UChicago Arts

In a week where a regional theater just won a Tony Award for decades of excellence, one hopes for serendipity. And that’s precisely what Court Theatre delivers with a blisteringly entertaining new Ron OJ Parson production of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” — Wilson’s 1960s play perhaps best known for the defiant, tragicomic line “I want my ham!”

Chicago has some high-profile vacancies for artistic directors. If any of those search committees are looking for a locally committed director who knows how to allow for the full poetic expression of a great American playwright’s ideas while also empowering actors and offering an audience a fast-paced, funny and unstinting night at the theater, Parson is that director. Read more

 The Tony Awards® Administration Committee has announced that based on the recommendation by the American Theatre Critics Association, Court Theatre will be the recipient of the 2022 Regional Theatre Tony Award.Read more.

Oboler—a fiction writer, radio dramatist, and filmmaker—has largely been forgotten, but from the 1930s through the ’50s he was a household name. A technical innovator, he experimented with novel sound effects and 3D film. And as an entertainer with his finger on the pulse of shifting mores, he depicted the horror he saw in humanity. His platform and message made Oboler one of the earliest, most prominent American voices condemning fascism. Read more

In an interview, the Pulitzer-finalist composer and University of Chicago professor spoke eloquently about her craft and the myriad decisions that go into creating the vibrant, deeply hued works that have made her one of the most frequently performed living composers in America. Along the way, her speech sometimes morphed seamlessly into song, as she illustrated a thought with melodic volleys of crisp nonsense syllables. Read more

Ten years ago, the artist Theaster Gates bought an old bank on Chicago’s South Side that was set to be demolished. The neighborhood near Dorchester Avenue had seen decades of divestment, rising poverty rates, and violence, so Gates struck an agreement to purchase the building from the city for one dollar—on the condition that he raise the funds to rehabilitate it. Read more