Hey, Chicago! We’d love to hear what your plans are this fall.
Fall Theater & Arts preview 2023
‘125 is feeling very good’
Celebrating Chicago’s cultural past and present at the Fine Arts Building
Setting the stage for queer stories
A seasonal preview of LGBTQ+ theater
‘We don’t want to get bigger. We want to get deeper.’
Jenny Magnus on 35 years with Curious Theatre Branch
Latest Stories
Sanctuary City explores the plight of DREAMers
Martyna Majok’s drama gets a sensitive staging with Steppenwolf.
All-girl garage band the Same got short-changed by the grown-ups in the room
The group weren’t even allowed to play their instruments on their lone 1967 single, but they still have a pile of demos that prove how hard they really rocked.
Little Amal invites Chicago to walk a little closer together
A 12-foot-tall puppet of a Syrian refugee girl comes to town this weekend.
Shaker Barbeque takes you down at the next Monday Night Foodball
Check out Mike Shaker’s central-Texas barbecue platter at the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Ludlow Liquors.
Charlique Rolle takes over at African American Arts Alliance of Chicago
Congo Square’s executive director succeeds Jackie Taylor; plus Court’s Charles Newell announces his departure.
Get the latest issue of the Chicago Reader
SPECIAL NOTE: Hey Chicago, we’ll be removing Reader boxes along the Bank of America Marathon route on Monday, October 2. This will affect 30 locations. But no worries, they’ll be returned Monday, October 9, with new issues featuring Hyde Park style, Laimoon, and Yvonne Gage.
News & INVESTIGATIONS
An online refuge for care workers during the Ukraine War
Former Chicagoan leads training and support groups for therapists and social workers working during wartime
Narcan for everyone
How to get the drug for free—and possibly save a life
Chicago church part of Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
Bronzeville’s Roberts Temple Church of God In Christ was the location for Emmett Till’s 1955 funeral.
Columns & Opinion
![[UPDATED] RICJ Racial Justice Writers’ Room Launches Cohort 2](https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20230929194415im_/https://i0.wp.com/chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/reader-general.png?resize=400%2C300&quality=80&ssl=1)
[UPDATED] RICJ Racial Justice Writers’ Room Launches Cohort 2
This year’s cohort is made up of six journalists who will be mentored by journalists and media professionals
The butterfly in your throat
A thyroid expert reconsiders 50 years of dogma.
Oppenheimer‘s Loyola connection
One Chicago chemistry professor cast the lone vote against revoking the father of the atomic bomb’s security clearance.
Film
Review: The Continental (Miniseries)
Action fans and John Wick franchise devotees might be satisfied, but the miniseries structure limits the true potential of The Continental.
Review: The Creator
This action-adventure film tries to use AI to examine colonialism and just short circuits.
Review: Dicks: The Musical
A24’s first musical is desperate to be a cult classic, but that’s its biggest downfall.
Arts & Culture
Debutantes and debacles
The Nacirema Society is a smart and hilarious dissection of class and race in 1964 Montgomery.
Purgatory in a dystopian disco
The Pragmatists at Trap Door examines stasis vs. chaos.
All about the Franklins
Chicago Children’s Theatre illuminates another side of Ben in Mesmerized.
Little orphan Annie meets Dracula
The Flying Dutchman opens the season at Lyric Opera.
Look but don’t touch
With SCUMB Manifesto, artist Justine Kurland takes an X-Acto knife to the male canon.
Music
Future Rootz teams up to reissue a rare album of trippy 70s Afro-Cuban funk
Plus: James King (aka the GTW) launches the #chigeria series of weekly song drops, and both founders of local weirdo label Hausu Mountain release solo records.
CITY LIFE
Celebrating the drag makers and nightlife impresarios
The Gaggy Awards are here to make you gag—in a good way.
Hecho En Arts & Craft Fair, Mothers of Murdered Transpeople annual picnic, and more
The To-Do: a curated list of things to do and events to check out in Chicago
Food & Drink
Dive Bistro creates a Waffle House à la campagne at the next Monday Night Foodball
Check out the veteran chefs’ sauce-soaked, soigné menu for the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Ludlow Liquors
The Melanin Martha celebrates the sweets of the south at the next Monday Night Foodball
Jordan Wimby gives love to the Black bake sale at the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Ludlow Liquors.
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