Rapturous Renee

The Tribune profiles opera star Renee Fleming in her moonlight role as the Lyric's creative consultant.  

Barack and Michelle: A Love Story

The President and the First Lady’s first date is going to be the subject of an upcoming indie romantic drama in the vein of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise trilogy, according to this Deadline exclusive. And yes, it will be filming in Chicago.

Rebecca Has a Dream

Chicago talks to the children’s author Rebecca Dudley about her beguiling, handmade illustrations.

Homage to Hunt

On the heels of a new retrospective exhibits at the Chicago Cultural Center and an upcoming show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Wall Street Journal looks at the work of veteran local sculptor Richard Hunt. 

Distinguished Bards

Check out our coverage of local writers who made the New York Times’s list of 100 notable books: Cristina Henriquez and Rick Perlstein. Chicago author Eula Biss also scored a spot on the Times's best books of 2014 for her memoir, On Immunity: An Inoculation.

Review Revue

Now that Thanksgiving over, find out how your familial drama compares to the Blakes', the working class family at the center of American Theater Company’s new production The Humans. The reviews are in, and they are glowing:

Chicago Reader: “The Humans—good title. Perfect, in fact, for this cunning new play by Stephen Karam, inasmuch as his six characters are nothing if not. They gather for 90 minutes to do the most human things: Joke. Eat. Lie. Pray. Ail. Hope. Worry. Bicker. Nap. Monopolize the bathroom. Complain about the neighbors. Try to get a handle on their lives and fail.”

Chicago Tribune: “…. It is a work filled with uncommon compassion for the kinds of people whom the theater often ignores.”

Time Out Chicago:  “For all of the characters' woes, this is a warm, funny, sharply observed portrait of their abiding connections with one another, even as things like health, financial worries, job anxiety, generational attitudes about faith and all those other modern-day bumps in the night ever evolve.”