzzle himself.

“I’ve always loved vintage and analog technology and taking things apart to see how they work,” Dul says. He also likes reel-to-reel tape recorders as well as photography and old cameras—a backroom in his repair shop doubles as a darkroom. “And I’ve always been a fan of creativity and writing and reading, so that all naturally coalesced into typewriters.” Dul, now 24 years old, got his start with typewriters about ten years ago. He was curious to try one out but didn’t have money to buy a working one, so he found a broken one and dismantled it to ﬁgure out how to repair it.

“It took me a while to piece it back together,” Dul says. One typewriter followed another as his repair skills and general knowledge grew. “Over the years I realized there was more of a demand from friends and local businesses— and that people would pay me to fix their typewriters—so it expanded to a business I ran out of my house.” Dul adds that since then he’s ﬁxed hundreds of machines, some shipped to him from all over the world. Eventually, Dul developed enough of a following that he was able to implement a dream a long time in the making—opening his own shop. This June he slowly moved into his storefront, located in a strip of businesses in Downers Grove, with a barber shop and an aquatic pet store as his neighbors. It’s a small space but has enough room for storage, a workbench, and a small storefront to display a rack of ribbons and a few typewriters for sale. These can range from $50 to a few hundred depending on the machine’s age, shape, and rarity.

“I thought it would be fun to create this space that helps solidify the legacy of these machines into the modern age and generate

Hours by appointment; 1525 Ogden, Unit L, Downers Grove, 630 - 561- 5853 typewriterchicago.com/contest

interest in people,” Dul says, “and to help foster this community of creative thinkers, writers, and artists.”

To that last thought, Dul launched his annual short-story-writing contest this month, with a theme this year of “Fireside.” The contest closes September 30, and a panel of judges will select the winner, who will receive a Groma Kolibri typewriter. Although Dul says his preferred model of typer tends to shift, this rare device, a lightweight model made in East Germany in the 1950s and 60s, is his current favorite.

Although there are still old-school shops like Wagner O ce Machines, a familyowned business in Burr Ridge that has repaired and maintained copiers, printers, typewriters, and other machines since 1912, Dul is part of a newer trend of younger typewriter servicepeople.

“There’s a new wave of people trying to take over the business so we can keep it running,” Dul says. “One of the most important things is creating this network of repair people who kind of know each other and help each other out, so we can establish this general standard of quality amongst the new generation of typewriter repair.”

Some of those connected to this new network include Edmonton’s YEG Typewriters, run by 28-year-old Keith Ferrer, and Tampa Typewriter Co., a repair service run by 19-year-old Jack Armstrong. Both services run out of the proprietors’ homes, though Armstrong says he hopes to open a shop after college. But who are the clientele providing business?

Dul says his customers include collectors and people who appreciate the history of these machines. “But a lot are just people who want to use them—they want to write letters, books, poetry, make artwork on them. There are also businesses that use them for bill and tax payments, stu like that.”

Demand for typewriters has been “signiﬁcantly increasing over the last few years,” Dul says, as people “get tired of their digital technology and they’re looking for something that’s a little simpler and more direct.” That desire for a “digital detox” is frequently brought up amongst typewriter aficionados—it’s an escape from pop-up ads, spyware, AI-generated content, doomscrolling, deepfakes, obnoxious comments sections, and all the other headaches that hit you at Internet speed. A piece of paper in a typewriter, on the

The Chicago Model Number One typewriter was manufactured from the 1880s until 1917 in Chicago and Galesburg by the Chicago Writing Machine Company. This one is circa 1890. LUCAS DUL

other hand, is a simpler connection of your thoughts tapped out letter by letter, mistakes and all.

A manual typewriter can also be taken anywhere, Dul points out, and if it’s shown proper care, “it’s going to work forever. They’re very solid and reliable. There’s this kind of tactile feel that people really love. It creates an atmosphere of feeling like you’re doing something productive.”

A business in agreement with Dul is Kibbitznest Books, Brews & Blarney on Clybourn in Sheffield Neighbors, which strives to be unplugged and WiFi free. The cafe, bar, bookstore, and venue has five typewriters provided by Kibbitznest, Inc., the nonprofit associated with the business, although only one typewriter is currently in working order and available to use by customers. Annie Kostiner founded both the nonprofit and business aspects of Kibbitznest (the for-profit cafe is now run by Paige Ho man).

“The experience of writing on a typewriter, although an advancement in technology

from paper and pen, serves as a reminder of a time when communication with other people was more tactile and sensory rather than an alienating and isolating experience sitting in front of a computer or holding a smartphone,” Kostiner says. She adds that overexposure to digital technology can be no just aggravating but also detrimental, citing studies that show that growing up constantly plugged in “can change the brain by rewriting a child’s brain pathways altering how they would normally develop” leading to “verbal skills and emotional intelligence” su ering.

“Society will be paying a hefty price as more and more young people depend on digital technology to communicate,” Kostiner says. The key, she believes, is to balance out that virtual world with “face-to-face communication,” and Kibbitznest encourages those interactions with a liberal arts discussion series and by engaging people with books and typewriters.

“We have enjoyed reading the random thoughts of our patrons as we keep a bulletin

board at the front entrance with many of the leftover poems, comments, and short stories,” says Kostiner. “Over the years we’ve had musicians write songs, authors write books, and students write term papers on the typewriters—it’s been a rewarding experience.”

Typewriters have celebrity endorsement, too. Actor Tom Hanks is an avid collector, as shown in the 2017 documentary California Typewriter . He’s known for surprising typewriter shop owners by shipping them an autographed typewriter along with a letter to show his appreciation for them. Dul was a recipient of this ritual and has his signed typer on display in a glass case in his shop. Typewriters even had a starring role in Taylor Swift’s music video for “Fortnight” this year, in which she and guest Post Malone clacked away on magical typewriters as they sang. Some people compare the new fans of typewriters to people who love vinyl records or collect VHS tapes. It’s a slower, more deliberate technology that’s also aesthetically pleasing.

Dul’s new shop is especially good news for people like Chicagoan Kay Kro, “the Traveling Typist.” Kro, who owns 16 typewriters, works as a “typewriter poet,” setting up to type poems on the spot at street fairs, art fests, markets, weddings, and wherever they can ﬁnd a gig.

“In addition to poetry, I peddle surprise and delight,” Kro’s website states. “My o ering is a spontaneous encounter, and an intimate, utterly unique artistic experience.” With typewriters being their bread and butter, Kro says it’s nice to have a place that local typists can turn to.

“A place like [Typewriter Chicago] is super helpful because I know at least two dozen typewriter poets in Chicago alone, and we all need a place to repair our machines,” Kro says. “If anything, we need more! Lucas is so good that he’s got a waiting list several months long. People in Chicago in my circles are all acquiring typewriters, and very few of us have the time and attention span to do our own repairs.”

In addition to helping with the nuts and bolts of maintenance, Kro says, Dul is helpful in building a sense of community.

“[Dul has] even reached out to me on Insta gram a few times congratulating me on my work and offering to cross-promote,” Kro says. “The typewriter world is so small that this kind of cross-pollination benefits everyone, and he definitely has the right spirit.”

In addition to working solo, Kro also works with the Glass Keys Collective, a self-described “lackadaisical consortium of typewriter poets” that works together as a “loose conglomerate.” Another organization of Chicago typewriter poets, Poems While You Wait, has been around since 2011. The group’s mission is to provide patrons with “a magical, unexpected, unpretentious, and decontextualized encounter with poetry.” Like Kro, Poems While You Wait often sets up at festivals and a variety of other events.

Kro invited all of these creative typists to gather at Midwest Typewriter Poet Meetup on September 8 at Andersonville’s Eli Tea Bar, a chance for people to bring their own typewriters and talk shop. A room full of typewriters clickety-clacking away, the ding of a bell when the edge of a page is reached—that’s music to the ears of people like Lucas Dul. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Lucas Dul with some of his tools in his workspace

Fall eater & Arts

BOOK REVIEW

RMALÖRT: THE REDEMPTION OF A REVERED AND REVILED SPIRIT by Josh Noel, Chicago Review Press, 272 pp., $19.99, chicagoreviewpress.com

RQ& A WITH JOSH NOEL AND BLOCK CLUB REPORTER QUINN MEYERS Sun 9/29 4 PM, The Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, joshnoel.net/malort-book

e revered, the reviled, and the taste of rubber bands

Josh

Noel aims to demystify Malört in his new book about the history of Chicago’s signature spirit.

By JONAH NINK

There’s a shot glass filled with Jeppson’s Malört in front of me.

I’ve never had Malört. The bottles of amber sadness are inescapable in Chicago—bars, parties, concert venues—and I had heard all the jokes, but never partaken. I am scared.

“I’m going to predict that you will ﬁnd it less bad than you are expecting,” says Josh Noel. Noel is an author, libation philosopher, and former beer and travel writer for the Chicago Tribune. His new book, Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit (Chicago Review Press), is about the history and legacy of Malört—it’s an immigrant story, a business story, and even a love story.

Jeppson’s Malört, purchased by CH Distillery in 2018, has lived many different lives. Noel’s book follows every thread, from Malört’s beginnings as a European oddity purchased by Chicago businessman George Brode on a lark from Swedish immigrant Carl Jeppson, to its modern teeter on the mainstream edge. When Brode died in 1999, his longtime secretary and partner Patricia Gabelick became the brand’s caretaker and almost single-handedly saved it from the sink drain of history.

Malört’s broad story is fairly well-documented elsewhere, but Noel uses his book to ﬁll in the unseen details, emphasizing the people like Gabelick who propelled the drink forward.

“I was trying to sort of demystify Malört a little bit,” Noel says. “It’s got this fascination and mystery about it and reverence, but it wasn’t very well understood as anything more than this sort of weird joke shot in Chicago bars.” Chicagoans mythologize Malört—recommend pairings and taste work-arounds, share horror stories and late-night CTA odysseys. Noel’s advice? Stop thinking and let your senses tell the story.

We’re at Christina’s Place, a 4 AM bar on Kedzie in Irving Park across the street from the post o ce. It’s Monday. The last few deep orange rays of the setting sun shine through the windows and onto bottles of everything, Malört included. Last year, a 21-year-old man

was shot and killed by police after allegedly pulling a gun on a security guard outside the bar. Tonight, everyone in the bar is cheering on the Cubs, who aren’t doing half bad. Malört is at home behind the counter of places like these, as set dressing to their stories, good and bad.

“Let’s drink,” Noel says. He is the navigator.

and its rise and eventual sale to Anheuser-Busch. Like Jeppson’s, Noel says Goose Island’s meteoric rise to a household name was propelled by an eclectic mix of savvy innovators caught in the middle of an industry in need of change.

“The payo comes in the aftertaste,” Noel says, still wincing a little. “In the walk-off, I always think ‘rubber bands.’

Not that I’ve eaten a lot of rubber bands.”

It’s funny to think that, despite having never tried Malört until that night, I was fully aware of the lore surrounding it. Even as far out as Kane County where I grew up, Malört was name-dropped. CH

The smell has heft; it’s bitter and somewhat fruity. There’s happy chatter and the odd clack of pool balls around us.

“The front story was Goose Island, but really that story is about the rise of craft beer—the ways and reasons the big beer companies felt like they had to get involved with craft beer.”

Distillery has leaned into Jeppson’s

Distillery has leaned into Jeppson’s identity with a new fleet of trucks adorned with photos of wincing people.

It’s a testament to the fact that Malört

It’s a testament to the fact that Malört has an unmatched reputation compared to other regional shots.

Noel witnessed the Malört-aissance firsthand while covering food and drink for the Tribune, most notably in the early 2010s, when the drink was propelled back into the Chicago consciousness. In his book, Noel partly credits Malört to a mix of trendsetting bartenders and savvy early coverage from food and drink writers. Part of the book is dedicated to the Reader’s own role in popularizing Malört.

“I knew people were really, really interested in it,” says Noel, “and the way I knew was anytime I wrote about Malört in the Tribune, those stories got read.”

In writing Malört , Noel aims to set the

jokes and stories aside and try to deﬁnitively understand the drink and the people behind it. He says some of the history was hazy even for Malört’s current producers.

“I interviewed the owner of CH [Distillery], talked to him seven, eight times over the course of the recording[s]. He said more than once, ‘Man, I can’t wait to read the book, there’s so much of this brand I don’t know.’”

This also isn’t Noel’s first rodeo tackling a Chicago libation. His previous book, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out (Chicago Review Press, 2018), profiled Goose Island

Noel will spend most of September bringing the Malört story on the road, with readings and book events scheduled in Chicago and as far out as New York City. He’ll wrap up his tour back in Chicago on Sunday, September 29, with a 4 PM Q&A hosted by Block Club Chicago at the Green Mill, a bar that has ﬁttingly sold more Malört than any other bar, according to Noel’s website. The event will end with one ﬁnal Malört toast.

Chicago there will be a lot of interest and

“I don’t really know what to expect. In Chicago there will be a lot of interest and excitement,” Noel says. “CH Distillery, they’re the [Malört] ambassadors. I’m here to tell the story.”

During a pause in conversation at Christina’s, Noel asks the bartender if Malört is still popular. She nods and says that they always need to order more.

As far as the next chapter of Malört’s story is concerned, Noel says, “The growth [Malört] has experienced in the last 15 years is just amazing. [Any] Chicago bar worth stepping into, I presume at this point, has a bottle behind the bar.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

FOOD & DRINK

Shallot-infused ten-year Shaoxing cocktail at Minyoli

As the dog days of summer come to a close, what everyone really needs is a drink that makes them say, “Ah, meat!” This is what my friend blurted out while trying the shallot Shaoxing cocktail at Minyoli, the simply delicious Taiwanese noodle restaurant that opened in Andersonville this past May.

The “Ah, meat!” comes from the restaurant’s in-house infusion of sweet shallots and ten-year-aged Shaoxing, a variety of

glutinous rice wine local to the Zhejiang province of eastern China. On its own, the wine has a strong fermented soy taste that is sweetened by the more delicate shallot and balanced out by Topo Chico, Taiwanese basil, and a heavy dose of lime. Altogether, the drink has a sort of meaty umami without the saltiness or pulpy particulates of your typical savory cocktail—think the best Bloody Mary you’ve ever had but with the refresh of a limey Ranch Water. It pairs perfectly with the richness of the restaurant’s Spicy

Tallow noodles, or, if you’re feeling extra boozy, their mouth-numbing Da Hong Pao Sichuan Peppercorn G&T. Visually, the Shaoxing cocktail is rather unassuming. It’s Sprite-clear on the top (the Topo) and a peachy amber color at the bottom (the Shaoxing). This might be a little scandalous, but I recommend dipping a ﬁnger (or, truly sacrilegious, a chopstick) in and stirring it all up to get the full e ect of the sweet and savory combo. It’s a drink that you’ll want to order three more of after the ﬁrst sip.

It’s well enjoyed on the back patio, where you can usually get a spot without a reservation. It’s a nice place to enjoy a book with some Ganban noodles or take your crush out for a meal—I promise you will both feel fancy without completely breaking your respective wallets. The patio gets bonus points for the static crunch of the blue bug-zappers, which make me nostalgic for the last dregs of summer as everything cools and eventually turns to fall.

—CHARLIE KOLODZIEJ

MINYOLI 5420 N. Clark, $15, minyolichicago.com v

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

cori nakamura lin | onibaba studio

NEWS & POLITICS

ELECTIONS

School board election plans

Interest groups are ramping up their support of candidates as Chicagoans prepare to elect the board for the ﬁrst time in November.

By MAUREEN KELLEHER

Since 1872, when Illinois created the Chicago Board of Education, all of Chicago’s school board members have been appointed by the mayor. But that will change on November 5, when Chicagoans will have their first-ever opportunity to vote for ten members of a new, 21-member school board, with the remaining 11 members still appointed by the mayor. In two years, the board will become a fully elected body.

Like school boards around the country, the Chicago Board of Education sets the vision, goals, policy, budget, and leadership of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). It hires and ﬁres the school district’s chief executive o cer and approves all dismissals for cause of school-level personnel. School board members, who are not paid, can expect to spend 25 to 30 hours a month or more reviewing documents, meeting with parents and the community, visiting schools, and taking part in public meetings.

Why the change from an appointed to an elected board? The process was actually altered in the late 80s with decentralization through 1988’s Chicago School Reform Act, which gave part of the power to nominating commissions that would create a slate of candidates and deliver a preferred list to the mayor— however, the mayor still retained ﬁnal approval and oversight on board members. The act was e ectively reversed in 1995 with the Chicago School Reform Amendatory Act which gave then Mayor Daley full control of the board again.

Much of the credit for this year’s shift to a fully elected board goes to a grassroots movement ignited by the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, supported by many other community groups and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and fueled by anger at former mayor Rahm Emanuel’s closure of 50 schools. Organizers envisioned elected parents and community members—not clout-heavy appointees subject to a high-handed mayor—running the city’s school system. This election begins the road test of their vision.

Already, the mechanics of electing Chicago’s school board have been through a few rounds of bare-knuckle politics. Though the state legislature passed a 2021 law creating the elected school board (and placing a moratorium on school closures), lawmakers didn’t ﬁnalize the map of voting districts until March of 2024.

After a summer of bruising challenges to candidates’ nominating petition signatures, the initial lineup of 47 candidates

shrank to 31, plus a handful of candidates running write-in campaigns.

Interest groups with deep pockets are also involved or likely to become involved soon, from the CTU to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS) to business-backed political action and independent expenditure committees. One of those independent committees, Urban Center Action, was recently cofounded by former schools CEO Paul Vallas and Juan Rangel, former president of UNO Charter School Network.

Urban Center Action has already raised more than $671,000. INCS’s independent committee controls nearly $3 million—almost $1 million of which came from James Frank, an auto leasing executive who chairs the board of Intrinsic Schools, a charter network, and sits on the INCS board of directors. Both INCS and the Urban Center have said they will make formal candidate endorsements soon. INCS has already donated money to third district candidate Carlos Rivas and sixth district candidate Andre Smith. The Urban Center has donated to Smith and to seventh district candidate Eva Villalobos, a Catholic school parent who has advocated that Illinois continue its now-defunct tax scholarship program, which gave tax breaks to donors who paid for private school tuition.

Despite the frenzy of petition signature challenges, at press time, six districts have three or more candidates, and only one district has a single candidate: fifth district candidate Aaron “Jitu” Brown is running unopposed after Michilla “Kyla” Blaise withdrew on September 6. Over the course of the summer, 16 other candidates withdrew from the race or could not surmount petition signature challenges.

Will this experiment in direct democracy lead to better schools? That’s unclear. While elected boards govern more than 90 percent of U.S. school districts, some research suggests big-city districts with mayoral-appointed boards have seen slightly bigger student test score gains than big cities with elected boards. The 21-member school board—expanded from seven members—will also be one of the largest school boards in the nation. Some observers, including the Civic Federation, a watchdog over Chicago and Illinois government, question whether such a large board can come to consensus and govern e ectively.

CPS is struggling to balance its budget and ensure all students, especially those whose families have the fewest resources, receive a

quality education. Whether an elected board can help solve these problems remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: without well-informed and engaged voters, an elected school board could devolve into factions and inﬁghting, or become the tool of a single interest group.

THE MAP

It’s never easy to draw a map of voting districts. The elected school board map went through three drafts: the first in May 2023, the second in November, and the final version in March 2024. When lawmakers released their first version, community advocates pushed back, arguing that the map should prioritize representation reflective of CPS students, whose demographics differ from city demographics. While students in CPS are 47 percent Latine, 35 percent Black, 11 percent white, and 4.5 percent Asian American, Chicago’s demographics are roughly one-third Latine, one-third Black, and one-third white. But federal and state voting laws constrained lawmakers’ ability to create a map based on student demographics. For this election, there will be three majority Latine districts, three majority Black districts, and two majority white districts. The other two districts have no clear demographic majority. In 2026, 18 of the 20 districts will have clear demographic majorities: seven majority Black, six majority Latine, and five majority white. Ensuring fair parent representation in

Chicago’s school board elections remains a contested issue. Though it’s hard to quantify exact numbers, many parents of CPS students are not citizens due to their immigration status. State Senator Celina Villanueva (D-12) sponsored a 2023 bill to allow noncitizens to vote in school board elections, but it failed.

THE CANDIDATES

Many of the candidates on the final ballot showcase their lived experience in CPS on their websites. At least nine candidates are CPS alums and/or have served on a Local School Council (LSC), the elected governing body at each public school tasked with hiring the principal and approving the budget. About half the candidates are CPS parents and/or have worked in schools as teachers or administrators. Nine have served or are serving on LSCs, which have the power to hire and fire principals as well as approve school budgets. So far, one citywide slate of candidates, known as Our Schools, has emerged. This group of candidates has been endorsed by the CTU and its allies—other unions and grassroots community groups. These candidates share a common platform, which includes promoting efforts to increase the state’s contribution to school budgets as well as creating progressive local taxes to fund schools, establishing more community schools with wraparound services for students and families, increasing the number of Black and Latine teachers and principals, and unionizing all

school sta . Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) is a civic leadership development organization for alumni of early career programs, like Teach for America, the national principal training program New Leaders, national leadership program Public Allies, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. LEE has endorsed a number of candidates but has not developed a full slate.

THE ISSUES

Unlike many high-proﬁle school board races in recent years, Chicago’s school board election is unlikely to center on culture-war issues like book bans. Rather, the focus so far has largely been on the district’s nuts and bolts: shoring up weak finances, ensuring transportation in the face of a bus driver shortage, building repairs, school safety, and improving outcomes for historically underserved groups of students.

Many candidates say they will focus on strengthening academics, arts, and sports in neighborhood schools. Others express support for school choice, including magnet, selective enrollment (test-entry), and charter schools, and some note that supporting existing schools of all kinds should not be an either-or. Given the recent inﬂux of money to groups supporting charter schools and school choice, we can expect this issue to heat up closer to Election Day.

Expect to learn more soon about the candidates’ positions on the issues. Two well-known parent advocacy groups, Raise Your Hand and Kids First Chicago, have been deeply involved in the process of preparing for school board elections. Raise Your Hand has already held virtual candidate forums, and recordings are available online. It will release responses to its candidate questionnaire in late September. Kids First Chicago will hold its ﬁrst candidate forum in Austin on September 19.

As Roderick Wilson, a longtime Bronzeville organizer who was among the early proponents of an elected school board, said during a Raise Your Hand candidate forum, “Having an elected school board is not a panacea. It’s not gonna cure all our problems. But it does give us power. If we have someone representing us on that board and they’re not doing what we need them to do, we can vote them out. But it’s all gonna fall back on us.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Senn High School JAMES HOSKING

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COMMUNITY LANDMARKS

A sign of the times

Vintage signs hold community and artistic value. Amid changing neighborhoods, they’ve become increasingly endangered.

By MILES MACCLURE

For decades, the Bridgeport Restaurant sat at the corner of 35th Street and Halsted, its bold red sign hugging the building, serving as an uno cial welcome to the neighborhood. Since the owners retired in 2022, the restaurant sat empty, but the sign persisted.

Fitted with chrome accents and adorned with marquee lights, it featured “Bridgeport” in swooping cursive and “Restaurant” in bold block lettering, once illuminated by neon. Its concave rectangles advertised fountain drinks, pancakes, malts, steaks, and chops.

The sign is even prominently featured on a Horses of Honor statue commemorating Paul Bauer, a Chicago police commander who was shot and killed in 2018. The statue— which stands on 35th Street, right outside of Guaranteed Rate Field—also depicts Schaller’s Pump, the Bridgeport watering hole that operated from 1881 until 2017, rendering the horse not only a monument to Bauer, but a monument to a bygone era.

Once an iconic neighborhood landmark, the sign no longer looks over the corner spot it occupied for more than a half-century. The space that once housed the diner has made way for Stussy’s, a new restaurant that opened in August.

The owners of Stussy’s elected to craft a 50s- and 60s-inspired retro diner aesthetic, yet in the process of doing so, removed an original piece of history from that time.

“While the transformation of these historic landmarks represents a promising catalyst for continued development along the Halsted Street corridor, it is hard to see the iconic Bridgeport Diner sign being removed,” says Anthony Skokal, an architecture graduate student at Illinois Institute of Technology and lifelong Bridgeport resident. “I hope it is pre-

Top: Ramova Theatre in Bridgeport and Grace’s Furniture sign in Logan Square

SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS

Bottom: Former Bridgeport Restaurant DAVID WILSON/FLICKR VIA CC BY 2.0

Long after they’re no longer operational, businesses’ signs hold sentimental value for the neighborhood and community.

served and showcased as a testament to the rich history of our neighborhood.”

While it’s disappointing for some to see an original taken down in favor of a copy, it’s also hard to follow in the footsteps of the original. “We loved the old-school history,” says Erik Nance, co-owner of Stussy’s Diner. “However, with us taking over, it’s best to be new.”

Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, tells the Reader, “There’s challenges, and sometimes these signs require a lot of work and a lot of maintenance. But it would be wonderful if somehow [the Bridgeport Restaurant] sign were preserved. And if it can’t be preserved in situ, maybe it can be preserved as is.”

Just a few doors down from Stussy’s, the historic Ramova Theatre, ﬁrst opened in the late 1920s, underwent a colossal restoration to its original splendor.

After sitting empty for more than 30 years, collecting dust and in desperate need of repair, the husband-and-wife team of Emily and Tyler Nevius took on the massive project to restore the Ramova—including its two vintage signs—to its former glory.

The theater’s vertical blade sign, long and rectangular, juts out from the building and can be seen from blocks away. Its font is a chunky sans serif, with elegant arches at the top of the letter A —a hallmark of the streamline moderne architectural style, a subcategory of art deco, which was popular at the time of construction. The Ramova’s marquee sign is a large trapezoid that hangs directly above the entrance, its dozens of little lights illuminating the sidewalk below.

During the restoration process, architect Dan O’Riley polled longtime neighbors to ask which color neon originally lit up the Ramova’s blade sign. Some neighbors remembered it as orange, and others as white. Fortunately, one of the old neon tubes was still intact, and when O’Riley ﬁred it up, it glowed a warm orange.

The neon signs are now back in business, turning the chapter from a dormant era on the South Halsted corridor to one of blossoming revitalization. “There are so many neighbors who stop in and tell us how much it means to

them to see the signs relit and to see Halsted lit up again,” says Emily Nevius.

The Ramova was recently awarded Landmarks Illinois’s Preservation Award for Adaptive Use.

In the age before Google Maps, Instagram, and Yelp, businesses’ signage played a much more valuable role in getting people to stop in and take a look at their o erings. Fifty years ago, someone might have decided to go to a place like the Ramova simply because they saw the sign. Now, people often know where they’re going before they leave the house.

“Nobody just impulsively walks into a hotel anymore, or nobody just impulsively walks into some restaurant,” O’Riley says. “We’ve already figured out on Yelp where we’re going.”

Regardless, vintage signs still hold community, artistic, and sentimental value. Small and large, businesses color every neighborhood. Their singularity is what makes each neighborhood stand on its own, and their signs are one of the first things visitors see.

Take a historic place like Wrigley Field, says Miller, “where you see that incredible sign [on] Clark and Addison, and you feel like you really have arrived at someplace very special. I think those special qualities are part of what makes some of our legendary businesses so noticeable and so well loved.”

nation in 2017, its sign was eventually moved to the back of the building, overlooking the rooftop terrace. In 2017, the Essex Inn building in South Loop, built in the international style of architecture, received city landmark status.

The hotel’s rooftop sign, notable for its Gothic lettering, was explicitly included in the designation, ensuring it remains in place.

“In most of downtown Chicago, any place that’s got these big signs, it’s typically on historic buildings and it’s considered part of the historic character of the building,” O’Riley says.

In 2015, Preservation Chicago included neon signs on its most endangered list, an annual list that highlights seven buildings or architectural elements in Chicago at risk of being destroyed or removed. “Bending neon

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40 feet tall and looms over Milwaukee Avenue. Preservation efforts by the building’s new owner stalled because the previous owners let signage permits expire, which proved to be a complicated legal hurdle.

The Grace’s Furniture debacle inspired a new city ordinance that was passed last year. It allows for the in situ preservation of vintage signs with “signiﬁcant iconic or cultural value that contributes to the distinct visual identity and character of the neighborhood, community, or City as a whole.”

Some signs, when they can’t be preserved in place, go on to have second lives in private collections or live on in the interior of other establishments. A few years ago, the blade sign that hung above the venerable North Center Chinese restaurant Orange Garden for

A block south from the stadium, the bar Sluggers recently replaced its longstanding green blade sign with a new one shaped like a baseball bat. Some amateur critics on Twitter criticized the new sign as being a bit too phallic. A rebuilt version of the old green sign was eventually installed on the building to accompany the new sign, as the Sluggers owners realized its patrons had a penchant for the old. While some signs might be historical, only buildings are eligible for landmark status in Chicago. Signs can be included in the designation, but they’re not always preserved on site. When the Johnson Publishing Building, at 820 S. Michigan, received Chicago landmark desig-

or making signs or putting together graphics for an institution or a business or a restaurant is really a work of art,” says Miller. “It’s a great craft, and I think so many of us understand that now in this day and age.”

But why aren’t new ornate neon signs going up? Blade signs hang over the sidewalk and require costly new permits; it’s far cheaper to a x one directly to the building.

Long after they’re no longer operational, businesses’ signs hold sentimental value for the neighborhood and community. In the heart of Logan Square, the iconic Grace’s Furniture sign has been a stalwart of the neighborhood for over 70 years, even though the property has been vacant for over 20 years. The sign, with its playful yellow swirl at the top that straightens into an arrow, stands more than

nearly a century and is believed to be the ﬁrst neon sign in all of Chicago was auctioned o to the wife of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. The sign is now on display in their Highland Park cafe, Madame Zuzu’s.

Miller has his own personal collection of signs from buildings and businesses around Chicago, some of which predate 1900. One of the signs in Miller’s collection comes from an ice cream parlor he frequented as a child, called Ting-a-Ling, located at North Division and Dearborn. It’s now a Walgreens.

Given that so few signs have lasted, he says, “it makes those that have survived the test of time landmarks in our community, and even more important.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Recently opened Stussy’s Diner replaced the iconic Bridgeport Restaurant sign as part of its remodel. ELIJAH BARNES FOR CHICAGO READER

PUBLIC TRANSIT

‘No new revenue without reform’

A plan to merge the CTA, Metra, and Pace could bring massive changes to public transportation. But what exactly does it do?

By REEMA SALEH

Chicago’s transit agencies are nearing the edge of a ﬁscal cli . Ridership plummeted at the start of the pandemic, and it’s struggled to return in the years since. Where exactly those missing riders have gone—and why—is up for debate, but that lost revenue has put transit agencies, which rely on ridership fares to fund roughly half their operating costs, in the hole.

Illinois used $3.5 billion in federal COVID relief dollars to keep the Chicago area’s transit agencies aﬂoat during the worst of the pandemic. But, when that funding expires in 2026, the agencies face a $730 million shortfall. Riders will likely face severe service cuts if the state doesn’t ﬁll that gap.

Why do Chicago transit agencies need money?

Without more money, regional transit systems will likely have to significantly cut service, hike fares, or both.

When that funding expires in 2026, the agencies face a $730 million shortfall.

Agencies have also been facing higher operating costs since the start of the pandemic, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). Inflation has risen, but CTA fares have stayed the same. (Metra and Pace fares went up, but they have far fewer riders than the CTA.) This means the CTA is now getting fewer riders—and less money from each one.

In April, state lawmakers proposed a bill to merge the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra, and Pace into one transit agency, along with their overseeing body, the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). This new agency, the Metropolitan Mobility Authority (MMA), would operate all public transit in the Chicagoland region with a new collective board and a four-year consolidation timeline. It would also give those agencies an additional $1.5 billion in funding each year, alleviating looming ﬁnancial problems while expanding service.

The process is complicated and unprecedented, and the 500-plus-page bill itself is unwieldy. Here’s a breakdown of what it does and what changes it could bring to transit in the Chicagoland region.

If nothing happens, we fall o that ﬁscal cli . The 2026 deﬁcit would force the RTA to cut service by 30 to 40 percent, according to CMAP. Cuts that steep could keep riders from coming back to public transit altogether, which would mean even less revenue.

The MMA Act would also permanently end the 50 percent farebox recovery mandate, a 1974 Illinois law meant to impose ﬁscal discipline by requiring Chicago’s transit agencies to earn half their revenue through ridership fares. With pandemic-induced ridership drops, it’s become impossible to meet that mandate over the past few years, especially since some reasons for declining riders, like the rise of work-from-home jobs, are outside agencies’ control.

Advocates for the MMA Act, like the Metropolitan Planning Council, the Civic Federation, and multiple environmental groups, argue

dramatically increasing service will keep Chicago-area transit agencies from a “death spiral,” where service cuts and fare hikes drive passengers away and force transit agencies to implement more cost-cutting measures.

What else would the MMA Act do other than increase transportation funding?

MMA Act supporters, like the Civic Federation and Metropolitan Planning Council, argue

that consolidation will make Chicago’s transit agencies more e cient and force them to plan for the whole region instead of just their local bases of operation.

A combined MMA could lead to beneﬁts— like fare integration between the CTA, Metra, and Pace—and it could incentivize collaboration over competition. Former mayor Lori Lightfoot, for example, once blocked a plan to lower fares and increase service for Metra users on the south side because the city believed it would compete with CTA ridership, even though the plan had support from busi-

If no changes are made, the RTA could be forced to cut service by 30 to 40 percent. JAMES HOSKING

NEWS & POLITICS

ness and transit advocacy groups. That may not have occurred if they were part of the same agency.

However, merging transit agencies’ cultures, processes, and existing contracts could be extremely di cult.

How would governance change under the MMA?

A unified, 19-member voting board would replace the current RTA, CTA, Metra, and Pace

boards. MMA board members would be selected as follows:

• Three voting directors chosen by the governor

• Five voting directors chosen by Chicago’s mayor (four appointed by the City Council plus the commissioner of the Mayor’s Ofﬁce for People with Disabilities)

• Five voting directors chosen by the president of the Cook County Board

• One member chosen by each of the county chairs of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will Counties

• One chair chosen by the MMA directors

Under the current system, Chicago’s mayor has majority control over appointments on the CTA board, while the suburbs and collar counties have greater control over Metra and Pace’s boards. The MMA board would give Chicago, Cook County, and the collar counties equal representation but would also cede some power over the local systems that serve their constituents.

What alternatives are coming forward?

The CTA, Metra, and Pace leaders have all opposed merging their agencies and instead want more state funding. At the ﬁ rst of six public hearings held by the Illinois senate Transportation Committee, CTA president Dorval Carter argued that “the governance model is not the problem here”—chronic underfunding is. Metra and Pace executives also argued against consolidation, saying the issues of suburban and collar county riders would go ignored under a single board.

The RTA has proposed a competing plan to meet the $730 million shortfall and increase funding by at least $1.5 billion from current operating levels. It would give the agency signiﬁcantly more power and oversight over the three regional transit agencies but would keep them separate. Historically, the RTA has had limited control over the operations of its transit system compared to other major cities. v m

Fall eater & Arts

ON CULTURE

Gilda is dead; opera’s not

The

fall season opens at Lyric, COT, and Haymarket.

By DEANNA ISAACS

Wow, who’d a thunk it? In spite of all the dire signs of opera’s impending demise (right along with its aging audiences), Chicago’s 2024 fall season got o to an impressively rousing start at Lyric last weekend.

No mean feat, given that what they’ve got onstage is a remount of a traditional production of a 173-year-old warhorse saddled with opera’s most depressing story: the tragic tale of Rigoletto

Well, OK, the Giuseppe Verdi music is a near shoo-in. Think of that bubbly earworm,

“La donna è mobile (Women are ﬁckle)”: it’s performed in the opera by a proto-#MeToo villain, the Duke of Mantua, and elsewhere by everyone from Mickey Mouse to the Muppets.

But it wasn’t only Verdi. On Saturday night at Lyric, in one great swoop, 3,000 mature and more-or-less sober operagoers fell perceptibly in love with pure-silver soprano Mané Galoyan, making her Lyric debut as the ingenue, Gilda. (Kudos to recently retired general director Anthony Freud for this casting.)

The audience was so giddy, it might have been a Taylor Swift concert. Or a mid-19th-century production, when opera

singers actually were pop stars.

Rigoletto , based on a play by Victor Hugo and sung in Italian with English supertitles, is set in the 16th century. Its title character is a bitter jester in the duke’s court. A widower with a crippling deformity, he uses his caustic wit to entertain the scumbag duke at the expense of anyone in their purview. The only thing he cares about is his daughter, Gilda, whom he keeps protectively sequestered. After the duke spots and seduces her, Rigoletto

and to a rare collaboration between Lyric and Chicago’s second largest opera company. Fidelio opens September 26; Chicago Opera Theater (COT)’s production of Leonora, by Italian composer Ferdinando Paer (a Beethoven contemporary), is based on the same true story: a woman poses as a man in a daring attempt to rescue her unjustly imprisoned husband.

Leonora opens October 1 for three performances at the Studebaker Theater. This week the two companies are joining forces for a

Is there a ticket left for the four remaining performances of Rigoletto? There shouldn’t be.

arranges for his murder, but (spoiler alert), it’s Gilda, disguised as a man and willing to sacriﬁce herself to save her lover, who winds up dead. An ominous curse has taken its course.

In a program note, director Mary Birnbaum, observing that the world of Rigoletto is one in which women are disenfranchised, says she wanted to let Gilda tell her own story—and did so by imagining her less as a helpless victim and more as a consenting young woman longing to escape her father’s possessive confinement. Birnbaum also introduces the mute ﬁgure of Gilda’s dead mother as a literal guardian angel—winged, but about as e ective as the Secret Service in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Was there ever a bleaker tale?

Nevertheless, ﬁne performances by baritone Igor Golovatenko as Rigoletto and tenor Javier Camarena as the duke (it’s a minor complaint that from mid-distance they didn’t look all that di erent), along with all the other featured singers, the excellent men’s chorus, the Lyric Opera Orchestra conducted by music director Enrique Mazzola, and, most of all, Galoyan, with her winning stage presence and remarkable voice, produced a smitten audience.

Is there a ticket left for the four remaining performances of Rigoletto? There shouldn’t be.

Gilda’s fatal foray into cross-dressing is a thematic link to Fidelio, Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera and the production coming up later this month at Lyric—

free panel discussion of the operas; panelists include Dame Jane Glover, who will conduct Leonora, and Matthew Ozawa, the director for Fidelio

COT general director Lawrence Edelson says the programming is no coincidence. “Our mission is to do rarely produced work as well as new work, which complements what Lyric does. Leonora was on my short list of things to program; when I found out they were planning Fidelio I thought we have to do this now because, not only has this opera never been done anywhere in North America and there’s a brand-new critical edition of the score, but it’s an incredibly rare opportunity to see these two pieces side by side. It became a no-brainer.”

Also this week, Haymarket Opera Company—Chicago’s resident producer of 17th- and 18th-century work—opens its already sold-out three-performance run of George Frideric Handel’s Tamerlano at DePaul University’s Jarvis Opera Hall. A story of good and bad behavior by 15th-century Turkish and Tartar emperors, fully staged with Haymarket’s hallmark “historically informed” costumes and sets, and its orchestra of authentic period instruments conducted by Craig Trompeter, it features tenor David Portillo and countertenor Ryan Belongie as the emperors, along with Emily Birsan, Kathleen Felty, Emily Fons, and David Govertsen.

If you don’t already have a ticket for Tamerlano, eat your heart out. There’s a waiting list but, in spite of what they say about opera audiences, it’s unlikely that somebody will actually pop o to the great opera house in the sky and open up a seat for you. v

m disaacs@chicagoreader.com

Mané Galoyan and Javier Camarena in the Lyric Opera’s production of Rigoletto TODD ROSENBERG

JOHN AKOMFRAH Four Nocturnes

John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Alphawood Exhibitions.

Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Halsted A&A Foundation

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ANNIVERSARY

Twenty years of Corbett vs. Dempsey

The gallerists celebrate the milestone with a slew of exhibitions and programming.

By BIANCA BOVA

For 20 years, John Corbett and Jim Dempsey have been engaged with a range of Chicago-connected and international artists through their gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey (a peculiarly adversarial name that nods to the symmetry between the founders’ surnames and those of the once-famous boxers James J. Corbett and Jack Dempsey, who incidentally never fought one another professionally).

Prior to going into business together, both men were well-established in their respective corners of the Chicago art world. For Dempsey, this meant involvement in programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center. For Corbett, it was as an independent presenter of jazz and improvised music, music journalist, and interim chair of the exhibition studies program at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC). The two often crossed paths at performances and events, and eventually worked together on a program at the Film Center based around the work of famed American composer and bandleader Sun Ra.

“We hit it o immediately,” Corbett recalls. “Then we started talking about how little we knew about the Chicago art scene—given that we’re really both kind of culture-vultures, that it’s weird that there was so little information readily available about the visual art scene that we were tangentially part of. That led us to start doing primary research, which just meant cold-calling artists that we would read about in the catalogs that we would ﬁnd in junk stores or at the library at the School of the Art Institute. Here’d be an artist like Robert Amft, and you’d call him, and he says, ‘Come on over.’ And an hour later, you’re sitting there looking at the painting that you were looking at in the catalog.”

This shared investigatory ethos led to a collaborative run of exhibitions staged at the Roger Brown Study Collection on the ground ﬂoor of the late artist’s home, which Corbett, through his role at SAIC, was responsible for overseeing.

“I kind of commandeered the interim periods between the SAIC shows,” Corbett says. “I

called it ‘Dark Nights,’ and just started doing these one-week-long shows, tracking out my own interests. Then Jim and I started doing things there—that was where we really started working together. A couple of artists that we work with now were first shown there— Gina Litherland and Phil Hanson. We were restless and hungry for ﬁguring this stu out.”

Two years later, in 2004, they opened Corbett vs. Dempsey in the space above the mainstay Wicker Park record store Dusty Groove, which was run by a friend.

“We didn’t seriously consider any other locations,” Dempsey says. “We had actually imagined that we might be private dealers. We really thought we could have an artwork, invite somebody into a space to look at it, talk about it, and maybe that person would be excited and buy it.”

While the space initially seemed too large for what the partners had in mind and consequently out of their budget, the building owner was supportive of the gallery and o ered to let the space at a rate they could a ord until the business took o .

ing,” Dempsey says. ”The person who lived across the street from Dusty Groove was watching us unload. She knocked on the door the next day and said, ‘What were you guys carrying up the stairs last night?’ So we invited her in to look at the work, and she asked about the price of a painting. We had a quick band meeting and told her, and she said she’d buy it.” He adds with a laugh, “We were like,

“We walked them up the stairs—uncrated— and slid them through the door, with maybe a half an inch to spare,” Dempsey adds.

It is perhaps no surprise then that the gallery outgrew its quarters. When the time came, the two dealers turned to architect Jack Murchie of Chicago ﬁrm SMNG A to handle the build-out of their new space in a former rubber mat factory on Fulton Street.

“No matter how you design it, you really learn about a space by doing things in it,” Corbett says. “Each time you mount a new exhibition in a space, the feedback that gives you provides a sense of what you might do in the future or how you might do it better.”

“There were really interesting architectural moments in this building,” Dempsey adds. “For instance, the fireproof steel door [with a] combination lock vault seemed really fun, and we thought about how we could activate it.”

“We didn’t think about it after that. We just shook hands. It didn’t take long for us to adjust that early deal that he put together for us,” Dempsey continues. “But we needed that sort of irresistible moment to not think about it. Because if we would have said, ‘Let us sleep on it,’ we would have talked ourselves out of it overnight.”

“First thing we did,” Corbett says, “we borrowed Jim’s ex-girlfriend’s van and drove out to New York and picked up a big load of artwork from a bunch of di erent artists and brought an entire van’s worth of work back to the gallery.”

“We unloaded at about three in the morn-

‘This is easy!’”

For 15 years, the gallery remained in the space, mounting exhibitions of work by everyone from Ralph Arnold, Margot Bergman, Morris Barazani, Max Kahn, Art Green, and Suellen Rocca, to works by Chicago-based Works Progress Administration artists, and artists like William Weege, Karl Wirsum, Peter Saul, Nicole Eisenman, Rebecca Morris, Brian Calvin, Cauleen Smith, and of course, Christopher Wool.

“I remember when Christopher Wool had his first show in that space,” Corbett says. ”The terror the night before of imagining how those works were going to get in the gallery’s tiny door. It was hair-raising.”

The room in question, now simply known as the Vault, is used as a screening room for short ﬁlms.

“That seemed great for us, to have an extra element of programming that involved time,” Dempsey says. “We left the room exactly as it was. It’s got some old wooden shelving, which also makes it sound great.”

Apart from exhibitions and screenings, the gallery also has a rich history in publishing and music production, operating both an imprint and a record label.

“When we were first digging around trying to find out about historical moments in Chicago, our information often came from small-run catalogs . . . that wound up, for instance, in a shoebox of an artist who we were talking with. Those were puzzle pieces that we used to help us shape the history that we were still learning,” Dempsey says. “We thought that if we could continue that, maybe there’ll be some of our catalogs in a shoebox somewhere that might help somebody else someday. That was important to us.”

Longtime gallery director, and now partner, Emily Letourneau says the gallery’s publications are “all about serving the artists that we represent.” “Some artists that we’ve worked with did not have any signiﬁcant publications, and those books we published really took an

Dempsey and Corbett, Berlin, 2018 COURTESY THE GALLERY

R“H UBCAP DIAMOND STAR HALO”

Through 11/2 : Tue–Sat 10 AM– 5 PM and by appointment, Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2156 W. Fulton, corbettvsdempsey.com/exhibitions/hubcap-diamond-star-halo

in-depth look at their work, ﬁlling in the gaps,” she says.

A record label seemed just as natural a ﬁt as an extension to the program.

“I had a record label before the gallery started, founded in 1999, called the Unheard Music Series,” Corbett says. “I’d been working on presenting live music since I was in college

and writing about music, and I had radio programs at both WHPK and WNUR.”

“The gallery’s record label started around 2007, but in a very casual way,” he continues, “maybe one or two productions a year. About ten years ago it started to change into something we were putting more serious energy into as a whole. Now it’s a full-ﬂedged record label. It’s still housed within the gallery, but it is its own entity as well.”

celebrating their anniversary. It will include a near-encyclopedic survey of the gallery’s artists in the primary space, as well as a revolving companion exhibition in the adjacent north gallery space that will change once a week for the seven weeks of the show, featuring thematic and one-, two-, and three-person exhibitions. There will be an extensive program of book launches, conversations with artists, and musical events augmenting the exhibitions, running through November 2.

Fall eater & Arts

it when it feels effortless,” Dempsey says. “You come in and learn things, and shows are exciting, and everything’s just kind of rolling. If you’re doing a good job, if you’ve got a good crew, it’s like running a circus in a way. It’s best when it’s just magical, and you don’t know how it even happened.”

One can, naturally, ﬁnd most of the label’s catalog in stock at Dusty Groove, as well as online and in the gallery, alongside an extensive library of catalogs and artist books.

On September 14, the gallery opened “Hubcap Diamond Star Halo: Corbett vs. Dempsey at Twenty,” a program of events and exhibitions

In preparing for the anniversary, the two dealers have had occasion to take stock of all they’ve done, and all they and the gallery in all its manifestations have contributed to Chicago.

“What drove us that whole time, and what continues to drive us, is enthusiasm for the work,” Corbett says. “That is 100 percent what motivates us. Not money, certainly not the parties or whatever. What drives us is constantly being able to spend the day talking about the work, understanding where it’s going, shepherding it into amazing places, then seeing it in an amazing place, seeing new contexts established for it.”

“When we talk about this place, we like

“We’re both really interested in improvised music, and that provides a model for di erent ways of thinking and working,” Corbett continues. ”And one of the ideas in improvising as a musician is you’re dealing with and learning about things as they’re developing, as they’re happening. I think that’s been how we’ve gone through these two decades, as improvisers. You plan—you have to plan—and we plan two years of programming in advance in order to be able to do ambitious things. At the same time, you’re learning and trying to respond to things in the moment. For us, it’s been about both of those realities simultaneously. . . . I am thrilled by the di erent questions that we’ve opened up for ourselves, and the prospect and privilege of continuing to explore them.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Roscoe Mitchell, “Keeper of the Code: Paintings,” 2023 ROBERT CHASE HEISHMAN

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R“FEDERICO SOLMI: THE GREAT FARCE”

Through 12/1: Wed–Fri noon–8 PM, Sat–Sun noon–5 PM, Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle, Evanston, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions, free

Entering the mirrored world

Federico Solmi transforms the Block into a monumental video installation.

By NICKY NI

On October 5, the Block Museum will open a solo show by Italian-born, New York–based artist Federico Solmi, with a single featured work, The Great Farce , which will transform the museum’s largest gallery space into a monumental video installation.

A Guggenheim fellow, Solmi has exhibited mixed-media installations of animated videos internationally of incredibly saturated colors and biting satire.

Originally commissioned for the B3 Festival of the Moving Image in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2017, The Great Farce was first shown as a long, projected “banner” on the entire upper-ﬂoor facade of the Schauspiel Frankfurt theater. The video tells a quizzical story in which an anachronistic crowd of historical figures—conquistadors, kings, popes, and presidents, all portrayed and animated like soulless paper-mache puppets with fairly ferocious looks—arrive in America on colonial ships and are received by Native people with

open arms. The ships parade through bustling boulevards, with endless fireworks and fanfare, and arrive at the front lawn of a White House look-alike. Inside, the colonizers waltz with the colonized, peacefully and joyously; outside, a humongous Times Square–esque theme park is ﬁlled with cheering and waving crowds. It is a nine-minute moving epic of high satire in a distinct and indelible aesthetic.

At the Block, the work will be shown as a nine-channel video in a U-shaped triptych; each wall of the projection is approximately ten feet high and 40 feet wide, with sound coming from four speakers at each of the corners of the projected space, immersing the viewer in a sea of stroboscopic frenzy and haunting marching music that distorts as if played from an old tape. Although not shown in this exhibition, The Great Farce is available in another format in the Block’s collection—a painted, sculptural “portable theater” that opens up like an altarpiece with embedded monitors to show the nine-channel videos in a three-by-three grid.

“The Block Museum had originally planned to present this work in 2020 but it was pushed back because of the pandemic,” explained Janet Dees, the Block’s Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum curator of modern and contemporary art. Now on view four years later—and again coinciding with an election year, only this time with arguably higher stakes—The Great Farce makes us recall the glints of disorientation in the wake of Trump’s presidency in 2017, when this work was made. Dees, who curated this exhibition, explained that The Great Farce “was gifted to the Block Museum in 2019 as part of its Thinking About History initiative.” Through the initiative, which encompasses over 550 newly accessioned works, the museum aims to encourage an understanding of art as a critical repre-

sentation of the past. The work encourages a deep dive into bigger questions such as how history is or can be recounted: “The artist has described the work as a reenactment in an amusement park of the way that American history has been narrated as myth,” Dees said. “There are portrayals of a number of historical figures, both from American history and beyond, that are caricatures or characters in a masquerade rather than one-to-one representations. There’s everyone from Julius Caesar, George Washington, to Marie Antoinette, and Donald Trump.”

The maximalism of Solmi’s aesthetic comes from a painstaking process of combining old and new animation techniques to make videos in a game engine. As the artist and his team explain in a behind-the-scenes video, everything in the work—from the objects and the mise-en-scènes, to the characters—is modeled in 3D software with painterly skin textures that is first hand-printed and then digitized to be stretched over the 3D model. Featured components—such as key personages’ clothes and building facades—have at least two distinctly painted surfaces that shuffle between themselves; together, they amplify the ﬂickering e ect of the whole scene. Each character’s movements are harvested from motion capture, giving them a more nuanced realism that is subverted by the very surreal caricatures and storytelling. “One of the most difficult things for me for a project like this is how to storyboard and approach the narrative,” Solmi admits in the video, which o ers a peek at extremely detailed line drawings of scenes and storyboards that show how the virtual camera of the game engine would go about each scene to produce wide shots or close-ups.

Solmi’s sources of inﬂuence are many: Apart from Renaissance painters such as Paolo Uccello and El Greco, Dees mentioned that he

was also inspired by German expressionist cinema, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Man Who Laughs (1928), and the films of Fritz Lang. “The artist was thinking about the way in which those filmmakers were creating distorted or disturbing images as a way of jolting people to think critically,” Dees said. “Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) was also an influence, because of its cinematic use of a triptych sequence. This influenced the format of The Great Farce.”

Speaking about Solmi’s research process, Dees added: “I think one book, among many, that was really influential to him was James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, as a way of thinking critically about how American history is narrated in di erent outlets.” Referring to the final scene, set in a theme park with a Times Square–esque extravaganza of billboards and advertisements, Dees said that “there is an implicit critique of consumerism and celebrity culture.” “He is filtering a narrative that’s partly based on history through an aesthetic of contemporary culture that is influenced by consumerism and spectacle.” The artist’s American Circus, a later video adapted from The Great Farce, threw this critique back at the epicenter of its symbolism: In 2019, it was shown in Times Square via Midnight Moment, the famed billboard-takeover public art project that shows new media art for a few minutes before midnight across the area’s myriad electronic billboards. Banners that read “Everything 99¢ or less” in the video rubbed shoulders with real advertisements from Sephora and news tickers. Spectacles seamlessly merged and multiplied; in Solmi’s work, we can not distinguish reality from its mirrored world. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Federico Solmi, The Great Farce video still, 2017

COPYRIGHT FEDERICO SOLMI

Explore the 2024 | 25 Season

VERDI Rigoletto

Sep. 14 - Oct. 6, 2024

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Sep. 26 - Oct. 10, 2024

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Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes

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MOZART The Marriage of Figaro

Nov. 9 - 30, 2024

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Blue

Nov. 16 - Dec. 1, 2024

FILM WITH ORCHESTRA Singin’ in the Rain

Feb. 7, 2025

SONDRA RADVANOVSKY IN CONCERT The Puccini Heroines

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MAZZOLI/VAVREK The Listeners

Mar. 30 - Apr. 11, 2025

LYRIC IN CONCERT A Wondrous Sound

Apr. 16, 19, 2025

Photo: Mazzoli & Vavrek’s The Listeners Erik Berg/Oslo Opera House

Fall eater & Arts

CRAFTS

Where arts education in Chicago began

“Radical Cra ” envisions art as a tool for social change.

BY JACQUELINE WAYNEGUITE

Situated on the University of Illinois Chicago’s (UIC) campus, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum historicizes the inﬂuential social settlement from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But little has been done to illuminate the innovative arts education piloted at Hull-House until now.

“Radical Craft: Arts Education at HullHouse, 1889-1935” does just that. The exhibition and accompanying catalog dig deep to show how educators and reformers envisioned arts and crafts as tools for social reform and connected those toiling in industrial labor with their inner creativity.

The show serves as a historical counterpoint to a companion exhibition at UIC’s Gallery 400, “Learning Together: Art Education and Community,” covering Chicago arts education from the mid-1960s through the 2010s.

“Radical Craft” is the ﬁrst major exhibition in more than ﬁve years at the Hull-House and occupies most of the museum.

“There is a kind of truth to the larger understanding of Hull-House as the place where arts education in Chicago began,” Hull-House director Liesl Olson said. “The arts were always central to all of the other projects of social reform at Hull-House and . . . that part of our history hasn’t really been told.”

While Jane Addams is the most prominently known ﬁgure from Hull-House, this exhibition gives credit where credit is due to Ellen Gates Starr, a radical educator who believed art should be prioritized and taught to everyone, not just the wealthy elite. A variety of arts and crafts were o ered at Hull-House, including drawing, painting, sculpture, textiles, bookbindery, ceramics, metal, woodworking, and basketry.

“When we think about Chicago as a city that really has led the country in terms of progressive arts education, where does that come from? It comes from Hull-House,” Olson said. “And it comes in particular from cofounder Ellen Gates Starr, about who very little has been written. She

brought to Hull-House her principles that came out of the Arts and Crafts movement, her politics around labor, and the value of doing something with your hands in opposition to the grinding hours of work at nearby factories.”

The exhibition highlights the work of artists both celebrated and little known. The parlor is dedicated to Alice Kellogg Tyler, an artist who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris and taught at Hull-House. Her portraits of women like Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey, have a prominent place near the beginning of the exhibition.

Above the ﬁreplace hangs a newly conserved painting, The Mother , of a woman looking tenderly at her baby lying across her lap.

It is Kellogg Tyler’s bestknown artwork, having been exhibited in 1891 in New York by the Society of American Artists and at the 1893 World’s Fair Columbian Exposition in the Fine Arts Building.

R“RADICAL CRAFT: ARTS EDUCATION AT HULL-HOUSE, 1889-1935”

Through 7/25: Tue–Fri 10 AM–4:50 PM, Sun noon–4:50 PM, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halsted, hullhousemuseum.org/radical-craft

“A lot of our focus has shifted to who was living in the neighborhood, who was participating in programs at Hull-House, how there was that social connection with the community,” education manager Nadia Maragha said. “We talk about Hull-House in terms of social work. We talk about it in terms of public health. We talk about it in terms of reform. But there isn’t as much conversation about how important it was to the community itself.”

The museum team is changing that with “Radical Craft.”

The exhibition also displays many artworks and craft objects from the museum collection that have rarely or never been shown before. These include a range of textiles and ceramics.

“So much of it was made during this period when Hull-House had what’s called the Labor Museum,” Olson said. “Social reformers invit-

can collect a section of a free booklet—in English or Spanish—that contains the exhibition text and photographs of most of the artwork on view. This is the ﬁrst time a Hull-House exhibition has been fully translated into Spanish. When you finish touring the exhibition, you can bind your booklet with small paper fasteners, a nod to Starr’s passion for bookbinding. Robust programming accompanies this show, and a new tour was developed speciﬁc to “Radical Craft.” A series of “Radical Mending” workshops led by the WasteShed will teach methods of clothing repair. “Weaving Stories”— in partnership with Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, and Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture—will share stories of heritage, culture, and material practice on Sunday, September 29. And a workshop by Emily Winter from the Weaving Mill will center on weaving techniques, inspired by Hull-House’s historic textile collection on Thursday, December 5.

Also on the ﬁrst ﬂoor, elegant books bound in Hull-House’s bookbindery show this rare art form “that upheld the value of slow craftsmanship in opposition to the quick and cheap operations of commercial printing,” according to Olson. Books featured include Christina Rossetti’s Poems and Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation, which point to the sapphic lives lived by many of the leaders of Hull-House.

Winding up the staircase and throughout the second ﬂoor are the names of artists and artisans discovered in Hull-House yearbooks and bulletins, an attempt to name some of the community members who passed through the settlement, along with their art specialty.

ed immigrants to demonstrate their craft from the Old World.”

The largest room on the second ﬂoor is dedicated to textile arts. Beautifully mounted on the walls, lace, embroidery, weavings, doilies, and other textiles showcase the breadth of skills of the neighborhood’s residents. Two looms stand at the center of the room, one used to demonstrate techniques during special programming.

The other second-floor exhibition room is devoted to work made in the Hull-House kilns, particularly by Mexican immigrants, and paintings by both students and teachers. A wall of ceramics intermingles work by known and respected artists and talented but little-known artists from the collection.

The exhibition takes visitors on a journey throughout Hull-House; in each room, visitors

Maragha hopes people walk away with “a greater sense of how accessible arts education can be, and how there’s a need to o er it. And that there are still spaces . . . doing the same work as Hull-House was doing in terms of arts education.” To that end, Hull-House has partnered with Red Line Service, an arts organization led by people experiencing homelessness, and Firebird Community Arts, which o ers arts instruction to people living on the south and west sides, to host ceramics and glassblowing workshops. These will take place in the fall of 2024 and spring of 2025 and will include shared meals to build community.

“It’s a sort of extension of Hull-House’s history . . . the best kind of art programming for the people, communities who don’t have access to those materials,” Olson said. “Everybody has access to creativity at some level. But when you think of something like glassblowing . . . or ceramics . . . these are processes that are expensive, laborious, and that take a studio or equipment that’s really expensive.” v A longer version of this piece appears online at chicagoreader.com.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Installation view, “Radical Cra : Arts Education at Hull-House, 1889-1935” SARAH LARSON

Fall eater & Arts

DRAMATIC DIASPORA

CIRCA Pintig launches inaugural Chicago Filipino American eatre Festival

The three-week celebration of new work touches on queerness, homecoming, nursing, wrestling, and more.

By ANNA ROGELIO JOAQUIN

When Ginger Leopoldo, RJ Silva, and Giovanni Ortega of CIRCA Pintig set out to produce a festival of Filipino theater, they had heartfelt hopes and modest expectations. “We knew there are Filipinos out there who want to do theater,” Silva recalls. “So we were like, ‘Let’s do a festival to grow our base— maybe two nights.’” A call for new work went out in July. The response was immense.

Now set to fill three weekends with over 20 readings, the Chicago Filipino American Theatre Festival is poised for its October debut. Each weekend will take place at a different venue, paired with pieces of complementary themes. Kicking off on Friday, October 11— National Coming Out Day—the first weekend features queer stories in collaboration with PrideArts in Buena Park. The next weekend picks up at the Rizal Center, a Filipino community center in Lakeview, with work reflecting on homecoming in both Tagalog and English. The final weekend looks toward the future with a focus on emerging voices and new generations at Bramble Arts Loft in Andersonville.

Threading the weekends together is a connection to CIRCA’s season theme of kapwa, or kindred. Among the plays to be featured is Daryo’s All-American Diner by Conrad A. Panganiban. Voted Best New Play of 2023 in the Reader Best of Chicago poll,

CHICAGO FILIPINO AMERICAN THEATRE FESTIVAL 10/ 11 –10/26 : PrideArts (4139 N. Broadway), Rizal Center ( 1332 W. Irving Park), and Bramble Arts Loft (5545 N. Clark), circapintig.org/cfa-theatre-festival, free, but donations welcome

familial duty through a protagonist torn between success in drag and a career in nursing. The festival showcases a wide range of perspectives in the Filipino diaspora, but it’s no coincidence that nurses play a recurring role—the U.S. has historically relied on the Philippines to ﬁll nursing shortages. Musician and nurse Foline Roos highlights the signiﬁcance of nursing to Filipino American immi-

in our social studies books. Then, around my adolescent years, my aunt and uncle recruited me into doing guerrilla theater and Theatre of the Oppressed [a form of theater promoting social change popularized by Brazilian artist Augusto Boal, inspired by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed]. It was an awesome way to learn about social and political history. It really gave me an appreciation for what it means to be Filipino.”

Daryo’s is a poignant capture of cross-cultural resilience amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another piece in the lineup is Lani Montreal’s Leaving Mother: Anak ni Tapia, a one-woman rumination of Montreal growing up with and moving away from her celebrity mother in the Philippines.

Festival conceptualizers Silva and Ortega also have plays in the mix—Hail Mary/Maria and The Butterfly of Chula Vista, respectively. Hail , inspired by Silva’s own experiences immigrating to the U.S. at 13, wrestles figuratively and literally with coming of age. In it, a young hero is guided by his personal holy trinity: the Blessed Virgin Mary; professional wrestler Maria; and his mother, a nurse. Ortega’s Butterfly was originally commissioned by San Diego Rep. A witty comedy, Butterfly navigates the tension between belonging and

gration in Crossroads, her new musical to be presented in concert on the festival’s closing weekend. Reflecting on Filipino representation of nurses in the U.S., Leopoldo remarks, “Nursing is such a big part of our narrative, and yet, I saw an article about how the big TV shows set in hospitals never really had Filipino nurses. Like, what’s up with that?” The importance of Filipino nurses to the U.S. health-care system is just one aspect of Filipino history the festival—which intentionally coincides with Filipino American History Month—aims to honor.

For Leopoldo, now executive director of CIRCA Pintig, the festival’s mission has been a lifelong one. She recounts, “When I came [to the U.S.] at the age of ﬁve in the late 70s, I didn’t really understand what it meant to be Filipino. We weren’t very well represented

“I feel like there’s a hunger now—‘What is this? What is Filipino culture?’—even though we’ve been here for a while.”

Leopoldo’s early inspirations influence CIRCA Pintig’s work today. Short for Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts, CIRCA is committed to education, organization, and mobilization. Leopoldo explains, “We want to make change, and we do that through educating one another.”

The company’s pintig, or heartbeat, has been pulsing since 1991. Then called Pintig Cultural Group, their ﬁrst production was an original adaptation of America is in the Heart , the 1943 memoir by immigrant and activist Carlos Bulosan. Leopoldo remembers the cast warmly, many of whom “were just community members who maybe loved singing karaoke or something.” She continues, “But what was beautiful is that we had skilled directors and a dramaturg to really get us to be the storytellers that we needed to be. You know, acting for nonactors. We all have voices. We all have stories. If we’re not telling them, who will in the way that we want them to be told?”

After 33 years, this grassroots spirit activates the festival. Silva describes how Filipinos ﬂocked to the platform—some seasoned professionals, some first-time writers—all with a story to share: “[They] weren’t all playwrights, but because the opportunity came up, they were like, ‘Oh! I can finally write about something I want to write about.’”

The festival comes at a time when, as Silva puts it, “Filipino culture has come into pop culture.” He elaborates, “Like Manny Jacinto being hot even though he’s been hot, right? All of a sudden, people are like, ‘Wow!’ And, obviously, Kasama and Filipino food in Chicago. I feel like there’s a hunger now—‘What is this? What is Filipino culture?’—even though we’ve been here for a while.”

When it comes to Filipino theater in Chicago, Silva hungers, too. “I think theater and our industry needs to be next.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

L to R: RJ Silva, Ginger Leopoldo, and Amanda Payne in CIRCA Pintig's Daryo's All-American Diner MATTHEW GREGORY HOLLIS

Fall eater & Arts

STAGES OF SURVIVAL

RCintas de Seda

11/7–11/ 10 : Thu–Sat 7: 30 PM, Sun 3 PM; National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19 th St., clata.org and aguijontheater.org, $ 35, in Spanish with English subtitles

e language in which they dream

Aguijón Theater celebrates 35 years of producing theater in Spanish.

By KERRY REID

Stages of Survival is an occasional series focusing on Chicago theater companies, highlighting their histories and how they’re surviving—and even thriving—in a landscape that’s become decidedly more challenging since the 2020 COVID19 shutdown.

When I ask Aguijón Theater cofounder and co-artistic director Rosario Vargas what inspired her to open the company 35 years ago, she answers in Spanish. Her daughter, Marcela Muñoz, who is now Aguijón’s co-artistic director and executive director, translates for me.

Vargas came to the United States from Colombia in the early 80s. In Chicago, she found work with the pioneering Latino Chicago Theater Company. “She started working with them a little bit in English and started directing,” says Muñoz. “And then she just felt that need again to continue to be able to express herself in her native language, in Spanish. And she realized that there were others like her, not just artists, but audiences who were thirsting for that at the time.”

Company member Elio Leturia says that Vargas also “wanted to express her art in the language that she dreams.”

Keeping that dream alive for 35 years hasn’t been easy. As I write this, London’s ﬁrst dedicated Spanish-language theater, Cervantes Theatre, has announced that they’re closing after eight years due to lack of institutional support.

Like a lot of Chicago companies, Aguijón went through several years of being itinerant. They did short runs at Truman College, where they also had o ce space. “We would travel all over the city. We would take the plays everywhere: libraries in Pilsen, in Rogers Park,” says Muñoz. Finally, Vargas mortgaged her house to purchase the two-story building on North Laramie that the company has called home ever since.

“I think it was a metal parts store before that,” says Muñoz. “The neighborhood has

changed. When we got there 25 years ago, it was a bit more of a Polish and German neighborhood.” According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the neighborhood is now nearly 78 percent Hispanic.

But getting Spanish speakers into the seats wasn’t a given, notes Muñoz. “It was probably the hardest relationship to develop. We do get folks from all over the city. We’re extremely thankful for our audience. They come from colleges from all over the city, and they come to us in Belmont Cragin, which we love. And we still to this day get someone who says, ‘I live right across the street, and I’ve never come in. I never quite knew what this was.’

And those are the moments that are really, really touching to us because that’s exactly who we want to speak with, and hopefully create with and tell stories to.” The company o ers a variety of theater classes for teens and adults.

It’s impossible to summarize all the work that Aguijón has done over the past three and a half decades, but it’s fair to say that there has been a particular focus on stories about complicated women—real, ﬁctional, and some combination thereof. The company’s name means “stinger” in Spanish; Vargas had a company of the same name in her native Cartagena, Colombia, and decided to keep it for her new artistic home.

In November, Aguijón presents two shows for the seventh annual Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, produced by the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance.

The first is a revival of Cintas de Seda at the National Museum of Mexican Art. First produced in the 2022 Destinos festival, Norge Espinosa Mendoza’s play imagines a conversation across the centuries by two iconic Mexican women artists: Frida Kahlo and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Vargas, who played “the Painter” (as the Kahlo-inspired character was called) received a Non-Equity Je Award nomination for her performance. In 2021, Aguijón’s production of Chicago writer Rey Andújar’s La Gran Tirana (descarga dramática) , a poetic and visually stunning portrait of Cuban singer La Lupe, won two Non-Equity Je Awards for

star Ana Santos-Sánchez and for properties designer Augusto Yanacopulos.

Then, from November 1–December 15 at their home theater, the company presents a new version of Andújar’s Adverses , his 2016 contemporary retelling of Euripides’s Electra , in which Clytemnestra is reimagined as “Clitemnestra.” Reader critic Justin Hayford described the first production as “urgent, idiosyncratic, and wholly contemporary.”

Festivals like Destinos and its predecessor, the Goodman’s Latino Theater Festival (curated by Goodman resident artistic associate Henry Godinez) have helped introduce Aguijón’s work to diverse audiences in Chicago as well as to the national and international artists who perform in the festivals. The company has also toured work around the world, and during the pandemic shutdown, their ongoing series of talks about theater went virtual as Aguizoóm.

I’ve spoken to for this series (including Lifeline and About Face), have decided producing fewer shows while paying artists better is the shortterm plan. “So we’re doing one show per season and making sure everyone gets paid something close to a decent wage,” says Muñoz. That focus on fairness may also come from the fact that, while many companies may describe themselves as “family,” there literally is a family running Aguijón. And that family feeling extends to ensemble members who aren’t blood relations.

Leturia, who also teaches journalism at Columbia College Chicago, says, “The first time that I went to Aguijón as an actor, it was like crossing a border. After so many years living in the United States, I had become really

“There’s a bit of an isolation when it comes to the work that we do here,” notes Muñoz. “There’s been more of a connection when we’ve gone to international festivals somewhere else. You see that connection and collaboration and understanding of the work that’s being done outside of each company’s country." With Destinos, Muñoz says, “There’s deﬁnitely a continuation that’s a surge of energy. You see it with the di erent companies that are in this year’s festival. A lot of them are new, showing their work in Destinos for the ﬁrst time, and they’re local companies, which is great.”

But even after 35 years, producing and paying artists remains a challenge. Aguijón’s annual budget, according to Muñoz, is less than $300,000. And while the company has received some major grants in recent years, including a Chicago’s Cultural Treasures grant (earmarked for “organizations whose mission is to enable the creation, preservation, and dissemination of art stemming from BIPOC traditions, leadership, and culture”) and a National Latinx Theater Initiative grant, they, like other companies

more rigid. So when I enter and people started kissing me to say hi, I was just, ‘What is going on here?’ That opened all of a sudden this possibility to go back to my roots. I’m Peruvian, they’re Colombian, and we have people from Mexico and from Chile and from Ecuador and even other countries like Albania, for instance. But it feels very much that we connect with each other, that we speak the same language, that we can actually work with each other without the conﬂict.”

In her introduction for a book produced by the company for Aguijón’s 30th anniversary, Vargas wrote about the “rigor, much love, energy and great tenacity” invested in making Aguijón “a space of creation and interdisciplinarity where everyone who has something to say can feel at home.” From their intimate storefront to international stages, the company hopes to continue bringing the language of dreams to vibrant life. v

m kreid@chicagoreader.com

Cintas de Seda ELIO LETURIA

OPENING

RThe price of truth telling The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon is a rattling experience.

Reading the statistics on femicides in the adjacent exhibit set up for Water People Theater’s The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon triggered my emotions and an alarming memory of my visit to a memorial site for women lost to femicide in Ciudad Juárez. I was with two femme writers researching material related to the disappearances (and deaths) of women and that sacred spot in an empty dirt lot, surrounded by giant pink crosses and props set up as human ﬁgures, had also rattled my emotions. Other feelings were exacerbated during that visit when two men approached us, inquiring about our presence as they casually revealed guns beneath their jackets and guided us back toward our car.

I felt all of those emotions again—the consternation, anger, and futility—while watching Rebeca Alemán and Eric K. Roberts in their performances. Alemán, who wrote the play based on true events (Water People premiered it in the 2019 Destinos festival), boldly explores that emotional complexity in her portrayal of Paulina, a human rights journalist who finds herself struggling through recovery after a tragic incident stemming from her work with victims of femicide and injustices against Indigenous people. With the help of her best friend, Rodrigo, she agonizes over lost memories that, once revealed, may lead to further life-altering consequences. Directed by Iraida Tapias, this is one of the most empowering and moving presentations I’ve witnessed about the courage it takes to be a truth-teller in this world. —SANDRA TREVIÑO THE DELICATE TEARS OF THE WANING MOON Through 10/4: Wed–Fri 7 PM; no show Sat 9/28; Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio, waterpeople. org, $30 (students and seniors $25); performed in English with Spanish subtitles

REast Texas Hot Links delivers the smoke

Court Theatre’s timely revival asks, “What do we owe our community?”

What do we owe our community? Ourselves? Spicy and explosive, the must-see East Texas Hot Links lives up to its name. The latest oﬀering from director Ron OJ Parson at the Court Theatre is a savory treat for even the most discerning theatrical palate. Set in 1955, a group of Black folks sit at the Top o’ the Hill Cafe under the shadow of the Klan and, well . . . just shoot the shit. Engrossing banter intoxicates, and you’re halfway through this slow burn before it occurs that not much has happened beyond drunken, philosophical musings. The brilliance of Eugene Lee’s masterful script is that everything has happened, making the reveal that much more devastating.

There isn’t a weak link in this hot cast. Willie B. serves soul-ﬁlling servings of wisdom and wit as the bawdy intellectual Adolph, who cryptically oﬀers, “Feed me with your death, and I’ll feed my brother with mine.” Kelvin Roston Jr. is all hilarious braggadocio as Roy, Alfred H. Wilson is the sober voice of reason as the upstanding Columbus, Anji White steals the show as the powerhouse shop matron Charlesetta, David Dowd is painfully naive as the enterprising Delmus, Juwan Lock-

ett is deliciously awkward as the odd-duck XL, Geno Walker plays Buckshot with imposing swagger, and the always indomitable A.C. Smith is intense as Boochie, the hand of fate.

RPassionate flight

The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk illuminates the lives of Marc and Bella Chagall.

dialogue, narration, song, and dance, Flying Lovers explores the longing for people le behind and places that are gone, o en through songs in Yiddish, Russian, French, and English. And when words are not enough, their passion transforms into dance. With sparse set design by Scott Penner and muted costumes by Rachel Lambert, the performances themselves illuminate the vibrant colors that made Chagall famous, painting a colorful pastiche in the minds of the audience rather than projecting his actual artwork onstage.

Jack Cahill-Lemme as Chagall and Emma Rosenthal as Bella are transﬁxing to watch, completely engrossing as lovers torn between a disappearing past and uncertain future, and certain only of their love. Cahill-Lemme embodies the spirit of Chagall and Rosenthal is a powerhouse of emotion, with ﬁery physicality that sets her apart as much more than just a spouse to a famous painter, but an accomplished artist and equal herself. Musical director Michael Mahler and Elisa Carlson de ly play numerous instruments and sing (as well as play various ensemble characters) to enhance this wonderful show. —JOSH FLANDERS THE FLYING LOVERS OF VITEBSK Through 10/6: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; open captions Fri 9/27, open captions and audio description with touch tour Sat 9/28 2:30 PM; Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, northlight.org, $49-$91 (students $15 pending availability)

RHenry V, portrait of a serial killer

Edward Hall’s staging for Chicago Shakes highlights the price of unchecked nationalism. In Chicago Shakespeare’s violent, bloody, overstuﬀed freight train of a production, the traditionally heroic King Henry V is a symbol of unchecked nationalism.

Directed by Chicago Shakes artistic director Edward Hall (whose brilliant 2003 Rose Rage remains a seminal production at the Navy Pier theater), Henry (Elijah Jones, in full command of the stage) goes to war for two reasons: A) because his feelings have been hurt by a child (the Dauphin of France and a prank involving tennis balls) and B) because he’s so wrapped up in his ego that he fails to understand the bishops convincing him to invade France only want war as a means of fattening church coﬀers. Yes, Henry’s eve-of-battle St. Crispin’s Day Speech is an inspiration to underdogs through history. But when Jones’s Henry unleashes the passage with ﬁre-breathing righteousness, urging his men to invade a sovereign country where countless will be slaughtered, it feels dangerous and disingenuous.

A musing on trust and betrayal, dehumanization and self-actualization, East Texas Hot Links explores individualism within the organism of community, as well as the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?”

—SHERI FLANDERS EAST TEXAS HOT

LINKS Through 9/29: Wed–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat–Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; touch tour, audio description, and ASL interpretation Sat 9/28 2 PM (touch tour 12:30 PM), open captioning Sun 9/29 2 PM; Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $58-$90

Northlight Theatre’s The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, written by Daniel Jamieson, featuring music by Ian Ross, and directed by Elizabeth Margolius, is a delightful journey of love and artistry. Celebratory, passionate, and o en tectonic, it follows Jewish painter Marc Chagall, who was born in Vitebsk (then part of the Soviet Union, a town that was 52 percent Jewish, boasting dozens of synagogues), and his wife Bella, through their romance and artistic endeavors. (Jamieson gives her some long-neglected attention.) We see the couple ﬂeeing pogroms in Russia and Nazis in Europe. Blending

Henry’s most damning moment arrives when he’s confronted by a soldier who scoﬀs at the idea of dying for honor: Nobody can eat honor, certainly not the orphans and widows of the dead. Jones’s Henry refuses to hear it, insisting that, since he rules by divine right, all of war’s carnage is actually God’s responsibility. So it goes in a country when there’s no separation of church and state and the leader believes Jesus wants him in power.

Hall could cut a solid ten minutes from Henry V. The battle scenes make full use of Chicago Shakes’s mighty arsenal of lighting (designed by Marcus Doshi), but the strobing becomes repetitive, making the scenes so alike the battles don’t clarify so much as they muddle. More eﬀective is Emily Hayman’s sound design, which incorporates a chilling array of nationalistic anthems

East Texas Hot Links

MICHAEL BROSILOW

and punk rock.

The ensemble is mesmerizing, with especially memorable work coming from Rachel Crowl’s malaprop-prone Welsh captain Fluellen and Jaylon Muchison as a French messenger, who creates an entire, nuanced character arc inside of three scenes. —CATEY SULLIVAN HENRY V Through 10/6: Tue 7 PM, Wed 1 and 7 PM, Thu–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7 PM, Sun 2 PM; ASL interpretation Fri 9/27, audio description and touch tour Sun 9/29, Spanish subtitles Tue 10/1, open captions Wed 10/2 1 and 7 PM; Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-5955600, chicagoshakes.com, $78-$97

RNever Better hits a nerve

A new musical at Theo explores mortality and deﬁance.

Avoidant and in denial. Most of us have been there. But when college girl Davy, played by Emma Samuelson in Never Better, leans into these strategies, it causes problems. Still mourning the loss of her mom, she discovers she may have leukemia and begins dissociating from her own life.

Not every musical takes on the topic of terminal illness, but in the new COVID universe, this processing of grief seems like an essential purge. What better way to process than through song? Theo’s production of Preston Max Allen’s new show (billed as a developmental production, but open to reviewers), directed by Landree Fleming, provides room for the talented

ensemble to deliver a wide range of youthful feels: denial, love, faithfulness, and existential angst. A musical and imminent death may seem like odd bedfellows, but they pair well in this spirited and humorous look at the harder moments in life. The scenic design and lighting (by Eleanor Kahn and David Goodman-Edberg, respectively) are contemporary and clever. Musicians pop up as embodiments of the outside world pressing in on Davy’s deep denial—concerned parents, annoying teachers, and demanding bill collectors.

Samuelson captures the mournful vibe of a young adult trying to play her role in life in defiance of her illness. Carter, played by Shawn Smith, is the endearing boyfriend patiently working to connect with an avoidant Davy. Roommate April (Melody Murray) shifts from a seemingly vacuous online personality to a person trying to make a difference in the world while living with her own trauma, toggling back and forth from masked confidence to unmasked vulnerability in that role.

Never Better is rooted ﬁrmly in the experiences of the current generation but oﬀers something universal, a reminder that we all endure sorrows no stranger can imagine. But what makes that realization bearable is how we experience them with support from our most trusted people. Delivered with a pop-rock musical score, that healing medicine just goes down smoother. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL NEVER BETTER Through 10/13: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 6 PM; industry night Mon 9/23 7:30 PM, understudy performance Wed 9/25 7:30 PM, no show Fri 9/20; Howard Street Theatre, 721 Howard, Evanston, 773-939-4101, theo-u.com, $46-$51 v

QUE TE VAYA BIEN

10/ 10 –10/27: Fri 7: 30 PM, Sat 2: 30 and 7: 30 PM, Sun 2: 30 PM; also Thu 10/ 10 7: 30 PM, Sat 10/ 12 7: 30 PM only; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, subtextstudiotc.org and greenhousetheater.org, $26 ($16 students, seniors, and military)

SUBURBAN STORYTELLERS

THE MISANTHROPE

10/ 11 –10/20 : Fri 7 PM, Sat 3 and 7 PM, Sun 3 PM; Madison Street Theater, 1010 Madison, Oak Park, fptheatre.org, $ 35 ($15 students; seniors and Forest Park Arts Alliance members free); opening night 6: 30 PM, $ 80

Subtext Studio eatre Company and Forest Park eatre bring drama to the near west suburbs

Both companies expand their audience base this fall.

By JACK HELBIG

Omar Vicente Fernandez, playwright and Subtext Studio Theatre Company artistic director, first came up with the idea for his play, Que Te Vaya Bien (opening in October as part of Destinos, the seventh Chicago International Latino Theater Festival), at a Cubs game.

Fernandez went to a game alone because his partner had to work that day, and, on a whim, he had stopped at a dispensary next to Wrigley Field. “I do partake,” Fernandez explains. “So I picked up a joint.” Fernandez was already feeling “a sense of inebriation” as he walked into the park. As soon as the game started, Fernandez noticed he was “flooded with thoughts” because, during quiet parts of the game, he “didn’t have anyone to talk to.”

“My thoughts were racing,” he continues, adding that to calm himself he “needed to step away from [his] own brain.

“I paid attention to the people around me, and heard the individual conversations that were happening, 30,000 times over in that stadium. It was almost like 30,000 individual people were dealing with all their own issues, and me just among them, and none of us know if this is one of our last days.”

After the game, Fernandez went home, his mind still buzzing, and wrote the ﬁrst scene of what became Que Te Vaya Bien, a two-person play about a Mexican American father and his lawyer son who “battle out generational trauma against the background of a Cubs–Brewers game.” Fernandez mischievously picked the Milwaukee Brewers for symbolic reasons. Part of the intergenerational trauma involves issues of alcoholism, and as Fernandez says, “Milwaukee is famous for their brewing, and some lawyers are prone to alcoholism.”

“The play centers around a character who just ﬁnds out that his wife is pregnant and he’s a lawyer and he has some skepticism about

his ability to make amends with his father and come to understand, you know, what does it mean to be a good father. This play is very personal to me. It’s heavily biographically inﬂuenced. It’s not an exact experience.”

Que Te Vaya Bien is Berwyn-based Subtext Studio Theatre’s second entry in Destinos, after last year’s The American Dream by Juan Ramirez Jr. It’s the company’s ﬁrst production outside of its familiar haunts in Berwyn and neighboring Oak Park. It marks growth in a company founded in 2021 by Fernandez and a group of fellow University of Illinois Chicago theater students.

The past years have been good for Subtext. They have had a couple of well-received productions, most notably a sci-ﬁ think piece, Qualia, performed in Oak Park at the Madison Street Theater. Now they have a season of new plays planned and are kicking it o with their entry in Destinos, the culmination of a lot of work by the Subtext team led by Fernandez.

The funny thing is that, for a long time, Fernandez thought of theater not as his vocation but as a fun thing he did while he pursued other things. “I entered UIC under the assumption that I was going for premed," he says, but his love of theater pulled him back.

He first became involved in theater when he was in middle school and joined an after-school theater program at the late, great Berwyn-based 16th Street Theater. Fernandez attended Lincoln Middle School, just across the street from the theater. One day Fernandez happened into the North Berwyn Park District building. “I was a very shy kid,” Fernandez remembers, “and I was fortunate enough to stumble my way into a classroom thinking it was an arts painting club when it really was the drama club. And yeah, so I was expecting to turn into a painter and then I turned into an actor.”

Fernandez loved theater but he also loved sports. He put theater aside to play high school football. But his career as a football

Fall eater & Arts

player at Morton West High School ended almost before it began when he broke his arm “in the ﬁrst game [he] ever played.” Arm in a cast, he auditioned for the high school musical instead (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella) and got a part. “That’s where my passion for theater really started.”

Today much of Fernandez’s theater work is in Chicago’s theater scene, though he is still a student at UIC, with plans to graduate in the fall of 2025 from the School of Theatre and Music. In the meantime, he wants to keep expanding Subtext. They have already outgrown Berwyn and have a space in the Fine Arts Building “smack dab right in downtown.” Onward and upward.

Another west suburban company with UIC connections stretching its limits is the Forest Park Theatre company. Founded in the spring of 2021 by UIC faculty member Richard Corley, it began as a shoestring theater specializing in performing Shakespeare outdoors in the summer in Forest Park at Altenheim in the Grove (a meadow-like space near the 19th-century Altenheim geriatric facility, originally built for elderly German Americans in the suburb).

Last year, Forest Park Theatre sponsored a series of readings of new plays by women playwrights (including a new adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre ), performing them at the now-closed American Legion Hall in Forest Park. This year they are moving from staged readings to full productions at the Madison Street Theater in Oak Park. In keeping with the theater’s Shakespearean vibe, both plays are English translations of classics in the western tradition: Richard Wilbur’s translation of Molière’s The Misanthrope and Ezra Pound’s take on Sophocles, Elektra

“This season is the kind of work that I want to do,” Corley tells me. “It fills a necessary place in the Chicago theater ecosystem, but it

also, for me, feels like a great way to continue building a company.”

It’s part of Corley’s ongoing e ort to build an ensemble of actors who are “ﬂexible, who use language really well, who deal with plays with ideas, and that can make that sort of cross-generational connection between the past and the present.” Already Corley’s e orts have resulted in remarkable productions over the past two summers of Measure for Measure and Pericles

“You know, what interests me as a director,” Corley continues, “is to bring the classic sensibility and a classic text into a contemporary sensibility without just simply making everything contemporary.”

That is why the texts he is using for his first season are translated by American poets—Wilbur and Pound—with a ﬂair for shaping American English to communicate the essence of works written originally in French and Greek. Pound’s work translating Greek originals is much less well-known than Wilbur’s Molière translations.

“Pound was, as you know, a great poet,” Corley explains, “and also very interested in taking ancient texts and ﬁnding an American lens through which to view the texts. So [his version of Elektra] follows Sophocles but there’s a lot of ‘ain’ts’ in it, a lot of o -the-cu kind of Americanism to it.”

The new season is a bold move for a company only a little more than three years old. But Corley believes it is now or never.

“I can’t honestly say that I feel like all the pieces, the ﬁnancial pieces, are in place for us to do this season. But if I waited until that was true, probably I’d wait forever.”

What he has to say about Forest Park Theatre could equally apply to Subtext. And, in a way, to every Chicago theater company that has made its mark.

“I just feel like we have to leap.” v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Pericles at Forest Park Theatre JOHN GRIFFIN

Fall eater & Arts

‘A poetry show that’s not a total bummer’

Giggle Hour combines live lit and comedy with diverse lineups.

By DORA SEGALL

Kost was itching to produce an event last summer. After a ninemonth tour of the U.S. with a children’s theater company, the poet-director-writer-performer wanted to create something of their own. They bounced ideas o of their roommate, Lincoln Lodge manager Christian Borkey, including a potential poetry reading or comedy show. Borkey suggested combining both.

Kost loved the idea. She reached out to two poets who inspired her, Kailah Peters (“K.P.”) and Emily “Lee” Goldstein. Both were down to collaborate, and after a series of co ee shop brainstorming sessions, Giggle Hour was born.

Giggle Hour markets itself on Instagram as “a poetry show that’s not a total bummer.” The monthly event ranges from stand-up to PowerPoint comedy to rap—Kost once even inhaled helium onstage for a sketch they titled “POV: I’m one of the seven spiders you swallow in

your sleep every year.” Now coming up on its 14th month, the series has already garnered an enthusiastic following.

A number of factors might explain Giggle Hour’s rapid rise in popularity. For one, it stands out as a lighthearted option among other poetry events.

Mikee Parangalan, a writer and regular Giggle Hour attendee, appreciates the series’s balance between levity and seriousness.

“We’re living in such a terrible time, in my opinion—it’s so hard to just get through a day sometimes,” she said. “To be able to go somewhere where people want to share work that’s actively trying to put a smile on your face but includes [their] own experiences, it’s just really encouraging.”

Goldstein, a self-professed “former button poetry addict,” noted the often unwarned emotional intensity of other poetry events.

“I’ve been to seven million open mikes where

RGIGGLE HOUR

First Tuesday of every month; next show 10/1, Lincoln Lodge, 2040 N. Milwaukee, thelincolnlodge.com, $10

I go up there and make a fart joke and then the person after me is like, ‘I want to kill myself.’ Or [I] go after that person—which is bad, but also [I] can tell that the audience is relieved.”

Kost believes that humor makes Giggle Hour’s audience more receptive to serious issues underlying some of the performers’ work.

“The comedy lens makes the vulnerability digestible in a way that you are laughing really hard, and then you walk away, and you’re like, ‘Jesus,’” she said.

K.P. says this digestibility is especially important in 2024. “In this day and age with the Internet, everything’s so rage-baity,” they said. “Giggle Hour is a way to enter that lens, but you get to laugh at it.”

Another less common aspect of Giggle Hour is its consistent COVID consciousness; masks are required when people aren’t actively performing, eating, or drinking. A running air puriﬁer—usually from Clean Air Club—always sits next to the stage. These health precautions were Goldstein’s idea.

“I made really close friends with someone who has long COVID,” they said. “I heard about the struggles that she was having and her feeling so left behind.”

According to Goldstein, the community has responded enthusiastically. “People are so hungry for COVID-safe events,” they said.

Giggle Hour has found ways to incorporate audience participation while maintaining COVID safety, including a doodling competition. Before each show, audience members can be seen hunching over the little comedy club tables with organizer-provided markers in hand. The winning doodler receives a free ticket to the next show, heightening the stakes.

Marley Scheld, who has attended almost every Giggle Hour since she moved to Chicago in May, said she and her girlfriend submit doodles to the competition every time.

“I have really tried to create some masterpieces and do some silly little doodles, and I’ve never gotten picked,” she said. “But my girlfriend won the free ticket one time, and she’s gotten featured on the Instagram almost every single time.”

Giggle Hour’s perhaps most highly anticipated element is what the organizers call “Silly Libs.” Between each set, an organizer has the audience shout out specific words Mad Libs–style—among responses at the most recent show on September 3 were “fracking” (verb), “Firework” by Katy Perry (song), and “horny” (adjective). Kost attributed the idea to Luya, an open mike centering queer BIPOC performers.

At each Luya show, audience members build a collective poem, exquisite corpse–style.

“We loved that idea of interactivity, of bringing people in,” said Kost, “but we obviously didn’t want to steal their idea.”

Giggle Hour’s do-it-yourself work ethic and focus on equity—from bringing in diverse performers to paying everyone involved in each show—makes the series a good ﬁt for the Lincoln Lodge.

“It’s pretty cheap to run a stage there, and you make 100 percent of the money from ticket sales, but you have to do the whole thing yourself and earn that money,” said Borkey, the space manager who helped Kost come up with the idea for the series. “The people who run Giggle Hour do such a good job getting people in the door every month.”

But as the series continues into its second year, the organizers have their sights set on other locations. They’ve already hosted a collaborative show at Guild Row with Grandma’s House, another monthly poetry series. Now they want to bring the series to the south and west sides.

“As a Black, queer woman I know what it means to feel not welcomed or not heard or just othered, so I try to put very intentional e ort into making sure that Giggle Hour is a space where everyone feels included,” said K.P. Kost and Goldstein, pulling from their own identities, share this drive for inclusion. All three organizers hope that expanding Giggle Hour to locations beyond the northwest side will bring in performers and audience members who might otherwise feel the series is not for them.

“We are always talking about [that],” said Kost. “Now that we're building this foundation, how can it be useful to everyone and keep bringing people up?” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Kailah “K.P” Peters COURTESY GIGGLE HOUR GENRE BENDER

L to R: Kost and Emily “Lee” Goldstein COURTESY GIGGLE HOUR

Fall eater & Arts

SEASON PREVIEW

Onstage front-runners

Our critics select a few promising performances for the months ahead.

By KERRY REID AND IRENE HSIAO

These are tense times, no doubt about it, and the lingering high temperatures of summer (Climate change? What climate change?) add to the seasonal confusion. But fall is afoot, and so are some of the most exciting live performances of the year, which may have the added bonus of taking your mind off cable news and election polls for a few hours—or at least give you a di erent perspective on the sociopolitical landscape than the talking heads provide. Here are just a few things we’re looking forward to seeing in the months ahead.

THEATER

(Kerry Reid)

Destinos: 7th Chicago International Theater Festival

The largest celebration of Latine theater and performance in North America, produced by the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), returns for a lucky seventh year. Featuring terriﬁc local companies (including Aguijón Theater and Subtext Studio Theatre Company; see stories on p. 26 and p. 29, respectively) as well as work by national and international artists, Destinos is always one of my favorite events of the season, as well as a strong source of cultural civic pride.

Among the highlights this year are Latin Standards (10/4–10/5), an autobiographical solo show from longtime San Francisco queer and Latine comedian-performer Marga Gomez; Elvira (10/2–10/26) from local company Colectivo El Pozo, about a Mexican migrant seeking sanctuary in a Humboldt Park church; Desvenar (10/3–10/5) from Mexico City’s Kraken Teatro, which explores Mexican identity through the concept of spice—“a fruit that gives birth to a feeling of patriotism, which is what tans our temperament and our failures as a nation”; and a special performance of Dennis Watkins’s long-running The Magic Parlour (now at the Goodman Theatre) featuring LA Latine magician Siegfried Tieber (who is originally from Ecuador) alongside local magicians Luis Carreon and Mago Gozner (10/9–10/20). There are

also “scratch nights” devoted to storytelling from the local collective 80 Minutes Around the World: Immigration Stories (10/18) and to physical theater, courtesy of the Physical Theater Festival Chicago (10/21). 9/30–11/17 at multiple locations; see clata.org/en/ programs/destinos-2024 for complete schedule and ticketing information.

Chicago Lore(s) UrbanTheater Company (UTC) unveils the world premiere of a new play based on the story of Young Lords founder José “Cha Cha” Jiménez. Sammy A. Publes’s script, directed by UTC artistic director Miranda González, functions as a memory play of sorts, in which Jiménez and his best friend, Billy “Che” Brooks, trace the evolution of the Young Lords from a 1950s street gang in pre-gentriﬁed Lincoln Park into a radical political force. UTC has been working with Publes to develop this work over the past few years, and the story of Cha Cha and Che fits well with the company’s unofficial motto of “From the Streets to the Stage.” 9/27–10/27, UrbanTheater Company, 2620 W. Division, 312767-8821, urbantheaterchicago. org, $37

Nancy Drew (Danne W. Taylor) will have to be along for this ride in the Mystery Mobile (and if past is prologue, she’s probably brought the good drugs from the retirement home lockup).

10/10–11/3, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, handbagproductions.org, $29-$60

Coronation

OK, not everything can be a distraction from politics. Refracted Theatre Company, whose production of Dave Harris’s Tambo & Bones last year won eight Non-Equity Jeff Awards,

DANCE (Irene Hsiao)

She’s Auspicious

Copresented by Chicago’s Kalapriya, this work by Los Angeles–based Indian American choreographer Mythili Prakash uses Bharatanatyam, vocal music, and percussion to explore the contradiction within a society that venerates woman as goddess in art and myth and destroys her in female infanticide, the historical practice of sati, and continuing unequal pay, harassment, and discrimination. Within these larger themes, Prakash, trained by her mother and mentored by Akram Khan, also questions her own practice of Bharatanatyam as an upper-caste woman. Chicago will witness three performances over two days in this work’s global tour. 9/26–9/27, Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, dance.colum.edu/events/2024/5/ kalapriya, $20-$150

The Golden Girls Meet The Skooby Don’t Gang: The Mystery of The Haunted Bush Hell in a Handbag combines their long-running parody of The Golden Girls with everybody’s favorite animated teen detectives in this new comedy by David Cerda, directed by Frankie Leo Bennett. The show inevitably raises the question: who’s more clueless— Rose or Shaggy? Of course the GGs’ friend,

returns with this “femme-futurist” tale by Laura Winters, directed by Tova Wolff. It’s 2044 and yet another woman candidate for president has been thwarted. A trio of women dream up a feminist monarchy in a show that also promises “a gas mask fashion show, a ball gown made out of blue jeans and a walking, talking, plotting Siri.” 10/11–11/16, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, refractedco.com, $11-$41

Chicago Performs

The MCA’s third annual festival of Chicago artists presents an eclectic mix of performances that have been brewing over the course of years by Every House Has a Door (Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish) and Essi Kausalainen, Lykanthea, and cat mahari. In Some Viscera, Lykanthea (Lakshmi Ramgopal) combines song, poetry, and dance performed by a luscious ensemble of dancers and musicians, to explore ideas of birth, death, and motherhood. Every House Has a Door’s Broken Aquarium, which was ﬁrst presented in the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series in 2022, explores extinction in an imaginary sea in 14 movements, inspired by the structure of Camille SaintSaëns’s 1886 The Carnival of the Animals . Mahari’s blk ark: the impossible manifestation, other iterations of which have been presented at Links Hall and Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater, evolves into its newest excerpt, an interactive performance, installation, and live-scored ﬁlm. 9/26–9/29, MCA Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave., visit.mcachicago.org/chicago-performs-2024, $10-$30 v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

She’s Auspicious JOSH ROSE

RFall eater & Arts

Looking back at 60 years of CIFF

The Chicago International Film Festival celebrates its 60th anniversary with citywide retrospective programming.

By KAT SACHS

This year marks the occasion of the 60th Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF). To put that into perspective, in 1964, on February 7, the Beatles arrived in New York City for their first U.S. tour, kicking off the British Invasion. Several months later, on July 2, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

While all of that was happening, the festi-

val was but a glimmer—OK, probably more than that, as it took a lot of planning—in the eye of one Michael Kutza. Then, in his early 20s, premed at Loyola University, Kutza started the festival with his father’s financial support, dependent on a promise to continue his studies and not turn to this full-time. The first CIFF ran from November 9 to 16, 1965, at the Carnegie Theatre, making it the country’s oldest competitive film festival and one of the longest running in general.

“The irony of it is, I’m being forced to be a

doctor, but I’m making movies because she’s teaching me to make movies . . . and he’s introducing me to movies,” Kutza tells me, referring to his mother and father, both doctors but film enthusiasts in their own rights. His mother carried around a 16-millimeter Bolex and would ask her son to “make [what she shot] into a movie” to show her doctor friends; his father collected films, exposing him to the medium at a young age. “So, in their own way, they’re forming me without realizing it—not wanting it, either, which is the funny part.”

silent ﬁlm star Colleen Moore, of all people) of Cinema/Chicago, the festival’s parent organization, in 1964.

“We really understand bringing people together to experience cinema in the theater, to create conversations, to bring guests in.”

Kutza recently published a book, Starstruck: How I Magically Transformed Chicago Into Hollywood for More Than Fifty Years, about his experience as the founder and longtime artistic director of CIFF, and as the founder (with help from

In celebration of these 60 years, in advance of this year’s festival, ﬁlm and cultural organizations around the city are hosting retrospective programs (aptly titled A Look Back) with themes relating to the history of this annual event: Before They Were Big at the Gene Siskel Film Center; Italian Women Direct: Through 60 Years of the Chicago International Film Festival at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago; Big Art Films at the Music Box Theatre; and Outside the Lines at Facets. All of this, of course, is supplementary to the ﬁlm festival itself, taking place from October 16 to 27. The full CIFF schedule will be announced on Monday, September 23, though its opening and closing

from

Fall eater & Arts

continued from p. 34

night ﬁlms have thus far been revealed.

Kicking o the festival is Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson, on October 16, at 6:30 PM, at the Music Box Theatre. A debut feature, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the festival’s long-standing mission to discover first- and second-time directors (“Trust me,” Kutza writes in his book, “this was a unique idea more than half a century ago”) and a point of pride throughout their enduring history, having shown the early works of major filmmakers before they were big.

Speaking of which: “It’ll be the third time that we’re closing with a Robert Zemeckis film,” the festival’s current artistic director Mimi Plauché says, referring to the Chicago native’s latest, Here. Starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, it will screen at the Music Box on October 27 at 5:30 PM. “One thing I think that’s really significant is that we started showing his work when he was making shorts as a student, and he had an Academy-nominated short that played at the festival.”

“I think [this programming] in some ways hearkens both back to the festival’s history and our tradition of showcasing first and second features, which you see in the New Director’s competition,” Plauché says. “That’s part of our very long history. So [we’re] connecting the history, but also looking to the future.

Hence the name of the first program of the citywide celebration of the festival’s diamond anniversary, Before They Were Big. The series ran through August at the Film Center and included screenings of the debut films of four major filmmakers whose work played at the festival in advance of their ascendency, something Kutza takes special pride in. “I wanted to start the festival because I wanted first-time and second-time directors—that

. . . We feel that Malcolm Washington did an absolutely amazing job on his first feature directing and want to recognize that with the Breakthrough Award. . . . It’s an interesting way to bookend the festival, with a ﬁrst feature opening it and a festival veteran coming back to close it.”

“It allows us to really hearken back to our history and talk about who we are and what 60 years has looked like at the Chicago International Film Festival.”

RA LOOK BACK

Italian Women Direct: Through 60 Years of the Chicago International Film Festival, Italian Cultural Institute, through Thu 10/ 10

Big Art Films, Music Box Theatre, through Sun 9/29

Outside the Lines, Facets, Sat 10/5–Sun 10/6

(2001). For Scorsese, especially, inclusion in the festival was fortuitous, helping to launch one of the most distinguished careers in American film history. Roger Ebert, in one of his first assignments for the Sun-Times, wrote that Scorsese’s film “made a stunning impact in its world premiere” at the festival.

In an appropriate throwback, this year’s festival will welcome back Kore-eda for a tribute, along with a six-ﬁlm retrospective of

four ﬁlms by Italian women ﬁlmmakers whose work has shown at CIFF, also evocative of the festival’s mission to showcase international auteurs and women directors both up-andcoming and established. There’s Lina Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy (1973), which has already screened; Liliana Cavani’s The Skin (1981), screening Thursday, September 19, at 6 PM; Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo Celeste (2011) on Thursday, October 3, at 6 PM; and Laura Bispuri’s Daughter of Mine (2018) on Thursday, October 10, at 6 PM. In recent years, CIFF has expanded outside its usual venues in a way meant to be especially collaborative, with festival screenings taking place citywide just as they are with this ancillary programming. This year, along with its primary venue, AMC Newcity 14, the festival will have screenings at the Music Box, the Film Center, the Chicago History Museum, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Hamilton Park Cultural Center.

was the whole point,” he says. “And no one had heard of these people, so they were not willing to venture in.” Some of those ﬁlmmakers who were then unheard of would go on to become among the most lauded working today, ﬁlling seats with just their reputations alone. Case in point, the four first features that made up the Before They Were Big showcase: Martin Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (1967); Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi (1995); Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999); and Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga

the Japanese director’s work. Partnering with other cultural organizations around Chicago has allowed the festival to showcase both its history and the past works of ﬁlmmakers who have shown there previously through this auxiliary programming. “It allows us to really hearken back to our history and talk about who we are and what 60 years has looked like at the Chicago International Film Festival,” Plauché says, “but also to keep the festival a manageable size. . . . We do have more retrospective screenings and restorations than we usually do . . . but [we] also [get] to build that out and talk about the history leading up to the festival.”

Italian Women Direct: Through 60 Years of the Chicago International Film Festival, at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, includes

“During the pandemic and then emerging from it, we really were thinking about who we are as a festival, and what our mission is, and how do we best achieve that,” says Plauché. “I think one of the big pieces that came out of it was thinking about accessibility and, you know, when we were online in 2020 with most of the ﬁlms, except when we were at the drive-in, we started really rethinking that question around accessibility, and then how do you translate that when we’re back in the theater? [One of the] ways that we’ve decided to carry that through once we returned to the theater is going out into different neighborhoods in the city and bringing programming to di erent venues.”

At least since I’ve been in Chicago—almost 12 years now—the Music Box has consistently been a place where some special festival events would take place. In addition to continued collaboration during the festival proper, another of the auxiliary series, Big Art Films, is currently underway through Sunday, September 29, at the newly renovated arthouse mainstay. King Hu’s Raining in the Mountain

Posters from the 35th and 38th CIFF COURTESY CIFF

BY JEROME LAWRENCE AND ROBERT E. LEE DIRECTED

A three-time Tony Award-winning masterwork and “cultural landmark that only seems to grow with relevance” (Los Angeles Times).

Science and religion go head-to-head in this iconic courtroom showdown. A small-town educator’s trial for teaching the theory of evolution becomes a battle royal of wits, wisdom and will for two of the country’s most powerful lawyers. In a bold retelling for today, Goodman Resident Artistic Associate Henry Godinez directs an all-new production of one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century, based on the real-life Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925—an “explosive episode in American culture” (The New York Times).

NOW THROUGH OCTOBER 13

Fall eater & Arts

continued from p. 36

(1979) and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) have already screened; upcoming are Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva (1981) on Saturday, September 21, and Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) on Sunday, September 22, both at 11:30 AM; Paul Thomas Anderson’s PunchDrunk Love (2002) on Saturday, September 28, and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017) on Sunday, September 29, also both at 11:30 AM.

“At some point in our history, we at the Music Box Theatre anointed ourselves ‘Chicago’s year-round ﬁlm festival,’” says Music Box programmer Rebecca Lyon, quoted from the event’s press release. “This title would have been hard to live up to without the presence of the Chicago International Film Festival helping to develop a community of moviegoers thirsty to see independent, foreign, and classic films on big screens across our fair city. Our relationship with the Festival goes back as far as 1985, where Cinema/Chicago presented monthly ‘secret screenings’ to Music Box Movie Club members eager to see a sneak peek of a new release or restoration, and we’ve played host to the Festival on and off since 1987. Both organizations have weathered decades of changes in the film industry and it’s a pleasure to be able to celebrate 60 years of movie watching with our colleagues by of course . . . watching some more movies.”

The press release also quotes the tropey saying, “You have to see it on the big screen!”—an old adage that nevertheless endures. Indeed, much of the ﬁlm festival experience is rooted in being physically present where it’s taking place; without that element, one wonders if there’s much of a festival at all.

“I think there are certain things [about the festival] that won’t change,” Plauché says.

“One is our commitment to the theatrical experience. We really understand bringing people together to experience cinema in the theater, to create conversations, to bring guests in, you know, just understanding the power of that and leaning into it. But we’re trying to think about how we expand our footprint in the city and make this accessible to more Chicagoans. So I think you’ll continue to see that programming expanding as well, and not just during the festival, but throughout the year.”

As for the guests, she mentions, they can range from so-called “below-the-line” filmworkers to the biggest and brightest Hollywood and international cinema stars.

Rand Spike Lee, among many others), some of the most talented people ever to grace the screen (Moore, Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson, Gloria Swanson, Jane Russell, Sophia Loren, Al Pacino, Ann-Margret, Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, and Halle Berry, also among many others), and just the newest and hottest faces in general. The festival had another claim to fame in its provocative poster series shot by Victor Skrebneski, which featured the likes of Cindy Crawford, Dolph Lundgren, Deborah Harris, and Anna Nicole Smith.

seem important to them. Seriously, as a group they’re antisocial and antishower.” (He’s not wrong as it pertains to this critic in particular, but, uh, ouch.)

Nevertheless, his book is a fun read; it’s fitting that Kutza so loves the movies, as he, too, is quite a character, with a love for stars, storytelling, and the sexier side of cinema. He even includes a nude photo of himself from the 70s among the myriad black-and-white photos of famed festival guests that make up a significant portion of his tome. There’s something to be said about the Chicago way of doing things: scrappily and just a little o eat, never looking to imitate the haughty grandeur of New York or the complete abasement of Los Angeles. We are the city of big shoulders, after all, and you can see Michael’s in his book!

Zemeckis, for example, is representative of the latter. Across its 60-year history, the festival has welcomed those whose names you’d see on film class syllabi (Wertmüller, King Vidor, Abel Gance, Otto Preminger, Howard Hawks, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy,

The title of Kutza’s memoir perfectly summarizes his a nity for such famous visages. He describes Chicago as a “star-starved city,” hence his dedication to honoring the greats and even helping to put faces to names moviegoers would see in the credits but would otherwise likely never have seen in photos, much less real life, such as directors and people like Edith Head, the famed costume designer. His love for movies and Chicago are evident, something this critic can’t deny—even though, in his book, he calls the Reader “a little local newspaper . . . our version of The Village Voice in NYC, an arts/cultural neighborhood sheet” and attests that the “majority of ﬁlm critics in the world are, well, slobs. They live in the dark and really don’t come out into the light very much, so the need to dress or shower doesn’t

O eat is the perfect descriptor for the last of the retrospective programming taking place before the official festival, the Outside the Lines series at Facets, featuring all animated films that have screened there in the past. The animated films represented here are meant for adults, with intense themes ranging from the personal to the political, as well as an array of animation styles that complement the subject matter. Screening on Saturday, October 5, are Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006) at 5 PM; Jian Liu’s Have a Nice Day (2017) at 7 PM; and Phil Tippett’s Mad God (2021) at 9 PM; and, on Sunday, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee (2021) at 3:30 PM and Chris Sullivan’s Consuming Spirits (2012) at 6 PM, with an appearance by Sullivan, a local filmmaker.

And then the festival, after which will begin the lead-up to the festival’s 61st edition, paving the way for future festival milestones that will ﬁnd many more movies and their makers and stars, and where the movies will ﬁnd us, the viewers, for whom it’s all being done. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Michael Kutza COURTESY CIFF

Posters from the 56th and 57th CIFF COURTESY CIFF

This past weekend was the Chicago Underground Film Festival, which I look forward to every year. Partly, of course, for the appropriately motley programming, and partly because I always know a lot of people whose work is in the festival, so I get to see them and other mutual friends over the span of a few days at the place I love most: a movie theater.

This year and last, the festival took place at the Harper Theater in Hyde Park. I hadn’t been there in a while, so the reclining chairs— complete with self-controlled heating!—were a welcome surprise. (Looks like it’s recently been renovated.) Such features at a soulless multiplex trying to re-create the comforts of home at a movie theater? Bad. But at a small arthouse theater kept just cool enough for the heated seats to feel like a kiss on the forehead? Perfection.

Anyway, my husband and I had a festival guest staying with us this year, friend and brilliant filmmaker Lynne Sachs. (No relation.) On Saturday, we caught a few shorts programs. At the first, I especially liked films by Kelly Sears, Saif Alsaegh, and Usama Alshaibi. Sears, whose collage-based animation accounts for some of my favorite experimental work ever, explores the dystopian e ects of climate change in The Lost Season (2024). Her conceit is a world experiencing its last winter, which filmmakers are hired to document so that these now-fleeting moments can be streamed. It’s a simple but evocative premise. Alsaegh’s film, The Motherfucker’s Birthday (2024), explores a similar kind of inanity but in the not-sodistant past as opposed to the disconcertingly not-so-distant future. In showing footage of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush dancing, he reflects the humanity of evil—it’s terrifying that such people can even still hear music amid the roar of their atrocities.

Alshaibi’s short, Testimony (2023), is an

ethereal take on the idea of AI becoming sentient and wanting the full human range of physical and emotional dynamism. Speciﬁcally, Alshaibi’s use of footage of ballerinas from the early 1900s creates a dreamlike e ect that to my mind seems like something a sensitive robot might have stored in its subconscious. My friend Lynne’s ﬁlm screened in the second program. Contractions (2024), featured earlier this year as a New York Times Op-Docs selection, beautifully—and woefully—considers the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic in Memphis two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned. There’s a certain tempo to her work that makes still the subjects she explores; in this stillness, they become ripe for contemplation, in the purest sense of the word. Time spent with her work is time spent deep in thought on some of life’s most pressing subjects.

Before seeing Lori Felker’s Patient (2023), I had no idea what standardized patients were. They’re people specifically trained in acting as patients so that med students can practice patient care. Felker’s short does a lot with this concept, shedding new light on questions of veracity, performance, and even health care itself.

So that was great. I also made it out to Roy Ward Baker’s Inferno (1953), playing as part of Noir City at the Music Box Theatre. It was in 3D, so I got to experience not only the newly renovated Theatre 1 but also its incredible, recently installed 3D capabilities. It was a great night back at one of my favorite places to be— now with cup holders!

Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local ﬁlm bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground ﬁlm scene has to o er.

A still from Contractions (2024) LYNNE SACHS

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

NOW PLAYING

RThe Killer’s Game

It’s deceptively difficult to pull off a boneheaded, lighthearted, big-budget action film, as many mediocre superhero films have demonstrated over the last decades. Stuntman turned director J.J. Perry got off to a rough start with the genre in his impressively awful first feature, Day Shi (2022). But in his sophomore effort, an adaptation of Jay R. Bonansinga’s novel The Killer’s Game, he finds the right mixture of engagingly silly plot, stylishly brutal choreography, and charismatic protagonist.

The plot is—as you’d expect—by the numbers. Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) is a hit man with a heart of gold who falls for ballerina Maize (Sofia Boutella) while on a job in Budapest. Joe discovers he has a terminal illness and decides to put out a contract on his own life in hopes of giving Maize a big life insurance payout. Things inevitably go awry: Joe decides he doesn’t want to die, so he has to fight off an array of colorful hit people, à la the John Wick franchise.

Perry is clearly having a blast choreographing different ﬁghting styles, from Spanish dancer assassin to Korean schoolgirl assassin. The direction is fun as well; a montage sequence that cuts with lyrical glee between Joe and Maize courting and Joe murdering targets is a highlight.

What really makes the movie, though, is Bautista, who projects a comforting sweetness even while he’s snapping some guy’s leg in half, and an intimidating brutality even when he’s struggling to ﬂirt by text. It’s easy to see why Maize falls in love with him, and it’s hard not to fall in love with him yourself. Few actors manage that kind of mixture of charm and menace, and it turns The Killer’s Game from a run-of-the-mill genre exercise into a perfect boneheaded, lighthearted, big-budget action confection. —NOAH BERLATSKY R, 104 min. Wide release in theaters

few weeks away from attending college in the city and leaving her family’s cranberry farm. While taking mushrooms with her friends, she is introduced to her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). A er some convincing, Elliott asks her “old” self all the questions she can think of—including, can she grab her own ass? It is hers a er all. Older Elliott oﬀers some advice: spend time with their family, enjoy their hometown, and stay away from anyone named Chad. What she believed was a weird hallucination returns the next day when Elliott calls the new number in her phone and continues talking to her older self. But she doesn’t truly believe it until she meets the most recent person hired to help on the farm: Chad. (Don’t stress about the physics and logistics of time travel and talking to yourself from the future—it’s not worth it.)

Stella is dazzling in her ﬁrst lead role, paired beautifully with Plaza, despite the two looking nothing alike. The dynamic between the two Elliotts is delightful to watch, as is the rich cast of secondary characters, including Maddie Ziegler and Kerrice Brooks as Elliott’s friends and Maria Dizzia as Elliott’s mother. The tagline is, “What would you ask your older self?” but the ﬁlm goes even further to ask, “Would you listen to what they say?”

My Old Ass voice that takes an interesting concept and makes it human. A beginning means the end of what came before: the last time playing pretend with friends, the last time you were rocked to sleep by your mother, the last time your childhood bedroom was just your bedroom. The beauty of growing is entwined with the loss of your past self.

and the bad are moments that pass, so treasure them. Most importantly, wear your retainer and moisturize, because your future self would do anything to remind you. —KYLIE BOLTER theaters, wide release 9/27

R My Old Ass

In the new coming-of-age dramedy My Old Ass, director and writer Megan Park captures the heartbreaking understanding that everything is impermanent and we can’t reclaim the passage of time—in a fun way! Elliott Labrant (Maisy Stella) is an 18-year-old a

how Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from best friends to sworn enemies on the planet Cybertron. The result is a genuinely funny and inspiring adventure. The pace and plot move quickly enough to keep the attention of any little ones in the audience, but the drama is actually engaging, with high-stakes and emotional pulls for an older viewer, too. And if there are any long-suﬀering Transformers loyalists out there, enjoy this refreshing ride. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of the Spider-Verse franchise or 2023’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, but it’s a worthy entry on its own to the new era of

RTransformers One demonstrates that perhaps this is a franchise that might have been best animated from the very beginning. With seven live-action movies released, all of them directed or produced by Michael Bay, there was a time when a Transformers movie would be a guaranteed blockbuster smash. The 2007 installment starred a younger, less controversial Shia LaBeouf with soon-to-be household name Megan Fox and went on to become the fi h-highest-grossing film of the year. But allegations of disagreements and sexism on set led to Fox’s exit a er the second film, LaBeouf le one movie later, and subsequent follow-ups lacked the characterization that made the debut so memorable. That brings us to Transformers One, the first animated Transformers feature since 1986. This prequel depicts

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FALLFESTIVALS

SEPTEMBER

31STCHICAGOUNDERGROUNDFILMFESTIVAL 1STOAKPARKILLINOISFILMFESTIVAL REELING:42NDCHICAGOINTL.LGBTQ+FILMFESTIVAL MIDWESTFILMFEST:ANALOGSHORTSNIGHT

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animated successes. —NOËLLE D. LILLEY PG, 104 min. Wide release in theaters v

My Old Ass AMAZON MGM STUDIOS

WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL CHICAGO

Produced by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Friday, September 20, through Sunday, September 29, various times and venues, all concerts free, many all ages

The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2024

The festival’s 12 free concerts, spread out over ten days, oﬀer curious listeners dozens of opportunities for discovery.

By LESLIE ALLISON, NOAH

BERLATSKY, AARON COHEN, SALEM COLLO- JULIN, ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ, CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON, JAMIE LUDWIG, PHILIP MONTORO, JAMES PORTER, AND KELLEY TATRO

You’ve probably noticed that it’s getting harder to a ord to live. Americans consistently vote against any policy that might prevent our money from ending up in the pockets of the same two dozen assholes who are already richer than god, so now an estimated 78 percent of us are living paycheck to paycheck.

This is, broadly speaking, why we can’t have nice things. Free, accessible, and exciting, the World Music Festival is inarguably a nice thing—in fact it’s my favorite festival of the year—but it’s under the same pressures as the rest of us. Spotify and Live Nation are siphoning off an unsustainable share of the revenue in the music ecosystem, and performers traveling to the U.S. from abroad face an even steeper climb due to increased up-front costs for visas—plus they have to withhold 30 percent of every artist fee to comply with federal tax law.

Almost no international acts can afford to play here without block-booking a run of concerts. To help their chances, they often request “all-in” o ers from presenters, meaning they get money to arrange their own transport and lodging instead of allowing the presenter to take care of those things. If the artist can cut

corners, they get to keep more of the total.

“It’s never going to be up to one presenter to determine if an artist can travel,” says one of the World Music Festival’s two lead programmers, Carlos Cuauhtémoc Tortolero at the Department of Cultural A airs and Special Events (DCASE). “You need a great anchor offer, but without multiple partners and gigs in the tour, no one’s going to make the trek to the States.”

The ecosystem of presenters is withering too. Tortolero and his partner at DCASE, David Chavez, used to work with a consortium of midwestern bookers, but now they usually have to involve a national network in order to piece together enough shows for a tour.

Though Chicago’s festival has a relatively stable budget because it’s part of a city department, it often has to shoulder a bigger share of each artist’s expenses.

Despite these increasing headwinds—and despite the turnover of almost one-fifth of DCASE’s staff in the past six months—this year’s World Music Festival improves over last year’s edition. Its 12 free concerts, spread over ten consecutive days, include 22 acts from abroad out of a total of 31—compare that to 19 of 35 in 2023, and consider the ingenuity and e ort that took.

Ragamala, the dusk-till-dawn extravaganza of Indian classical music that DCASE books in partnership with the South Asia Institute and South Asian Classical Music Society, has been part of every World Music Festival since 2013—and Tortolero thinks this year’s lineup is the strongest yet. “Ragamala is the clearest example of people who walk away and it’s like they’ve been converted,” he says.

The 2024 festival is also more accessible— of its 11 venues, five are on the south side or downtown, compared to just two last year. (The festival always tries to compensate for the concentration of venues on the north side.) Likewise, five events are in parks or other city facilities, compared to two last year, which means a greater proportion are all ages. The fest also returns to Millennium Park for the first time since 2019 with the Global Carnival on Sunday, September 22.

DCASE’s days of running World Music Festival shows by the seat of their pants are over—no more setting up speakers on sticks in a park and hoping for the best. “We’re better equipped to produce these events, better sta ed and supported than we were before,” Tortolero says.

Unlike festivals that pack the population of

a midsize suburb into a public park, charge everybody a hundred bucks or more, and surround them with competing stages, the World Music Festival is designed for listeners. “They’re being very intentional about coming to World Music Festival to see something that isn’t the norm,” says Tortolero. “There’s less and less spaces to have those experiences.”

This year’s World Music Festival brings in artists from India, Brazil, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Cuba, Italy, Sweden, Ukraine, Guatemala, Spain, and Cape Verde. Now that national Republican leaders and their neoNazi buddies are openly terrorizing Haitian immigrants with lies and violence, support for these musicians—and for the many Chicagoans who share a homeland or a culture with them—has unfortunately become a political act.

“It’s important to allow people to experience different cultures and to realize the beauty of the world,” Tortolero says. “I think World Music Festival reminds people in the States that the world is bigger than we realize. It’s bigger than we know, and that’s a good thing.”

—PHILIP MONTORO, MUSIC EDITOR m pmontoro@chicagoreader.com

Ilê Aiyê perform at Pritzker Pavilion on Sun 9/22. COURTESY THE OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC

World Music Festival Chicago

continued from p. 45

FRIDAY20

Ragamala: A Celebration of Indian Classical Music Presented by DCASE in collaboration with the South Asia Institute and South Asian Classical Music Society–Chicago. Emceed by Brian Keigher from People of Rhythm Productions. This event continues into the morning of Saturday, September 21. Fri 9/20, 6 PM–8 AM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, third ﬂoor, all ages

Each year, Ragamala renews its precious gi to the people of Chicago with a fresh lineup of contemporary masters in Indian classical music. The vibrant all-night festival has something for the devotee, the uninitiated, and everyone in between. This year’s program oﬀers a variegated bouquet of music, balancing Hindustani (northern) and Carnatic (southern) styles, new and established performers, and conventional and novel orchestrations. From sundown to sunup, expert ensembles will sculpt the air with sitars, sarods, and bansuris, among many other traditional instruments—as well as a few unusual ones, including Saskia Rao-de Haas’s cello, which is adapted for playing seated on the floor (she performs in a trio at 7:45 PM).

On a night packed with dozens of exquisite musicians, you have lots of options for allocating your time and attention—but you might choose to treat Ragamala’s three distinctive vocal performances, spread out across the 14 hours of the event, as touchstones. At 9:30 PM, Carnatic playback singer S. Mahathi lays the groundwork: she’ll perform core South Indian vocal repertory, dazzling with her command of the tradition’s agile twists and turns and with swi , volleying exchanges with her violinist collaborator V.S. Gokul. The burnished brass of Mahathi’s voice will also be framed by two contrasting percussion sounds: the round, earthy resonance of Delhi Sairam’s double-headed mridangam and the playful dancing of Anirudh Athreya’s tambourine-like kanjira.

The second vocalist, Anandi Bhattacharya, goes on at 2:45 AM—a time slot that suits her effortless pop-star energy. Inﬂuenced by Bengali folk music in addition to North Indian classical, she delivers cool, sweeping melodies with badass stage presence. She’ll be accompanied by the bubbling tabla of her uncle Subhasis Bhattacharya and the shimmering strings of her legendary father, Debashish Bhattacharya—a Grammy-nominated master, he plays instruments of his own invention, including a 24-string slide guitar he calls the chaturangui (which uses 14 sympathetic resonating strings) and the 25-string pushpa veena. The Bhattacharya trio will illuminate the dark-

ness with an almost freak-folk splendor.

The ﬁnal dish in this three-course meal of vocal artistry is Chicago transplant Ashwin Rode, who brings the festival to a close at 6:30 AM by singing North Indian melodies into the dawn. Rode’s amberlit tenor will weave supple, silken loops through the percussive framework of Dhananjay Kunte’s tabla atop Praneet Marathe’s simple harmonium drone. You might think you’re not a morning person, but reconsider—this performance may transform your experience of those early hours into something relaxed, fortiﬁed, and clear.

Across the duration of Ragamala, people will gather, si out, and regather, but one thing that will stay constant is the palpable aura of camaraderie and devotion shared by the artists and the audience. Everyone beneath the Tiﬀany dome of the Cultural Center is a participant, there to honor sounds ranging from the most ancient (the clay-jug drum called a ghatam, played here by Giridhar Udupa, appears in the Ramayana ) to the most recent (Debashish

Bhattacharya devised the pushpa veena just a few years ago). Ragamala is a life-changing event, whether it’s your ﬁrst or tenth time. —LESLIE ALLISON

SATURDAY21

La Sonora Mazurén, DJ Lápiz & Valanze Sat 9/21, 9 PM (doors at 8 PM), Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, 21+

Formed by musicians from several cultishly adored bands in Bogotá, Colombia, La Sonora Mazurén emerged from that city’s rich alternative scene as an experimental four-piece that reenvisioned traditional music with acidic guitar licks, spacey vintage synths, and other hallmarks of psychedelic rock and retrofuturist tropicalia. Founded by accordionist and keyboardist Iván Medellín, bassist Nicolás Eckardt, guitarist Juan David Lacorazza, and drummer Luis Lizarralde, the band soon expanded to

seven members with the addition of three percussionists and vocalists: Miguel Ángel Rodriguez Rebolledo and two-thirds of trailblazing all-woman Afro-Colombian trio La Perla, Diana Sanmiguel and Giovanna Mogollón, specialists in folkloric styles such as cumbia and bullerengue.

La Sonora Mazurén’s repertoire now focuses on original compositions, with a largely instrumental style—when they use vocals, they tend to be group chants, not lead lines. The band owe a debt to Meridian Brothers mastermind Eblis Álvarez, who produced their debut album, last year’s Bailando con Extraños (“Dancing With Strangers”). La Sonora Mazurén’s upcoming sophomore album, Magnetismo Anímal , showcases a kaleidoscope of styles rooted in popular sounds and rhythms of South America, which veer and twist into slightly askew grooves infused with trance-inducing energy. The vibe is that of a slightly surreal party from the golden age of Latin American tropicality—the album works like a chunk of musical amber whose compositions give a new glow to elements of Afro-Andean traditions that it freezes in time, including Peruvian huayno and chicha, Ecuadorian sanjuanito, and Colombian gaita, vallenato, and cumbia. La Sonora Mazurén create a mesmerizing musical dreamscape, whose mood they describe in an Instagram post: “The lights are low and the ﬂoor is sticky,” it reads in translation. “Bodies move, touch each other, as the walls sweat. We are from another planet, all vibrating as if we were one. I feel free—I’m dancing with strangers.”

—CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON

Representing the proud island nation of Cuba, DJ Lápiz and Valanze bring Caribbean flavor to their blend of reggae, Afrobeats, and hip-hop. Lápiz is a musician and producer in his own right, but he’s also the lead vocalist in Valanze, and in 2021 he and the band released a collaborative 12-track album called Precisión. Sonically it’s mellow and easygoing, drawing heavily on their roots-reggae influences, but the content is urgent and powerful: their lyrics, rapped or sung, touch on the plight of Afro-Latinos, police violence, and the struggle for personal freedom. Reggae is most commonly associated with Jamaica, of course, but the islands of the Caribbean are all close enough together that it’s established a firm foothold throughout the region. The subgenre reggae en español even became the precursor to reggaeton, a vastly more popular style that’s commonly associated with Spanish-speaking countries today. Lápiz and Valanze make music that leans into the traditional sounds of reggae en español, while their vocal delivery incorporates a cadence that owes more to rap. With more than 20 years of music making under his belt, Lápiz aims to speak to the listener’s conscience and raise their spiritu-

The Bhattacharya family trio: Subhasis, Debashish, and Anandi COURTESY OF DCASE

La Sonora Mazurén perform at Martyrs’ on Sat 9/21. COURTESY OF DCASE

SEP 19-20

Orozco-Estrada Conducts

Romeo and Juliet

SEP 26-28

Tchaikovsky 4

OCT 4-6

Eschenbach with Lucas & Arthur Jussen

OCT 8

Jordi Savall

Monteverdi: A Baroque Revolution

OCT 10-11

Alsop & Vondráček

OCT 17-19

Mozart Coronation Mass

OCT 19

Family Matinee: Philharmonia Fantastique

OCT 24-26

Don Quixote

OCT 27

Lila Downs: Día de los Muertos

OCT 31-NOV 3

Muti, Uchida, Emperor & Eroica

Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Lila Downs

Maestro Residency Presenter

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider

World Music Festival Chicago

continued from p. 46

al vibrations—he wants to participate in the legacy of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, and the other reggae greats who came before him.

—ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

SUNDAY22

Noor Bakhsh, Bia Ferreira Sun 9/22, 1 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, third ﬂoor, all ages

Folk music is the music that folks play right now. Nothing better illustrates that truth than the eclectic mash-up of regional tradition and global pop in the music of Noor Bakhsh

Bakhsh hails from Balochistan, a large but sparsely populated province in the southwest of Pakistan. He’s 79 years old, but his international career has taken off only in the past few years. His first album, Jingul (Honiunhoni/Hive Mind), named for a type of small bird that nests in Bakhsh’s house, came out in 2022. To the casual Western listener, Bakhsh’s music sounds like it’s in the vein of Indian classical ragas. But when you listen closer, you realize his sound can’t be contained in any one lineage. His instrument is a keyed zither known as the benju, originally a Japanese children’s toy and later picked up and modified by musicians in Karachi. Bakhsh plays an amplified version powered by a motorcycle battery (his village isn’t wired for electricity), and his repertoire wanders all over South Asia and beyond— ragas, yes, but also Persian tunes, Kurdish tunes, Arabic ghazals, Bollywood songs, popular and folk

songs from Balochistan, and original material sometimes inspired by birdsong. His entrancing polyrhythmic sound also bears similarities to African traditional music, very likely due to the centuries of commerce and migration between the two regions across the Indian Ocean.

You get a sense of Baksh’s omnivorous energy from a Boiler Room set filmed in Pakistan in June 2022. The musicologist host starts to try to introduce the music, but Bakhsh starts to play before the emcee is two sentences into his spiel. Bakhsh isn’t some sort of museum piece to be explained or interpreted. Like any number of great artists—Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Konono No.1, A.R. Rahman—he picks up the sounds of the past and blasts down the doors to the sounds of tomorrow. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Bia Ferreira started performing as a teenage troubadour, traveling around Brazil with just her guitar as accompaniment. In so doing, she developed her own twist on the national musical idioms. Ferreira calls her style “MMP” (música de mulher preta), which translates as “Black woman music”—a sly personal reclamation of the term “MPB” (música popular brasileira), which describes a guitar-driven, post–bossa nova genre, influenced by jazz and rock, that emerged in her country in the 1960s. Ferreira similarly looks backward and forward in her lyrics: she describes Brazil’s legacies, beautiful and horrifying alike, while asserting herself as a queer artist in defiance of stubborn prejudices. Her studio albums, 2019’s Igreja Lesbiteriana, um Chamado and 2022’s Faminta, deliver these strong proclamations couched in inviting melodies that make them feel light and joyful. (“Igreja Lesbiteriana” translates as “Lesbyterian Church.”) Ferreira’s riveting NPR Tiny Desk concert from early 2023 presents a quick cross-section of her discography to date. “A Conta Vai Chegar” (“The Bill Is Coming”) uses a funk-driven arrangement to propel Ferreira’s words about fighting 500 years of colonization. On “De Dentro do Ap,” she draws on hip-hop to question class privilege in the feminist movement. Ferreira also highlights her vocal range on “Antes de Ir,” climbing into some lovely high notes and even doing some jaunty whistling. The romantic “Levante a Bandeira do Amor” makes one of her strongest declarations: she will “raise the flag of love,” she sings, signaling that the most powerful resistance is also the most personal. —AARON COHEN

Ilê Aiyê, Flagboy Giz & the Wild Tchoupitoulas The Global Carnival is presented in collaboration with the Old Town School of Folk Music. In addition to the mainstage artists above, groups appearing include the Windy City Ramblers, Muntu Dance Theatre, Azania Drum, Team Jukeboxx Mas Band, and

the Epic Steel Orchestra. Sun 9/22, 5–9 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph, all ages

As part of the World Music Festival, the Old Town School is hosting an evening of traditional carnival music in Millennium Park. Lenten season is months away, of course, but the organizers correctly point out that Chicago—unlike the tropical locales that celebrate carnival—is frequently a lousy place to throw a huge outdoor party 40 days before Easter. But don’t let the word “carnival” convince you that Ilê Aiyê are just a party band. Founded in the early 70s in Salvador, they pioneered the formation of blocos afros (Black carnival blocks), and their liberatory practice draws on venerable Brazilian traditions. During their carnival procession, Ilê Aiyê grow to include hundreds of musicians (mostly drummers and singers) and dozens of dancers, and thousands of people accompany them through the streets in a thundering affirmation of Afro-Brazilian culture and religion. Salvador is the capital of the northeastern coastal state of Bahia, and as the fi h-largest city in the country, it’s comparable in size to Chicago—but around 300 years older. (It’s also my mom’s hometown, so forgive me for insisting it’s Brazil’s most beautiful.) Nicknamed “the Black Rome,” it also has the world’s largest African-descended population of any city outside Africa. West African influence is pervasive in every aspect of its culture, most intensely in food, fashion, religion, and music. Yet for way too long, celebration of carnival in Salvador was for whites only.

Ilê Aiyê, like all blocos afros, are deeply rooted in Candomblé. This African diasporic religion, kin to Santería and Lucumí, arose in Brazil when enslaved West African people (many of Yoruba or Bantu descent) kept reverence for their ancestral orixás alive by linking those spirits syncretically to Catholic saints. The sound of the blocos afros is music of resistance, just as Candomblé is a religion of resistance; the two are not easily separated. Not so long ago, the sound of the drums was suppressed in Salvador’s historic Pelourinho district (whose name itself means “pillory”). Now blocos afros are a huge tourist attraction—which leads to gentriﬁcation. Practitioners of Candomblé were persecuted by Brazil’s military dictatorship from the 1960s till the ’80s, and they’re under attack by Evangelical gangs today.

Ilê Aiyê still carry the ﬂag of Black pride that they ﬁrst hoisted half a century ago. They’ve released a stack of albums over the decades (the most recent I can find is from 2014), but their purpose and power has always been in live performance. You shouldn’t expect hundreds of musicians here, but you can expect a thrilling and transformative celebration.

—MONICA KENDRICK

In 2017, Chicago rapper Rhymefest performed at the Chicago Blues Festival with the backing band of harmonica player and blues educator Billy Branch. Flagboy Giz & the Wild Tchoupitoulas are a New Orleans equivalent of this fusion of new and old traditions. Formed in the early 1970s, the Wild Tchoupitoulas began as a Black street tribe of “Mardi Gras Indians” (aka Black masking Indians), an identity they chose to honor the Native Americans who’d helped enslaved people fleeing their captors. The Wild Tchoupitoulas became a recognizable fixture at New Orleans street parades with their toweringly gorgeous beaded-and-feathered costumes. Led by the late Big Chief Jolly (real name George Landry), they immortalized their street chants on a self-titled 1976 album with members of the Meters and all four of the Neville Brothers, who were Landry’s nephews, making music as a group for the first time—The Wild Tchoupitoulas is an essential document not only of New Orleans funk but also of New Orleans culture in general.

Flagboy Giz is part of the contemporary New Orleans hip-hop scene and a flag bearer for the most recent iteration of the Wild Tchoupitoulas. He’s connected to the bounce music that’s the party sound of today’s New Orleans, but there’s also a through line that connects his rhymes to traditional Mardi Gras chants. Allen Toussaint, the singer, songwriter, pianist, and producer who contributed so much to New Orleans music, said in a 1975 interview for Creem that he hoped the city’s musical traditions would continue to resonate into the future by inﬂuencing current artists—though the traditions’ roots are very old, they’re more than just symbols of a bygone time. Flagboy Giz is proof that Toussaint’s wish can still come true. —JAMES PORTER

Noor Bakhsh performs at the Cultural Center on Sun 9/22. ASA WAHAG

Flagboy Giz performs with the Wild Tchoupitoulas at Pritzker Pavilion on Sun 9/22. COURTESY THE OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC

Gray Center Fellowship Exhibition

July 19 - December 15

Logan Center for the Arts

915 E. 60th St. | University of Chicago

Tuesday - Sunday, 9 AM - 9 PM

vanessa german

World Music Festival Chicago

continued from p. 48

MONDAY23

La Muchacha, Vivian Garcia Mon 9/23, 9 PM (doors at 8 PM), Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 21+

TUESDAY24

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, Ana Everling & Taraf de Chicago Tue 9/24, 7 PM (doors at 6 PM), Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 18+

The folkloric Italian dance and music genre of tarantella was named in part for tarantism, a hysteria most frequently documented in the south of the country in the 16th and 17th centuries. Those aﬄicted became restless and excitable and engaged in a frenzied dance that they believed was the only way to prevent themselves from dying. The words “tarantism” and “tarantella” come from the name of the town of Taranto, in the heel of Italy’s boot, and not from “tarantula” (though spider bites figure into the story too). Taranto is about 45 miles west of Salento, the hometown of leftist music scholar Rina Durante, who in 1975 cofounded the ensemble Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. The group exists to bring the traditionally loud, fast, and danceable music of this region to modern ears; it’s currently led by violinist and drummer Mauro Durante, son of late guitarist and singer Daniele Durante, Rina’s cousin and also a founding member of the band. Much of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino’s music is a variation on pizzica tarantata, a form of tarantella speciﬁc to Salento, which means it’s meant to move the body; the lyrics tend toward progressive and activist themes, including the protection of the envi-

ronment in their homeland (2015’s “No TAP,” written by Daniele, is a straight-up protest song against the building of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline). The band’s usual seven-piece lineup includes Mauro on violin, several percussionists, a lead singer, a dancer, and other folks variously playing accordion, guitar, bouzouki, Italian bagpipes, harmonica, or recorder. Together they can make a tremendous sound—when there isn’t a tall stage getting in the way, the singer and dancer are o en joined by excited fans seemingly bitten by the bug. —SALEM COLLO-JULIN

WEDNESDAY25

Fränder, Maryna Krut Wed 9/25, 7 PM (doors at 6:30 PM), Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, all ages

The bandura is a Ukrainian instrument with a lutelike neck and a zither’s row of strings across its broad, pear-shaped body. It’s so tied to Ukrainian identity that for more than a century, the bandura and its traditional players (many of whom belonged to an itinerant class of blind musicians called “kobzars”) were repeatedly targeted by Russian and Soviet authorities in attempts to suppress Ukrainian culture. Many bandurists were jailed or executed in the 1930s, and evidence suggests that Stalinist forces even invited hundreds of itinerant musicians to a fake ethnographic conference in Kharkiv, where they were murdered en masse and their instruments burned. Needless to say, Ukrainian culture is still under threat today, and against that backdrop, the powerful singing and expressive bandura playing of Maryna Krut resonate strongly with listeners in her home country and abroad.

Born in western Ukraine, Krut began performing in competitions as a teenager. She arrived in the national spotlight in 2017 with an appearance on

Ukraine’s version of The X Factor (she covered Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”), and in the 2020s she’s reached the finals of Ukraine’s Eurovision selection twice. Her bandura has 64 strings: she plays the 13 bass strings on its fretless neck with her le hand and the 51 treble strings on its body with her right, producing delicate, intricately interwoven notes that sound a bit like a more resonant harpsichord. She takes a modern approach to her instrument, combining folk tradition with contemporary influences, including jazz and pop. These days she divides her time between aiding the home-front effort against Russian aggression in Ukraine (o en playing in war zones or in hospitals to improve morale) and touring the international circuit, where she advocates for Ukraine and its culture. “They came to our country and want to kill not just our bodies and soldiers, but our culture,” she told Scotland’s Interpret magazine in 2022. “That’s why I need to sing and scream about Ukraine. Sometimes sing, sometimes talk, and sometimes scream.”

—JAMIE LUDWIG

THURSDAY26

Sara Curruchich, Menjunje Thu 9/26, 7 PM (doors at 6 PM), the Promontory 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. W., all ages

The Reader published the following piece on Sara Curruchich as a concert preview last year. The original text has been lightly edited.

When Sara Curruchich made her Chicago debut at the sixth edition of the LatiNxt festival in August 2023, the melodic syllables of the Kaqchikel Mayan language rang out across Navy Pier for what might have been the very ﬁrst time. Curruchich is part of a Kaqchikel Mayan community in Guatemala’s highlands, and she’s one of the ﬁrst artists to compose

and sing contemporary music in Kaqchikel. Curruchich combines rock, folk, and traditional Kaqchikel Mayan music in her upli ing ballads. With grace and strength, her songs showcase her people’s long history of resistance and struggle—a history that came to international prominence during Guatemala’s civil war, which lasted from 1960 till 1996. Her ﬁve-piece band combines lush, cascading marimba chords with steady guitar riﬀs, traditional percussion, and even kit drumming, all guided by Curruchich’s soaring, emotional voice. When I saw the group perform at the Indigenous Music Summit in Toronto in June 2023, they stunned the audience into awed silence.

Curruchich’s 2019 debut album, Somos , and 2021’s Mujer Indígena center demands for dignity and respect for Indigenous women around the world; her anthems proclaim hope and make it feel possible for me to believe in a different kind of future. As the band chant on the title track of Somos : “Somos vida, somos la historia y canción / Somos las venas de la tierra / La humanidad sin fronteras” (“We are life, we are the story and the song / We are the veins of the earth / Humanity without borders”).

—CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON

Bia Ferreira PEDRO BARROS Canzoniere Greciano Salentino VINCENZO DE PINTO

Maryna Krut COURTESY OF DCASE

Sara Curruchich SANDRA SEBASTIAN

The 50th: An Anniversary Exhibition

Sep 24, 2024 - Mar 2, 2025

This exhibition offers an illuminating journey tracing the layered, sometimes hidden, and always fascinating histories that have contributed to the Smart Museum of Art’s legacy.

From the Smart Museum’s beginnings as a teaching collection, to its development through relationships with local artists, critics, and community leaders, to fatealtering opportunities presented by unexpected gifts and partnerships, this exhibition reconsiders the Museum’s past through a new lens.

Curated by Dr. Galina Mardilovich.

and

ALAN PARSONS LIVE PROJECT

Grammy®Award-Winning Artist and Rock Music Legend "Eye in the Sky" and "Games People Play" Friday, October 11 8:00 PM

THE PIANO GUYS

7 Million YouTube Subscribers and 2.3 Billion Views "Smooth Criminal" and "Ants Marching" Thursday, November 7 7:30 PM

JOE GATTO

Let's Get Into It Tour Former "Impractical Jokers" Star and Comedian Friday, November 22 7:00 PM "I Know

World Music Festival Chicago

continued from p. 50

FRIDAY27

Ana Crismán, Maracatu Atômico Fri 9/27, 7 PM (doors at 6 PM), Rhapsody Theater, 1328 W. Morse, 21+

The roots of flamenco can be traced back to 16thcentury Andalusia, when Spanish Romani people, Muslims, Jews, and other minorites fled to the mountainous rural parts of that region to escape forced conversion, deportation, or execution by the Spanish Inquisition. Flamenco eventually arose from their commingled cultures, and though it’s passed in and out of respectability over the years, it found strongholds across Europe and the Americas. To listeners centuries removed, the spirit of struggle, desperation, hope, and resistance it retains from those dark times feels passionate and romantic—which makes for an irresistibly compelling combination with its intricate percussive rhythms, plaintive melodies, dramatic dances, and vivid storytelling. Modern artists have adapted flamenco to popular styles, including jazz, rock, and pop, and Spanish musician Ana Crismán has introduced another novelty: she plays it on the harp. Born in 1983 in Jerez de la Frontera, the Andalusian municipality where flamenco was first documented in the late 18th century, Crismán grew up surrounded by flamenco music and culture. She’s widely considered the first person to compose flamenco for her instrument, and she works in many of the genre’s dozens of traditional forms, called palos, among them seguiriyas, tangos, alegrías, and malagueñas. Her evocative, heartfelt songs don’t rebuild the music from the ground up—she doesn’t sound too different from a flamenco guitarist—but the relatively large number of strings on the harp allows her a broader range of tones and more flexibility in her combinations of rhythms and countermelodies. Crismán’s concert at the Rhapsody Theater should serve as an introduction to the genre for those who need one, and everyone can enjoy the chance to experience the music in this new form.

—JAMIE LUDWIG

SATURDAY28

Kavita Shah with the Cape Verdean Blues Project Sat 9/28, 3 PM (doors at 2:30 PM), Hamilton Park Cultural Center, 513 W. 72nd St., all ages

Vocalist Kavita Shah encountered all sorts of music growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants in New York City and singing in a children’s choir. But she gravitated toward towering divas such as Billie

Holiday—women who matched their masterful artistry with powerful charisma. Small wonder, then, that Shah would later be mesmerized by Cesária Évora. Dubbed the Queen of Morna for her command of the melancholy genre (as closely associated with the Cape Verde islands of West Africa as the tango is with Argentina), Évora became a global music sensation in the 1990s, when she was already in her 50s. She earned her fame with a captivating, lived-in voice and an irreverent performance style—she o en appeared barefoot with whiskey and cigarettes at hand.

Évora’s music resonated with Shah’s experience of diaspora. The morna is built on poetry that expresses sodade, the longing of a people all too thoroughly acclimated to the losses of migration.

“Growing up as the child of immigrants,” Shah says, “there was always an incompleteness in the air . . . a life and an identity and love that belonged to you but that was beyond your reach.”

Years a er establishing herself as a jazz vocalist, Shah found her way to Cape Verde, where she began an intensive seven-year collaboration with musicians who’d worked with Évora, resulting in the 2023 album

Cape Verdean Blues and the touring group supporting it, the Cape Verdean Blues Project. Shah calls this work a “carefully curated love letter” to Cape Verde and its most famous performer, but her own background also shines through with scat-style improvisations and agile timbral play. In addition to well-known mornas, she performs “Chaki Ben,” a traditional children’s song in her family’s native Gujarati; “Cape Verdean Blues,” borrowed from jazz pianist Horace Silver; and “Flor de Lis,” a 1970s hit by Brazilian songwriter Djavan Caetano Viana. In Chicago, Shah will appear with guitarist Juancho Herrera and two musicians based in Cape Verde: Évora’s former music director Bau (lead guitar, ukulele) and N’Du Carlos (percussion). —KELLEY TATRO

Yallah Yallah, La Tosca Sat 9/28, 9:30 PM (doors at 9 PM), Chop Shop, 2033 W. North, 21+

Yallah Yallah hail from New York City, and their music feels like taking a walk across the cultural landscape of Queens from one end to the other— with some west-coast surf-rock guitar thrown in.

Segev Harosh (mandolin, electric guitar) and Amit Peled (bouzouki, electric guitar) celebrate the drum-machine pop that swept the Middle East in the 1980s, creating their songs using instruments and traditions with roots in Palestine, Morocco, South Asia, and elsewhere. But their music isn’t a narrow re-creation of a style—you can also hear qawwali in the percussion and Bollywood in the riﬀs, plus bits of surfy 2010s indie rock reminiscent of Surf Curse and the Strokes. (Peled also plays in self-described “Mediterranean surf” trio Habbina Habbina, who list among their inﬂuences Umm Kulthum, Farid al-Atrash, TLC, Blondie, and Link Wray.)

Yallah Yallah are a dance band, and it’s baked into their name: in Arabic, “yallah” can mean something like “Let’s go!” But despite the duo’s insistence on celebration, a tinge of sadness characterizes the Middle Eastern pop to which they pay homage, a feeling that springs in part from Arabic peoples’ history of dispossession in Palestine. As Suﬁ scholar Inayat Khan wrote in The Mysticism of Sound and Music : “The heart finds a joy in feeling, in sorrow. It feels that it is used, and in that there is a happiness.” Peled and Harosh are still evolving this relatively new project: they’ve begun to ﬁll out their lineup, with Micha Gilad adding synth bass and keyboards and guest percussionists augmenting the electronic beats. They’re also in the process of recording music that they hope to release this fall.

—“SILAS KLINE”

SUNDAY29

La Dame Blanche, Surabhi Ensemble, Johnny Blas y Afro Libre Orquesta, Cloud Farmers The Global Peace Party is

hosted by Sonal Aggarwal. Sun 9/29, 2–8 PM, Navy Pier Beer Garden, 600 E. Grand, all ages

The Reader published the following piece on La Dame Blanche in its guide to the 2022 World Music Festival. She released Atómica , her fifth studio album, in December 2023.

Flutist, singer, and percussionist Yaite Ramos Rodriguez, aka La Dame Blanche, was born in 1979 into a musical family in Pinar del Río, the westernmost province of Cuba; her father, Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos, is a trombonist and musical director of the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club, and her uncle Mayito Rivera spent more than two decades as the front man for legendary Cuban band Los Van Van. She began conservatory training in classical flute at age eight, then relocated to Paris in the late 90s. A er making her mark as backup singer with French-Spanish punk raggamuffin band Sergent Garcia, she began developing her own musical persona as La Dame Blanche. Ramos Rodriguez’s stage name is meant to evoke a fearsome yet benevolent mythical figure—a witch, sorcerer, and healer—as well as to reflect her beliefs as a practitioner of Santería (an Afro-Cuban spiritual system with roots in Yoruban beliefs). Her tunes inject traditional sounds—notably batá drums, used in many religious ceremonies—into a compelling, ultra-danceable fusion of styles from across the African diaspora, including rumba, reggae, dancehall, cumbia, and moombahton. Masterfully backed by French sound engineer and beat maker Marc “Babylotion” Damblé, La Dame Blanche spits fierce feminist calls to power and pride in the face of sexist violence, her rhythmic flow marked by flavorful Cuban slang; she also punctuates her vocals with dramatic flute lines that reflect the Latin-jazz grooves she explored at Havana’s Escuela Nacional de Arte de Cuba. La Dame Blanche’s buoyantly creative performances feel as if they map out the road from rumba to rap.

Kavita Shah JOE WUERFEL

Yallah Yallah COURTESY OF DCASE La Dame Blanche ALEJANDRO BAUDUCCO

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of September 19

The Englewood Jazz Festival celebrates 25 years of music and community

at the

include fest founder

Dawkins, Greg Ward, and Corey Wilkes. COURTESY OF ERNEST DAWKINS, BY MIKEL PATRICK AVERY, AND BY INGRID MORETA

THURSDAY19

Englewood Jazz Festival day one See Pick of the Week at le . See also Fri 9/20 and Sat 9/21. Today’s bill consists of Junius Paul (6 PM) and Jahari Stampley (7 PM). 6–8 PM, Hamilton Park ﬁeld house, 513 W. 72nd. Fb

FRIDAY20

Englewood Jazz Festival day Two See Pick of the Week at le . Today’s bill consists of Jeremiah Collier & the Reup (6 PM) and Nicole Mitchell (7 PM). 6–8 PM, Hamilton Park ﬁeld house, 513 W. 72nd. Fb

SATURDAY21

Englewood Jazz Festival day Three See Pick of the Week at le . Today’s bill consists of a Black South Side Jazz Presenters panel discussion (noon), the Young Masters directed by Ernest Dawkins (1 PM), Corey Wilkes (2:15 PM), Greg Ward (3:30 PM), the Spirit of Jazz Award presentation (4:30 PM), and the jazz poetry opera Paul Robeson: Man of the People (4:45 PM). Noon–6 PM, Hamilton Park outdoors, 513 W. 72nd. Fb

Powerplant 9 PM, Co-Prosperity, 3221 S. Morgan, $16. 18+

ENGLEWOOD JAZZ FESTIVAL

Thu 9/19: Junius Paul (6 PM) and Jahari Stampley (7 PM). Fri 9/20: Jeremiah Collier & the Reup (6 PM) and Nicole Mitchell (7 PM). Sat 9/21: Black South Side Jazz Presenters panel discussion (noon), the Young Masters directed by Ernest Dawkins (1 PM), Corey Wilkes (2:15 PM), Greg Ward (3:30 PM), the Spirit of Jazz Award presentation (4:30 PM), and the jazz poetry opera Paul Robeson: Man of the People (4:45 PM). Thu–Fri 6–8 PM, Sat noon–6 PM, Hamilton Park (ﬁeld house Thu–Fri, outdoors Sat), 513 W. 72nd. Fb

THIS WEEK THE ENGLEWOOD JAZZ FESTIVAL celebrates its 25th anniversary with three days of music in Hamilton Park—a remarkable achievement, especially considering the neighborhood Whole Foods lasted just six years. The determination of the festival’s visionary founder, saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, and a host of local supporters have made this community event much more than an outpost of a corporate chain. For this special occasion, the festival features Dawkins’s inspirational jazz poetry opera, Paul Robeson: Man of the People. The music in this piece, which he wrote for an ensemble of 12, projects a weight that matches the powerful oratory of the titular 20th-century artist and social activist. Dawkins’s string arrangements frame words from librettist and vocalist Lasana D. Kazembe and singer Goldie Ingram, and spontaneous interplay between these voices and individual instrumentalists propels each movement. Such exchanges include Kazembe and Ingram’s call-and-response with pianist and vibraphonist

Isaiah Keith as well as the dialogue between Dawkins and trumpeter Corey Wilkes (who performs his own set Saturday). The work has rarely been performed since it premiered in May in Indianapolis, and no recording has yet been released—so this Englewood Jazz Festival booking is a crucial opportunity. Along with Dawkins’s large-scale work, the weekend is loaded with Chicago stalwarts, among them Wilkes, bassist Junius Paul, and saxophonist Greg Ward leading small groups. The festival also highlights artists who work primarily in other cities but made their names here, most notably Afrofuturist ﬂutist Nicole Mitchell, now a professor at the University of Virginia. Another exciting booking: Chicago-raised pianist Jahari Stampley is making another local victory lap after winning the prestigious Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition last year. Stampley is roughly the same age as the festival itself, and his set reinforces how events like this keep the music thriving. —AARON COHEN

The term “egg punk” didn’t initially see much use outside of niche memes that placed it on one end of a spectrum that had “chain punk” at the other. It described a loose network of underground midwestern bands in the early 2010s whose wacky experiments with hardcore punk sounded like an agitated Devo buzzing from an Olympic-size pool of coffee. But at some point between the 2018 breakup of Saint Louis scene stalwarts Lumpy & the Dumpers and the January 2024 celebration of egg punk’s second wave in zombie Spin , the term crossed over from in-joke to definable genre. When Theo Zhykharyev launched London project Powerplant in 2017, he tapped into the same electric, offthe-wall vibe as Indiana egg-punk progenitor Mark Winter, whose best projects (Big Zit, Coneheads, C.C.T.V., D.L.I.M.C.) accidentally helped set a template for the sound. The burners on Powerplant’s early lo-fi recordings jolt along under a blanket of spooky synths like a rickety cartoon car falling apart in motion—when they arrive at a definitive, logical endpoint, it’s almost a surprise. Zhykharyev has maintained Powerplant’s wry, smart-assed sensibilities as he’s turned the project into a full band. Lots of young punks like to use humor in their music, but I can’t think of any others who’ve pulled a U-turn to issue an entire album of dungeon synth—Powerplant put out 2022’s Stump Soup a er getting into Dungeons & Dragons . Last year’s Grass EP (Static Shock) is the cleanest-sounding Powerplant release yet, and the extra clarity makes the band’s woundup nerviness even more vivid and galvanizing. On the title track, the way Zhykharyev’s dizzying croon

Performers

Englewood Jazz Festival

Ernest

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UPCOMING SHOWS

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SEPT 23 the breeders

WITH MAN ON MAN

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SEPT 26 & 27

LAKE STREET DIVE ................... .FAIRGROUNDS WITH KATIE PRUITT

SEPT 28 THE JESUS LIZARD .................. .FAIRGROUNDS

WITH SEXTILE, PROVOKER, KING WOMAN, BENDIK GISKE, AITIS BAND AND STRESS POSITIONS

SEPT 29 KELELA ............................ .FAIRGROUNDS

WITH FLOATING POINTS, SISTER NANCY, SHABAKA, 454, LOLINA AND SML

SEPT 30 PJ HARVEY ............................. THE SHED OCT 1 & 2

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STURGILL SIMPSON .................. .FAIRGROUNDS WITH JOHNNY BLUE SKIES

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Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Wendy Whelan, and Francesca Harper

Carnival of The Animals

October 19, 2024 / 7:30PM

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

American Railroad

November 7, 2024 / 7:30PM

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Virtuoso Winds

November 12, 2024 / 7:30PM

BalletX

Mixed Repertoire

November 21, 2024 / 7:30PM

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Brandenburg Concertos

December 11, 2024 / 7:30PM

Joyce DiDonato + Kings Return KINGS ReJOYCE!

December 13, 2024 / 7:30PM

continued from p. 54

careens around knock-kneed rhythms and rusty-coil guitar riﬀs makes Powerplant sound like they’re hurtling toward a gear-smashing breakup or a terrifyingly amazing set—and not knowing which it’ll be is just as bracing as their music. —LEOR GALIL

SUNDAY22

Femdot. Opening acts to be announced. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, sold out. 18+

Evanston-raised rapper Femdot., born Femi Adigun, upholds the broad-shouldered, self-assured poetry of homegrown hip-hop to rep Chicago with an artisan’s touch. His signature pencil-behind-the-ear

aesthetic and million-dollar smile telegraph his dedication to writing impactful lyrics and doing what he can to strategically win at the game of life. Education is also a pillar of his values: in 2018 he founded Delacreme Scholars, a Chicago-based nonproﬁt dedicated to providing scholarships to Black and Brown college students and fostering community through tutelage and civic engagement.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Femdot. is one of Chicago’s hardest-working artists. He’s built a catalog of consistently satisfying releases, and along with his national tours, stellar features, and beautiful social media content, they’ve helped him create a lane of his own—and a legend that’s surely growing. Femdot. has collaborated with the likes of Sango Beats, Saba, theMIND, and IDK, and his latest project, Buy One, Get One Free, Vol. 4, continues his ﬂood of thoughtful releases: it’s a two-pack

of smooth rap tunes that makes a perfect musical capsule for summer’s end. That said, he’s kicking oﬀ the fall with a series of performances celebrating his 2019 breakthrough album, 94 Camry Music The Los Angeles show is already sold out, and the Chicago gig was listed that way at press time too— so those who score tickets can count themselves among the lucky ones. The 94 Cent Show promises the type of high energy only Femdot. can provide. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

MONDAY23

Thievery Corporation See also Tue 9/24. Striz opens. 6:30 PM, Outset, 1675 N. Elston, $49.50. 17+

from a Kindertransport after their arrival in Waterloo Station in London, February 2, 1939 (ÖGZ S 52/11).

MUSIC

Calling Thievery Corporation “eclectic” is an understatement—their sound’s been described as downtempo, but it can also light up a dance party. Cofounders Eric Hilton and Rob Garza would likely blanch at attempts to define their band within any category—though ambient, trip-hop, house, and global fusion all come to mind. They borrow from a variety of genres from near and far, guided by an open-ended outlook they’ve termed “Outernationalist.” How many other electronica acts feature melodic sitar, hand percussion, a bit of bass, and lyrics in multiple languages?

Thievery Corporation formed in 1995 at the Eighteenth Street Lounge in Washington, D.C. (co-owned by Hilton and still a ﬁxture of the Dupont Circle club scene), out of a seemingly mundane pursuit: Hilton and Garza’s mutual interest in collecting bossa nova and jazz records. Soon their partnership

OCTOBER 2 - DECEMBER 18

WEDNESDAY NIGHTS AT 7PM

continued from p. 57

grew into a studio project focusing on club remixes of jazz, reggae, dub, hip-hop, and just about anything else that inspired them. In 1996, they founded Eighteenth Street Lounge Music (more commonly known as ESL) to handle their output, and they’ve since released more than a dozen studio LPs as well as a slew of compilations, singles, live albums, and solo eﬀorts. All the while, they’ve continued to be a work in progress. They’ve also maintained a solid rep for collaboration: over the years they’ve platformed a variety of emerging talents, including vocalists Notch Howell and Shana Halligan and rapper Mr. Lif (all three remain studio and touring members of the group), and worked with established artists such as David Byrne, the Flaming Lips, Femi Kuti, and Seu Jorge.

Thievery Corporation’s ethos of diversity and inclusion goes beyond the music itself—they’re also well-known for their not-so-subtle commentary on globalization, police brutality, and the surveillance state. I hope their current tour, including these two shows at Outset, has something to say about our precarious present electoral moment.

—DAVID ANDERSON

TUESDAY24

Caterina Barbieri KMRU opens. 8 PM, Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland, $47.38. b

The music of Italian multi-instrumentalist and composer Caterina Barbieri shimmers and pulses at the intersection of ambient, new age, minimalist electronics, and drone. She uses primarily modular synthesizers to build her tracks, creating canvases of sustained tones that spread flat like aural wallpaper and then splashing them with digital and ana-

log color, including guitar, strings, moaning vocals, and a variety of electronic bloops, bleeps, and runs that recalls composers as diverse as Giorgio Moroder, Vangelis, and Bach. Listening to Barbieri’s latest album, 2023’s Myuthafoo (on her own Light-Years label), is like being dipped into an 80s vision of the future as imagined in Tron or Space Invaders . It’s ecstatic digitized nostalgic transcendence that sprinkles its retro vibes with intimations of other genres and tomorrows. “Memory Leak” is full of distorted shrieks and feedback-laden noise; “Alphabet of Light” is quiet and crystalline, pattering toward the barely there whispers and gestures of lowercase music; and “Math of You” is hyped-up fruity chiptune yoked to algorithmic repetition. Whatever mix of inﬂuences Barbieri is ﬂoating through, though, she turns everything she picks up into carefully calibrated cathedrals of bliss where robot dreams chase each other beneath the stars. It’s electronica that’s less for dancers and more for people who want to lie down on a digital beach and watch waves of light roll gently in and out of the computer screens in their brains.

—NOAH BERLATSKY

Footballhead You Blew It! headline; Footballhead open. 7 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North. $25, $22 in advance. b

I can’t listen to the Footballhead mini album Before I Die (Tiny Engines), which came out in August, without thinking of an interview I did with front man Ryan Nolen last September: we talked on the phone for nearly an hour because I was writing about the death of one of his best friends, Space Gators front man Ryan Deffet. Melancholy gives Before I Die much of its power: it makes the truck-size riﬀs feel

immune to gravity, and it lends a calming, reﬂective warmth to Nolen’s bittersweet lilt. His lyrics grapple with the unknown while the band’s heavy, polished alt-rock hits with declarative force, a winning combination that would bring some refreshing energy to corporate FM stations if iHeartRadio cared about music as much as it cares about quarterly earnings. I’ve spun “Your Ghost” dozens of times since Footballhead released it as a single in May, and when

Nolen’s forlorn vocals emerge from the cascading guitars of the verse and burst into a roaring chorus that feels like a plunge down Niagara Falls, I still get teary-eyed.

—LEOR GALIL

Thievery Corporation See Mon 9/23. Duke Shin opens. 6:30 PM, Outset, 1675 N. Elston, $49.50. 17+ v

Femdot. LUIS QUINTANA

Caterina Barbieri FUURMAN AHMED

3rd

Annual

A Beneﬁt for the Chicago Reader

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO 220 E CHICAGO AVE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3RD

VIP COCKTAIL HOUR 6PM - 7PM | GENERAL 7PM - 9PM

DRESS CODE READER YELLOW OR GOLD

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JOBS

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].

Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology/ Physician Surgeon The Dept of Pathology, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking full-time Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology/Physician Surgeon to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, teach, train, and advise medical students, residents, and fellows in fields of Pathology, and specifically Dermatopathology and Hematopathology. Provide clinical patient care in the specialties of oncologic and non-oncologic Dermatopathology and Hematopathology to a diverse patient population in the hospital. Participate and collaborate on other sub-specialty diagnostic services, such as molecular pathology, digital pathology, HLA, and informatics. Conduct medical science research, publish and present scientific research findings, and perform University service and administrative duties as assigned. Some periodic travel may be required for conferences, professional development, and/or local travel in between worksite locations. This position minimally requires a Medical degree (MD) or its foreign equivalent, one (1) year of Dermatopathology fellowship training and one (1) year of Hematopathology fellowship training, a valid IL med license or eligibility for an Illinois medical license, & board certification or eligibility for certification in Anatomic & Clinical Pathology. For fullest consideration, please submit CV, cover letter, and 3 professional references by 10/5/2024 to Ms. Alsera Hayes, 840 S. Wood Street, 130CSN, MC847, Chicago, IL 60612 or via email to Alsera.edu. The University of Illinois System is an equal

opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit https://www.hr.uillinois. edu/cms/one.aspx?portalId=4292&pageId=5705uic to view our non-discrimination statement and ﬁnd additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify. The university provides accommodations to applicants and employees https://jobs. uic.edu/request-andaccomodation/

Senior Software Engineer , Chicago, IL, for Team TAG Services, LLC (TAG) (2 positions available): Work on a team focused on customer and practice facing websites. Req’d: Bach. or higher deg. (or foreign equiv.) in Comp. Sci., IT, or related ﬁeld & 2 yrs. of exp. working in Software Development. Exp. must incl. 2 yrs. exp. working w/: JavaScript, incl. DOM manipulation & the JavaScript object model, front-end frameworks, popular React.js workﬂows (such as Flux or Redux), and data structure libraries (e.g. Immutable.js). Demonstrated prof. w/ integrating RESTful APIs also req’d. May work from home up to 2 days/ wk. Resumes to code JQ-SSE, c/o Juliana Ximenes, TAG, 800 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607 (juliana. ximenescoutinhodias@ aspendental.com).

Lead Data Engineer , Chicago, IL, for Team TAG Services, LLC (TAG). Partner with business, analytics, and engineering teams to design and build data structures to facilitate reporting, models, and monitoring key performance metrics.

Req’d: Bachelor’s in Data Science, Mathematics or related data or computational social or hard science field & 5 years exp. in IT, Analytics and/ or Data Science OR Master’s & 3 years of exp. May work from home up to 2 days/wk. Resumes to code YZ-LDE, c/o Juliana Ximenes, TAG, 800 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607 (juliana.ximenescoutinhodias@aspendental.com).

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

Req’s Master’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ, or

non-bus adv degree, & 1 yr exp as Associate-level mgmt consultant w/ a major top-tier int’l mgmt consulting firm. Domestic & int’l travel typically required. Dest & freq impossible to predict. Telecommuting permitted. Email resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to CTR08EM. Multiple positions.

Morningstar Investment Management LLC seeks a Lead QA Automation Engineer (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to develop test cases for multiple new features of the Retirement Manager application (5%). BS in Info Tech, Comp Sci, Software Engg, or rltd engg field & 7 yrs of rltd exp or in field involving coding req’d. Alternatively, MS deg. in Info Tech, Comp Sci, Software Engg, or rltd Engg field & 5 yrs of rltd exp or in field involving coding req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-046001.

SENIOR DEVOPS ENGINEER, CHICAGO, IL, 66DEGREES, A DATA AND AI SOLUTIONS COMPANY SEEKS GCP DEVOPS ENGINEER TO BUILD CI AND CD PIPELINES, MONITOR AND OPTIMIZE INFRASTRUCTURE, DEVELOP TOOLS AND AUTOMATION; INCREASE STABILITY & AUGMENT PROCEDURES, IMPLEMENT SECURE & ROBUST DEVOPS PIPELINE AND MANAGE GCP INFRASTRUCTURE. ADD’L JOB DUTIES ON REQUEST. DUTIES MAY BE PERFORMED REMOTELY FROM ANYWHERE IN THE U.S. REQ: B.S. COMPUTER SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, ELECTRONICS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, MIS, TELECOMMUNICATIONS OR RELATED + 36 MOS EXP. Must possess Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Certiﬁcation in BOTH Professional Cloud (PC) Architect and PC DevOps Engineer. EMAIL RESUME TO HR DIRECTOR AT RECRUITING@ 66DEGREES.COM

Financial Consultant, Aviation (Master’s w/ 3 yrs exp or Bach w/ 5 yrs exp; Major: Aviation Mgmt, Math, Statistics, Bus. Admin., Finance, Accounting, Econ, or equiv) – Chicago, IL. Job entails working with & reqs exp incl: Airport Financial Analysis; auditing concessionaires, ﬁnancial modeling, & benchmarking KPIs. Send resumes: Unison Consulting, Inc., Attn: HR, 150 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 2930, Chicago IL 60601.

Segment Industrial Engineer Mars Wrigley Confectionery US, LLC: Segment Industrial Engineer – Chicago, IL (Up to 50% Tlwk permitted). Develop, evaluate, & recommend optimal supply solutions for new market activities aﬀecting the segment, in close cooperation w/ the segment support IE’s & site IE’s. Job reqs Bach’s deg in Engg, Biz Mgmt, or rltd ﬂd & 4 yrs of exp working as a Project Eng, Logistics Mgr, Industrial Eng, Ops Line Mgr, Supply Chain Mgr, or rltd position. In lieu of a Bach’s deg as stated, employer will accept 2 additional yrs of exp working as a Project Eng, Logistics Mgr, Industrial Eng, Ops Line Mgr, Supply Chain Mgr, or rltd position. Up to 20% domestic & int’l travel reqd for biz mtgs. To apply, send resume identifying Job Code 139 to MarsTA-PIC@ effem.com. No calls.

Commercial Technology Architect Enterprise Solutions – SAP Procurement Mars Information Services, Inc.: Commercial Technology Architect Enterprise Solutions – SAP Procurement (Formerly known as: Commercial (Procurement) Technology Solution Architect – Direct Procurement) – Chicago, IL. Partnering w/ key stakeholders across business segments to deliver new commercial technology solutions for Mars Information Services, Inc. Job reqs Bach’s deg in Comp Engg, Mgmt Info Sys, or a rltd ﬂd + 7 yrs in any job title involving exp in Procure to Pay domain w/ responsibilities for solution design, product mgmt & sys implementation for SAP ECC, SAP SRM, & Ariba within the Consumer-Packaged Goods industry. Up to 25% intl & dom travel reqd for biz mtgs. Tlwk permitted up to 2 days per wk. To apply, send resume identifying Job Code 137 to MarsTA-PIC@ effem.com. No calls.

Manager FT. Orozco Trucking Corp, Elk

Grove Village, Chicago, IL. Bachelor in mgmt, no exp, no training. Annual salary is $57,200.00. Email resume to Konstantins@ orozcotrucking.com

Engagement Manager – Implementation positions avail w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US in Chicago, IL . Dvlp relationships w/ clients; be expert in impl & delivering results. Req’s Master’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ, or nonbus adv degree, & 2 yrs of exp w/ a major top-tier int’l mgmt consulting firm as Assoc-Implementation or Consultant. Domestic & int’l travel typically required. Dest & freq impossible to predict. Telecommuting permitted. Email resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to CTR08EMIM. Multiple positions.

Licensed Professional Counselor Licensed Professional Counselor: Part of multi-disciplinary treatment team. Psych treatment to help w/mental health disorders. Discuss mental health, assess symptoms, diagnose, appl treatment. Study of behavior patterns & cognitive functions. Observe individuals, record interactions. Master’s degree in counseling psychology. Res: LifePoint Child and Family Therapy. 5101 Washington St, Suite 1108, Gurnee IL 60031

Northwestern Memorial Healthcare seeks Sr. Cloud Security Analysts for various & unanticipated worksites in the U.S (HQ: Chicago, IL) to be responsible for providing security for cloudbased digital platforms. Bachelor’s in Comp Sci/ IT/related ﬁeld +5yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills: 3yrs w/network protocols & topologies; proxies, Firewall, packet analyzers; Incident response; monitor & administer endpoint detection & response; Windows admin; Exp must incl at least 2 major security vendors; Python/ scripting; email security; SIEM; security controls & threat protection in cloud & hybrid; cyber

threat intelligence. Edu/ exp: Linux/UNIX; Threat & Vulnerability Mgmt, Security standards/controls (NIST, HIPAA). May work remote w/ability to commute to Chicago oﬃce. Background check & drug screening req’d. Apply online: http:// jobseeker.nm.org/ Req ID: LMT68894N

Northwestern Memorial HealthCare seeks Medical Laboratory Scientist (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to perform test procedures in a clinical laboratory & convey results to physician or designee in an accurate & timely manner for the purpose of patient diagnosis & treatment. BS in Medical Tech or Lab Sci, Clinical Lab Sci, Chemistry, Biology, or Allied Health, qualifying applicant for req’d ASCP cert exam. ASCP MLS/MT req’d (ASCPi also accepted). Drug test & background check req’d. Must be willing & able to work night shift. Add’l speciﬁc skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://jobs.nm.org; ref. job REF67347R.

Infectious Disease Physician Infectious Disease Physician needed in Park Ridge, IL. Please send resume to: Tara Kowalski, Metro Infectious Disease Consultants, 901 McClintock Drive, # 202, Burr Ridge, IL 60527

Front End Developers Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago d/b/a Shirley Ryan Ability Lab seeks Front End Developers for various & unanticipated worksites throughout the U.S (HQ: Chicago,IL) to build, deploy, & maintain robust web sw applications w/ cloud-based & locally hosted infrastructures. Bachelor’s in Comp Sci/SW Eng/ related field +2yrs exp req’d. Req’d Skills: JavaScript; AWS Services (S3, EC2); React; HTML/ Sass; CSS; translating non-tech reqs for med sw apps to tech functional code; privacy protections & security safeguards for med sw apps; jQuery; Node.js; Python; PHP;

SQL; Linux. 100% telecommuting permitted. Apply online: https:// www.sralab.org/careers REQ ID: JR-1061963

HOUSING

1506 N Hudson 4 bedroom duplex 1506 North Hudson, Unit 2, quiet neighborhood Spacious 4 bedroom duplex (2nd/3rd) ﬂoors. Large living room, den, two baths with 4 sinks, hardwood floors, kitchen includes dishwasher and microwave, washer/dryer in unit, central air and heat; private deck off third floor, large shared deck over garage. No Pets; gas and electric not included; $3,850 monthly, $5,775 deposit. garage space $140. 773.255.6988, 312.343.0449. Block from El station

Logan Square 1 bedroom loft apartment for rent 3.5 room Logan Square apartment. 3rd floor. 1 bed, 1 bath. Pets okay. Near blue line stop. Call 224488-6164. $900/month

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

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS PROFESSIONALS

& SERVICES HOUSING

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW!

10/24 Joan Baez: When You See My Mother, Ask Her To Dance

11/2 Tegan and Sara on Junior High and Chrushes - In Conversation 11/7 Jeﬀ Parker Quartet

12/5 Over the Rhine (An Acoustic Christmas) 2/2/25 Mike Dawes

5PM Sunday 9/22!

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GOSSIP WOLF

MAYBE THIS STRETCH of sunny 80-degree days has you feeling like summer will never die, but Gossip Wolf has bad news— the equinox that defines the astronomical end of the season falls this weekend. That doesn’t mean that the fun is over, though! Millennium Park’s 20th-anniversary summer season coincides with the second year of its residency program, which chooses ﬁve cultural organizations to host a diverse series of free events. Vocalo, the city’s urban alternative public radio station, is one of the five—and though it lost most of its hosted programming this spring and narrowly avoided shutdown, it’s still on the air, and it’s throwing a great party at Pritzker Pavilion on Friday, September 20.

Hall

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 8PM Kulaiwi - Native Lands In Maurer Hall

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6 7PM Ali Azimi In Maurer Hall

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

Vocalo’s Summer Finale is bringing out one of the best free lineups of live Chicago music you’ll ever see. DJ Lady D , who was voted best house music DJ in the Reader ’s Best of Chicago audience poll last year, will set the night off at 5 PM. The show proper starts at 6:30 PM, with opening performances by sublime singer-songwriter Kaina and seasoned jazz trumpeter Marquis Hill. Famed west-side hip-hop collective Pivot Gang will take the stage at 8:15 PM as the headlining act. Past and present Vocalo hosts Bekoe and Nudia Hernandez will emcee the festivities. This show has something for practically every Chicago music lover, but you’ll need to bring your own lawn chair or blanket! Here’s hoping Vocalo sticks around long enough to help us end lots more summers on this kind of high note.

ON SEPTEMBER 4 , Chicago artist-led organization Golden Egg announced a pilot round of grants to support retirement savings by local professional musicians. Applicants who qualify are eligible to receive $2,000, $3,000, or $6,500, based on their age. The application is open to any Chicago musician between 20 and 65 whose average adjusted gross income over the past three years is less than $80,000. Recipients have to promise to put the money in an individual retirement account (and match it with an IRA deposit of any size from their own funds).

Project manager Deidre Huckabay has long been concerned about the ﬁnancial insecurity faced by freelance musicians, in no small part because they’re a freelance musician. They play flute (they’re a member of

Pivot Gang headline Vocalo’s Summer Finale on Friday, September 20. MICHAEL SALISBURY

performance collective Mocrep) and co-own avant-garde cassette label Parlour Tapes. Huckabay makes a living as a fundraiser for nonproﬁts, a helpful skill set for launching a retirement-savings program for musicians.

Huckabay says the first time they talked about starting Golden Egg was with Experimental Sound Studio director of development and outreach Olivia Junell in 2019. “Funders are also looking for big, systemschanging collaborative ideas that have potential to extend benefits beyond a grant period,” Huckabay says. “It was stuck in my craw: How could we create some kind of donation opportunity for a funder that wants to leave the dollars in our community and let them circulate among artists for a little bit longer? So that’s how retirement came about. I dreamed of an opportunity for us to receive some dollars and then keep and let them grow and enjoy them for generations.”

Junell became Golden Egg’s engagement and outreach manager, and Experimental Sound Studio became the project’s ﬁscal sponsor (that is, it’s allowing Golden Egg to use its nonproﬁt tax exemption, among other things). Junell and Huckabay then began the long process of securing funds. In spring 2023, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events awarded Golden Egg $100,000 through the Chicago Arts Recovery Program . To help shape its application

process, Golden Egg recruited economics and public policy students in the University of Chicago’s free CampusCatalyst consultant program.

Golden Egg has also assembled an eight- person steering committee of local artists to help shape the initiative and develop retirement-planning resources and workshops for working musicians. It includes pianist and Ensemble dal Niente cofounder Mabel Kwan , multi-instrumentalist and Sitarsys bandleader Shanta Nurullah, and dance producer and Smart Bar resident Ariel Zetina

“These conversations have been super interesting,” Huckabay says. “They’ve brought together people with a bunch of different life experiences and people who belong to all different kinds of musical communities to talk about, like, ‘Wait, how much proof should people have to give us when they apply?’ Or ‘How long should the grant application take to fill out?’ Or really interesting questions that everybody, of course, has really different opinions about.”

Golden Egg’s application requires just two links demonstrating that candidates have performed or released music in the past two years. “If you provide those two links and check a box that says, ‘I identify as an active and professional musician,’ that’s the level of verification we’re requiring,” Huckabay says. “It’s important to us to acknowledge the many diﬀerent levels of traditional professionalism that might apply to an artist. I have a job outside of my work, but I consider myself primarily a musician. Plenty of other folks are in that situation. Others have made the leap to go completely full-time. Others teach at universities or teach at music schools and play on the weekends. There’s a thousand ways of doing it. The main thing we want to do is take care of artists who have, for whatever reason, lower incomes and who identify as musicians, primarily or professionally.”

Huckabay says Golden Egg has received 58 applications as of September 10. The ﬁrst round of grants will total $50,000, and applications close at 11:59 PM on Friday, November 1. —TYRA NICOLE TRICHE AND LEOR GALIL

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

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Role perversal

Neither of us enjoys role-play, so how do we fulﬁll each other’s fantasies?

By DAN SAVAGE

Q: A er 19 years together, my husband and I have ﬁnally managed to have a really good conversation about our desires.

We both struggled to nail down what it is we want (he is a long-term Catholic guilt-sufferer) but finally got to talking about what porn he likes. Turns out he’s into these coercive-type scenes, things like, “I caught you shoplifting, eat me out or I’ll call the cops!” and “You can’t make rent? Let me fuck you and we will call it even!”

He says it’s less about what the action actually is (the sex acts themselves) and more about the power exchange going in either direction.

Sometimes he fantasizes about being coerced, sometimes he fantasizes about doing the coercing. Now that sounds hot as hell to me. I’m more of a reader of erotica and I tend to go for free-use MFM stories. But we have a few issues to deal with.

First, he doesn’t ﬁnd the idea of treating me badly hot because he loves me, whereas in the fantasy situation he doesn’t care what the other party thinks. I hate the Madonna/whore thing, so that was frustrating to hear. Neither of us enjoys roleplay. We’ve tried it, but the eﬀort of playing a character and improvising really takes us out of the moment. Obviously, it’s hard to play any of the types of scenes we’re talking about without getting into role-play. Is there anything we can

do to take this dynamic and play with it as ourselves?

We’ve got two young kids at home so our time for anything spontaneous is very limited. —RECENTLY EXPLORING NEW THINGS

a: “It takes a lot of guts to express a new sexual desire 19 years in, and I want to congratulate them for putting it all out in the open,” said Claire Perelman, a licensed therapist who works with couples seeking to improve their sexual connections.

“The possibility of feeling rejected by our lovers . . . can make it so challenging to be that vulnerable. RENT and her husband are a great reminder that you never know how excited your partner might be about trying something new!”

I agree with Claire (because of course I agree with Claire): it’s great that you two are finally having this conversation.

But I have to say . . . this was a conversation you should have had 18 and a half years ago, RENT, six months into your relationship. (I checked with Claire about this, and she agreed with me.)

You’re not alone in putting this convo off: a lot of us avoid having honest conversations about our desires and/or kinks early on because we fear derailing a promising new relationship.

But these conversations get harder the more time passes, not easier, because being rejected by someone

pay the rent!” fantasies, but you might be able to explore and enjoy other “sex under a mutually-agreeable degree of duress” scenarios that work for both of you.

“First, RENT and her husband could try watching the porn he enjoys together,” said Claire, “playing with the fantasy before playing with each other.

we’ve fallen in love with is scarier than being rejected by someone we just met.

Now, very few people want to be with someone who blurts out all of their kinks on the first date or hookup (not even other kinky people), RENT, but by the six-month mark—ideally—those kink cards should be face-up on the table.

OK, RENT, so you’ve finally had this conversation. You now know about your husband’s kinks (does he know about yours?)—but these aren’t fantasies you can realize together.

Not just because your husband has one of those annoying Madonna/whore hang-ups, but because realizing his fantasies would require you to engage in role-play, and that’s not something either of you enjoys.

And since this is a fantasy scenario that can be ethically explored through role-play, your husband—who can’t do role-play—has accepted that this fantasy of his can never be realized with anyone, ever.

So, where do you go from here?

“When engaging in kink, it’s helpful to understand what about the kink excites you,” said Claire. “RENT’s husband identified that it’s not about the sex acts, it’s about the power exchange. There’s lots of ways to play with power dynamics outside of role-play, degradation, and humiliation.”

In other words, RENT, you can’t explore your husband’s very specific “but you must

where RENT’s husband can make sexual demands, they could incorporate the transactional nature of the sex he fantasizes about while accommodating the scheduling constraints of parenthood.

to take that aren’t Madonna or whore, but an entirely third path that they can figure out together.”

You can follow Claire Perelman at Instagram or Threads at the handle “sexclariﬁed.” v

“They could also negotiate ‘free use’ scenes that include both their interests. If they agree on a set time frame

“For example, they could agree that after RENT’s husband helps the kids get to sleep, RENT can’t refuse her husband’s demand for a blowjob that helps him to get sleep. There are a lot of creative avenues for this couple

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for Dan Savage, record a question for the Savage Lovecast, and/or read full column archives at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love