12/05/08

24-Hour Party People

What’s harder than crafting a scene out of nothing in front of a crowd of rowdy strangers? Doing it for 24 hours straight. The Second City (1608 N. Wells St.; 312-337-3992) presents its seventh annual 24-hour improv benefit The Second City That Never Sleeps: Letters to Santa, stocked with enough ensemble members, alumni, and guest artists to guarantee the hilarity will increase as sleep deprivation sets in. The show kicks off 9 p.m. Tuesday the 9th and finishes up 9 p.m. Wednesday the 10th with the added bonus of live-music sets from the local alt-country hero Robbie Fulks (noon Wednesday) and pop icons The Breeders...

11/26/08

Hot Toddy Holiday

Two Dudes A-Drinking
Before you know it, Thanksgiving will be over and everyone will need a drink. Or three. In Drinking & Writing Vol. IV: The 12 Steps of Xmas, Neo-Futurists Steve Mosqueda and Phil Ridarelli ruminate on hard-drinking authors from Kerouac to Bukowski to Cheever and Capote, as well as on their own drunken...

11/21/08

What the Dickens?

Scrooged!
Stores have had their halls decked since Halloween, but for those of us not running a retail establishment, the holiday season is just getting started. This year, leave consumer culture to the mallrats (who has money for excessive shopping anyway?) and go rogue with a couple of irreverent holiday...

11/14/08

One Size Fitz All

Great Scott!
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a classic tale of wealth, privilege, consequence, and the schism between the haves and have-nots. It’s also, as you probably remember from high school, a full-length book—which means Gatz, a marathon theatrical staging of the unabridged novel by the New York troupe Elevator Repair Service, runs a good six-plus...

11/07/08

Double, Double Toil and Trouble

It’s been an emotional week, but election-day jitters are nothing compared to the 400-hundred-year-and-counting eau de anxiety that clings to Macbeth. The backstage whispers—Ghosts! Accidents! Funny business!—are almost as old as the play itself, but Radio Macbeth blows the...

10/31/08

Thrills! Chills! And Halloween, too!

Ballad of the Ballot
Those who missed snagging tickets to Obama’s blowout in Grant Park—i.e., just about everybody—can still catch a screening on Tuesday, November 4th of local filmmaker and producer Maggie Bowman’s Election Day. The documentary, shot entirely on November 2, 2004, weaves together the stories of 11 citizens, from a factory worker to an ex-felon to a busy...

10/24/08

The Monster Mashup

When Aliens Attack
Nearly 70 years ago to the day, Orson Welles scared the bejeezus out of America by declaring that Martians had invaded a small New Jersey town. In Martian Invasion! Decoding the War of the Worlds, a live edition of the syndicated public radio show Radiolab, hosts Jab Abumrad and Robert Krulwich pair original radio footage with new audio in an attempt to...

10/17/08

Can We Buy a Vowell?

The Early Bookworm Catches the Seat

Grab your toothbrush. It’s such a big week at the library, you’ll be tempted to find a quiet spot in the stacks and set up camp (maybe somewhere in the 700s: Recreation). At 6 p.m. Monday the 20th, Writers on the Record’s Victoria Lautman sits down with the best-selling author Alaa Al Aswany, the Egyptian-born...

10/10/08

Tom Wolfe, Rachel Weisz, and Jesus

Proud Morty Keep on Burning
Poor Christopher Marlowe. It’s hard to snag the spotlight when Bill Shakespeare is a contemporary, but a new production of Marlowe’s The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer, adapted and directed by The Hypocrites’ much buzzed-about...

10/03/08

Cheap Thrills

Theatre of the Absurdly Affordable
Save the belt-tightening for that extra martini or the premium cable subscription: When it doesn’t cost a dime, culture can stay in the budget. The nationwide program Free Night of Theater hits Chicago in October, and not a moment too soon. How it works: Anyone can reserve free tickets to one of more than 45 selected plays. The only stipulations are that you...