What’s New

It was a quarter till four in the afternoon, the Monday after Thanksgiving, when a line of wool trench coats and puffy winter jackets appeared at the corner of Clark and Lake. They stood in the cold, wide-eyed first-timers, jaded political operatives, and others almost ambivalent to the custom. They waited to walk through the revolving glass doors of the Chicago Board of Elections Loop Supersite—a downtown storefront turned into a polling place adjacent to the el tracks. This was the last chance to get on the ballot for February’s municipal election. 

Corey Denelle Braddock wore a navy blue, zippered sweatshirt with “Corey Denelle Braddock for 37th Ward Alderman” printed on the back. He had on a matching baseball cap. I asked why he was submitting petitions an hour before they were due. “I wanted to get as many signatures as I could because I wanted to make sure that dirty tricks aren’t something I’m affected by,” he told me.

Krystal Peters, candidate for the new Seventh Police District Council, laughed when I asked the same question. “I’m a master procrastinator,” she said. Another woman said, “I’m excited to get this over with.” 

“My name is Wendi Taylor Nations, and I’m running for alderman of the 43rd Ward,” Wendi Taylor Nations, wearing a tan wool coat, told me eagerly, as if narrating a campaign advertisement. “I’m here because I want to get into the lottery to be the last person on the ballot.”

It’s a Chicago tradition for prospective candidates to line up outside the Board of Elections office hours, if not days, before the period to submit petitions to get on the ballot opens. Board officials hand candidates a white slip of paper if they’re in line by 9 AM on the first day petitions are due. The hope is that by winning a lottery, your name will appear at the top of the ballot. (That is, if you successfully dodge attempts from your opponents to kick you off the ballot.) 

In the 2020 documentary City So Real, Willie Wilson supporters camped outside the elections board office the night before to get a top spot on the ballot for the 2019 mayoral election. (Wilson paid these people.) Cleopatra Draper, candidate for Ninth Ward alderperson, was in line at eight in the morning on a Friday this year, even though doors didn’t open until Monday morning. 

There’s no advantage to being first in line. The rules say candidates who filed “simultaneously”—four transferred calls later, I learned that this means anyone who shows up before doors open—and received a ticket are placed in the lottery. But it’s not for nothing. Research shows that there is an electoral advantage to having your name listed first on a ballot. 

There’s also a second lottery, a week later, for folks hoping to get the last spot on the ballot, available to those in line by 4 PM on the last day petitions are due. It’s a last-minute chance for the latecomers and superstitious to test their luck. Research, apparently, shows there’s also some advantage to being last.

When I went, the first ones in line were supporters of second-time mayoral candidate Chuy García, the last one to file petitions in a crowded race. “We want Chuy! We want Chuy!” they chanted as they saved his spot. Minutes later, the U.S. Congressman materialized with his wife, Evelyn, and political advisor Clem Balanoff. Together, they wheeled a cart with a large stack of petition signatures wrapped in green plastic and held down with bungee cords. A large cartoon replica of García’s trademark mustache was taped to the front of the cart. 

García was the first to step through the revolving doors. The room was decked in blue curtains, and rope barriers ran through the middle. The space quickly filled with his supporters and news crews who followed like ducklings. Once at the registration tables, García tossed his stack of petitions on top. A board official measured the stack with a yardstick (it was just a few inches short from the top). At nearly 50,000 petition signatures, García had one of the highest counts among mayoral candidates and even more than incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot. His gambit worked: On Tuesday, election officials announced the results of the lottery, and García was indeed last on the ballot.

This was the last chance to get on the ballot for February’s municipal election.

More office seekers trickled in throughout the next hour, though it was less of a spectacle. Near the entrance stood a police officer and a few board officials keeping watch. Reporters camped out in the corners using their coats as blankets to lie on. It was uncomfortably warm inside. Almost everyone’s attention was on the big name in the room. 

“Twenty-eight is a very lucky number in the Chinese community,” Don Don humbly told me. A candidate for 11th Ward alderperson, he stood with his hands behind his back and spoke in a hushed tone. He told me that he announced his campaign on September 28, and it only made sense to file his petitions on November 28. 

Others stood in line to get referendums on the ballots. Dixon Romeo and Savannah Brown, two young, Black community organizers from South Shore, showed up with 750 signatures to get two questions on the ballot for Fifth Ward residents: Do you support a holistic package of housing protections for South Shore residents? Do you support the use of a city-owned vacant lot at 63rd and Blackstone for affordable housing? 

Romeo said the referendum would be nonbinding, or without legal power. But he said it would send a message to retiring Fifth Ward alderperson Leslie Hairston and Lightfoot about the lack of affordable housing, directly from residents. One board official at the registration table patiently wrote the referendum questions by hand on different sheets of paper for each of the 12 precincts in the ward.

Would the referendum get enough support? “We’ll let the numbers talk,” Romeo said. 

By 5 PM, officials locked the doors. Only a handful remained inside. Andre Smith, candidate for 20th Ward alderperson, stood at the end of the line. He had a big smile on his face. He told me the other two candidates in the race, Jennifer Maddox and the incumbent alderperson Jeanette Taylor, had similar first names, so his name would stick out by being last on the ballot if he won the lottery. 

I chatted with a board official and a political consultant who didn’t want to be named. They sat on chairs, ties loosened, relieved that the day was almost over. Both agreed that filing petitions had gone smoothly this year. It was a miracle they were done before six, they said. 

For more than two hours, I watched as candidate after candidate exited the building. The process of getting (and staying) on the ballot is arduous and complicated, and it was designed to be that way. Yet every election cycle hundreds accept the challenge, even if there’s no real guarantee of victory. For these people who braved the cold and long lines and red tape, no tactic can be ruled out. 

Peters, one of the last candidates to exit, walked out joyfully. “Even if I don’t win,” she said, “I’m in.”

Read More

Uncle Joe was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The cardboard boxes littered the floor, filled with Joe’s tools, Joe’s college textbooks, Joe’s albums and manuals, Joe’s CDs, Joe’s tax returns, Joe’s unfinished projects, and all manner of Joe’s mess and memorabilia, stacked in a circle radiating outwards from a table upon which was posed a glass of half-drunk wine. There is no doubt that Joe was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story that Aunt Trudy (LaKecia Harris) is going to relate. For beyond her wineglass glints a piece of cardboard that has transcended its purpose as a receptacle for detritus and collectibles to become, thanks to the judicious application of Sharpies and string lights, a space for the most fantastic magic—but more on that part later.

Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol Through 12/24: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; also Tue 12/20 7:30 PM and Wed 12/21 and Fri 12/23 3 PM, Sat 12/24 3 PM only; open captions Thu 12/15; Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$90

It’s Christmas 2020, and Aunt Trudy is alone. She is alone because, as aforementioned, Uncle Joe is dead, and, as the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic required, most everyone is in quarantine. And yet, because of the marvel of modern technology, her house is full, not only with the stuff and memory of the departed but also with the specters of his numerous blood and legal relations—of which Trudy is, in fact, not one, as Joe and Trudy never crossed over from cohabitation to connubiality (“a mutual decision,” Trudy insists). That’s right—it’s a good old-fashioned Zoom Christmas, and for Joe’s aggressively festive fam, that means it’s time to gather (virtually) for Uncle Joe’s annual puppet presentation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, as reanimated by his grieving widow (in spirit only)!

Aunt Trudy is not amused. Actually, Aunt Trudy seems a little stuck in the anger stage of grief, and, in the absence of her once-loved Joe, some cardboard figures and the muted countenances of his family are indeed a sad compensation for the real thing.

Scowling in front of a camera that beams her shoebox puppet show to an audience of distant and—for all practical purposes—imaginary kin, she whips open the cardboard curtain and begins a monotone rendition. The flatness of her voice is matched by the two-dimensionality of the paper doll puppets that first appear: dour Ebenezer Scrooge, hunched at his desk and his chipper nephew Fred inviting him to dinner, all beneath Trudy’s withering glare. This glare is magnified a dozen or more times by a screen above the stage that makes a puppet the size of a person—and thus manifests this disgust at a scale that extends to all of us who have gathered here in Glencoe for a Christmas puppet show. “Bah humbug!” sneers Ebenezer/Trudy with feeling. But before we have time to tire of Trudy’s testy telling, the miracle of modern technology proves its man-made provenance: Faces freeze! The connection is unstable! The lights go dark! And then, as Trudy is joined by three silent hooded figures (Lizi Breit, Julia Miller, and Jeffrey Paschal), the story can begin.

In Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, adapted from the Dickens with additional writing by Nate Marshall, storyboards and puppet designs by Drew Dir with additional puppets by Chicago Puppet Studio, and original score and sound design by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter, their signature style of keeping the mechanisms of their image-making visible works double, not only by keeping viewers tuned into the practical magic of making cut paper tell tales, but also by shaping Aunt Trudy’s role as puppeteer, commentator, and player. The puppet show can be viewed on two scales and both are life-size: Trudy and a paper box on a stage, and Trudy and the story on a screen. The effect is as disorienting as the shifts in place and scale we’ve become accustomed to on Zoom, which brings us all to act in an imaginary place, and here renders live Trudy tiny as Joe’s puppets next to the projected story, sealing her place as a personage within it. (The company first presented the show online in 2020.)

As Scrooge undergoes the customary visitations, much of Dickens’s story unfolds in dreamlike images that succeed each other in cinematic blinks of the eye that take us immediately from time to time and place to place, blending tears and rain, skeletons with bare tree branches, in every way wondrous. Trudy’s backstory with Joe unfolds in parallel, as she remembers the party where they met, their early love, and then how their ways diverge as Trudy is seduced by capitalistic values and workaholism, while Joe remains generous and friendly but financially irresponsible and dependent on the woman he did not marry. As Ebenezer wrestles with his shriveled soul with the aid of the spirits who haunt him this one night, so does Trudy surrender to the silent ministrations of the ghostly puppeteers. When the third spirit arrives—gargantuan, cloaked, and looming horribly—it comes for the two of them.

The Christmas classic retains its charm in Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, which brings the old story to our recent present in this new telling, while also acknowledging feelings—anger, frustration, and disappointment—that are particular and familiar to loss, holidays, and our technological moment.

Read More

Whether you’re a calligraphy explorer or a hand-lettering veteran, check out the Newberry (60 W. Walton) today. They’ll be joined by the Chicago Calligraphy Collective for a Calligraphy Fair. From 10 AM-noon, they’ll have a breadth of demonstrations and hands-on how to’s that cover everything from gothic lettering and creative caps to arabic calligraphy and flourished copperplate. While free, registration is encouraged. This event is part of the Newberry’s programming to support the exhibition “A Show of Hands: Handwriting in the Age of Print.” The exhibit looks at how print media has encouraged the evolution and artistry of calligraphy since the mid-20th century, even dovetailing into forms like graffiti. It’s on view until December 30. To catch the show before it closes, check out the Newberry’s website. (MC)

Theatre Y has been working all year with west-side youth to create an original piece of puppet theater, in partnership with spoken word and musical artist Marvin Tate, puppet artist Michael Montenegro, and the Firehouse Community Arts Center (2111 S. Hamlin), which hosts the performances. The result, Little Carl, premieres today at 2 and 5 PM. Devised as a dream play offering a counternarrative to stories of gun violence, the creative process grew out of questions the youth artists raised about a host of issues, including “How should you get money?,” “Is anger virtuous?,” and “Does it make sense to worship NBA players over, say, 6’4?” The show continues Sat 12/10 at 5 PM and Sun 12/11 at 2 and 5 PM. Tickets are pay what you can, though Theatre Y members get a guaranteed seat for $60. Reservations and information at theatre-y.com. (KR)

The day after the Club Q shooting, Howard Brown Health Center announced its intent to lay off over 100 patient-focused workers before Christmas. Not only did this news immediately follow an LGBTQ-centered hate crime, but it also comes just three months after HBH workers won union recognition, which affords them legal protection when advocating for workplace improvements. According to the union, HBH Workers United, these layoffs affect the organization’s behavioral health, PrEP navigation, and health education staff plus other departments and projects designed to improve the physical and mental health of the queer community. Workers suggest looking for the budget cuts elsewhere. Do you agree? Show your support at 5 PM today outside the Howard Brown Health administrative building (1025 W. Sunnyside). If you can’t make it out, the union has a social media toolkit for showing solidarity from home. (MC)

Sick of the state of public transit in Chicago? Commuters Take Action wants to meet you! This grassroots group is organizing to hold the CTA accountable for how bus and train services have deteriorated since the pandemic. They’re asking for transparency and improvement! At 8 PM tonight, Commuters Take Action is throwing a meet and greet at Emporium Logan Square (2363 N. Milwaukee) “to manifest [CTA president] Dorval Carter’s retirement.” They want to hear your experiences with the CTA, invite your input on what you’d like to see change, and share ways to get involved, such as reporting a late train or bus, or submitting a public comment to the city. The people united will never be divided, so let’s work together to ensure we can affordably and effectively get where we need to be on time, eh? Or at least manifest Carter’s retirement. (MC)

Read More

Jake Xerxes Fussell deftly balances the imperatives of research and performance. A second-generation folklorist raised in Columbus, Georgia, he draws much of his material from field recordings made throughout the American south. His four albums, all released by North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors, scrupulously credit the folk-song collections from which he sources his material. However, if you compare the versions of those tunes that appear on those old LPs with Fussell’s recordings, his artistry quickly comes into focus. His first fidelity is to the stories the songs tell—he enunciates so clearly that you won’t need a lyric sheet to catch every word—and he’s not shy about streamlining them to get at their essence. He pares down “Rolling Mills Are Burning Down,” for example, to a single verse and chorus that vividly portray the personal tragedy that follows the economic collapse of a factory town. Fussell’s arrangements pull the songs out of time. The sparse, gorgeous orchestration on his latest record, Good and Green Again (produced by local multi-instrumentalist James Elkington), feels neither antique nor contemporary, but it perfectly frames Fussell’s rich voice and sturdy, reverberant guitar playing. In concert, Fussell’s singing and picking are quite complete unto themselves; he and Elkington will both be performing solo tonight.

Jake Xerxes Fussell James Elkington opens. Sat 12/10, 8 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, Szold Hall, 4545 N. Lincoln, $24 general public, $22 for members, all ages

Read More

It was a quarter till four in the afternoon, the Monday after Thanksgiving, when a line of wool trench coats and puffy winter jackets appeared at the corner of Clark and Lake. They stood in the cold, wide-eyed first-timers, jaded political operatives, and others almost ambivalent to the custom. They waited to walk through the revolving glass doors of the Chicago Board of Elections Loop Supersite—a downtown storefront turned into a polling place adjacent to the el tracks. This was the last chance to get on the ballot for February’s municipal election. 

Corey Denelle Braddock wore a navy blue, zippered sweatshirt with “Corey Denelle Braddock for 37th Ward Alderman” printed on the back. He had on a matching baseball cap. I asked why he was submitting petitions an hour before they were due. “I wanted to get as many signatures as I could because I wanted to make sure that dirty tricks aren’t something I’m affected by,” he told me.

Krystal Peters, candidate for the new Seventh Police District Council, laughed when I asked the same question. “I’m a master procrastinator,” she said. Another woman said, “I’m excited to get this over with.” 

“My name is Wendi Taylor Nations, and I’m running for alderman of the 43rd Ward,” Wendi Taylor Nations, wearing a tan wool coat, told me eagerly, as if narrating a campaign advertisement. “I’m here because I want to get into the lottery to be the last person on the ballot.”

It’s a Chicago tradition for prospective candidates to line up outside the Board of Elections office hours, if not days, before the period to submit petitions to get on the ballot opens. Board officials hand candidates a white slip of paper if they’re in line by 9 AM on the first day petitions are due. The hope is that by winning a lottery, your name will appear at the top of the ballot. (That is, if you successfully dodge attempts from your opponents to kick you off the ballot.) 

In the 2020 documentary City So Real, Willie Wilson supporters camped outside the elections board office the night before to get a top spot on the ballot for the 2019 mayoral election. (Wilson paid these people.) Cleopatra Draper, candidate for Ninth Ward alderperson, was in line at eight in the morning on a Friday this year, even though doors didn’t open until Monday morning. 

There’s no advantage to being first in line. The rules say candidates who filed “simultaneously”—four transferred calls later, I learned that this means anyone who shows up before doors open—and received a ticket are placed in the lottery. But it’s not for nothing. Research shows that there is an electoral advantage to having your name listed first on a ballot. 

There’s also a second lottery, a week later, for folks hoping to get the last spot on the ballot, available to those in line by 4 PM on the last day petitions are due. It’s a last-minute chance for the latecomers and superstitious to test their luck. Research, apparently, shows there’s also some advantage to being last.

When I went, the first ones in line were supporters of second-time mayoral candidate Chuy García, the last one to file petitions in a crowded race. “We want Chuy! We want Chuy!” they chanted as they saved his spot. Minutes later, the U.S. Congressman materialized with his wife, Evelyn, and political advisor Clem Balanoff. Together, they wheeled a cart with a large stack of petition signatures wrapped in green plastic and held down with bungee cords. A large cartoon replica of García’s trademark mustache was taped to the front of the cart. 

García was the first to step through the revolving doors. The room was decked in blue curtains, and rope barriers ran through the middle. The space quickly filled with his supporters and news crews who followed like ducklings. Once at the registration tables, García tossed his stack of petitions on top. A board official measured the stack with a yardstick (it was just a few inches short from the top). At nearly 50,000 petition signatures, García had one of the highest counts among mayoral candidates and even more than incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot. His gambit worked: On Tuesday, election officials announced the results of the lottery, and García was indeed last on the ballot.

This was the last chance to get on the ballot for February’s municipal election.

More office seekers trickled in throughout the next hour, though it was less of a spectacle. Near the entrance stood a police officer and a few board officials keeping watch. Reporters camped out in the corners using their coats as blankets to lie on. It was uncomfortably warm inside. Almost everyone’s attention was on the big name in the room. 

“Twenty-eight is a very lucky number in the Chinese community,” Don Don humbly told me. A candidate for 11th Ward alderperson, he stood with his hands behind his back and spoke in a hushed tone. He told me that he announced his campaign on September 28, and it only made sense to file his petitions on November 28. 

Others stood in line to get referendums on the ballots. Dixon Romeo and Savannah Brown, two young, Black community organizers from South Shore, showed up with 750 signatures to get two questions on the ballot for Fifth Ward residents: Do you support a holistic package of housing protections for South Shore residents? Do you support the use of a city-owned vacant lot at 63rd and Blackstone for affordable housing? 

Romeo said the referendum would be nonbinding, or without legal power. But he said it would send a message to retiring Fifth Ward alderperson Leslie Hairston and Lightfoot about the lack of affordable housing, directly from residents. One board official at the registration table patiently wrote the referendum questions by hand on different sheets of paper for each of the 12 precincts in the ward.

Would the referendum get enough support? “We’ll let the numbers talk,” Romeo said. 

By 5 PM, officials locked the doors. Only a handful remained inside. Andre Smith, candidate for 20th Ward alderperson, stood at the end of the line. He had a big smile on his face. He told me the other two candidates in the race, Jennifer Maddox and the incumbent alderperson Jeanette Taylor, had similar first names, so his name would stick out by being last on the ballot if he won the lottery. 

I chatted with a board official and a political consultant who didn’t want to be named. They sat on chairs, ties loosened, relieved that the day was almost over. Both agreed that filing petitions had gone smoothly this year. It was a miracle they were done before six, they said. 

For more than two hours, I watched as candidate after candidate exited the building. The process of getting (and staying) on the ballot is arduous and complicated, and it was designed to be that way. Yet every election cycle hundreds accept the challenge, even if there’s no real guarantee of victory. For these people who braved the cold and long lines and red tape, no tactic can be ruled out. 

Peters, one of the last candidates to exit, walked out joyfully. “Even if I don’t win,” she said, “I’m in.”

Read More

Uncle Joe was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The cardboard boxes littered the floor, filled with Joe’s tools, Joe’s college textbooks, Joe’s albums and manuals, Joe’s CDs, Joe’s tax returns, Joe’s unfinished projects, and all manner of Joe’s mess and memorabilia, stacked in a circle radiating outwards from a table upon which was posed a glass of half-drunk wine. There is no doubt that Joe was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story that Aunt Trudy (LaKecia Harris) is going to relate. For beyond her wineglass glints a piece of cardboard that has transcended its purpose as a receptacle for detritus and collectibles to become, thanks to the judicious application of Sharpies and string lights, a space for the most fantastic magic—but more on that part later.

Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol Through 12/24: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; also Tue 12/20 7:30 PM and Wed 12/21 and Fri 12/23 3 PM, Sat 12/24 3 PM only; open captions Thu 12/15; Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$90

It’s Christmas 2020, and Aunt Trudy is alone. She is alone because, as aforementioned, Uncle Joe is dead, and, as the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic required, most everyone is in quarantine. And yet, because of the marvel of modern technology, her house is full, not only with the stuff and memory of the departed but also with the specters of his numerous blood and legal relations—of which Trudy is, in fact, not one, as Joe and Trudy never crossed over from cohabitation to connubiality (“a mutual decision,” Trudy insists). That’s right—it’s a good old-fashioned Zoom Christmas, and for Joe’s aggressively festive fam, that means it’s time to gather (virtually) for Uncle Joe’s annual puppet presentation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, as reanimated by his grieving widow (in spirit only)!

Aunt Trudy is not amused. Actually, Aunt Trudy seems a little stuck in the anger stage of grief, and, in the absence of her once-loved Joe, some cardboard figures and the muted countenances of his family are indeed a sad compensation for the real thing.

Scowling in front of a camera that beams her shoebox puppet show to an audience of distant and—for all practical purposes—imaginary kin, she whips open the cardboard curtain and begins a monotone rendition. The flatness of her voice is matched by the two-dimensionality of the paper doll puppets that first appear: dour Ebenezer Scrooge, hunched at his desk and his chipper nephew Fred inviting him to dinner, all beneath Trudy’s withering glare. This glare is magnified a dozen or more times by a screen above the stage that makes a puppet the size of a person—and thus manifests this disgust at a scale that extends to all of us who have gathered here in Glencoe for a Christmas puppet show. “Bah humbug!” sneers Ebenezer/Trudy with feeling. But before we have time to tire of Trudy’s testy telling, the miracle of modern technology proves its man-made provenance: Faces freeze! The connection is unstable! The lights go dark! And then, as Trudy is joined by three silent hooded figures (Lizi Breit, Julia Miller, and Jeffrey Paschal), the story can begin.

In Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, adapted from the Dickens with additional writing by Nate Marshall, storyboards and puppet designs by Drew Dir with additional puppets by Chicago Puppet Studio, and original score and sound design by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter, their signature style of keeping the mechanisms of their image-making visible works double, not only by keeping viewers tuned into the practical magic of making cut paper tell tales, but also by shaping Aunt Trudy’s role as puppeteer, commentator, and player. The puppet show can be viewed on two scales and both are life-size: Trudy and a paper box on a stage, and Trudy and the story on a screen. The effect is as disorienting as the shifts in place and scale we’ve become accustomed to on Zoom, which brings us all to act in an imaginary place, and here renders live Trudy tiny as Joe’s puppets next to the projected story, sealing her place as a personage within it. (The company first presented the show online in 2020.)

As Scrooge undergoes the customary visitations, much of Dickens’s story unfolds in dreamlike images that succeed each other in cinematic blinks of the eye that take us immediately from time to time and place to place, blending tears and rain, skeletons with bare tree branches, in every way wondrous. Trudy’s backstory with Joe unfolds in parallel, as she remembers the party where they met, their early love, and then how their ways diverge as Trudy is seduced by capitalistic values and workaholism, while Joe remains generous and friendly but financially irresponsible and dependent on the woman he did not marry. As Ebenezer wrestles with his shriveled soul with the aid of the spirits who haunt him this one night, so does Trudy surrender to the silent ministrations of the ghostly puppeteers. When the third spirit arrives—gargantuan, cloaked, and looming horribly—it comes for the two of them.

The Christmas classic retains its charm in Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol, which brings the old story to our recent present in this new telling, while also acknowledging feelings—anger, frustration, and disappointment—that are particular and familiar to loss, holidays, and our technological moment.

Read More

On Inauguration Day 2017, New York-based comedian Ben Wassermanʼs father died—the first in what would turn out to be a series of deaths in his life over the next three years, including his grandfather, his uncle, and four friends. Wasserman, whose past comedic work included a segment for MTV where he painted with his butt, takes a deep dive into grief in Live After Death, an interactive comedic solo show he developed in part through performances in an actual funeral home. (At one point, Wasserman juggles balls representing the people he’s lost while an audience member reads prompts about other things going on in his life, including his grandmother’s dementia and his battle with kidney stones.) He’s now touring the show and will be performing December 13 at Lincoln Lodge. Maggie Winters, a Reader Best of Chicago 2021 winner for “best comedian (non stand-up)” opens.

I talked to Wasserman about what it’s been like for him to perform what he called “the last show I’d ever wanna have to do.” 

Kerry Reid: You hadn’t really leaned into autobiographical material prior to doing this show, correct?

Ben Wasserman: I, for the most part, was always just sort of like your standard-issue goofy weirdo guy who would go up with some sort of high concept. I’ve got bits where I’m like a meditation coach and the whole joke is just that I’m an angry guy trying to make people meditate. Or I would be Britain’s number one insult comedy duo, and then it would only be me, and I’d get an audience member to help me insult the rest of the crowd in a British accent. Really untethered, goofy, stupid stuff. And then I started losing people, and I could not help but talk about it. And I happened to be on stage, and so it sort of just bled into my comedy.

How much of your previous performing persona is still present in Live After Death?

Oh, it’s all there. This sounds gross to say out loud. But I would say I’m firing on all cylinders in terms of who I am, my comedic voice. And I’m also meeting people with material that’s a little bit more approachable, maybe. The whole goofy sensibility and fun persona kind of thing is still thoroughly there. It’s just now mitigated by, you know, more somber topics. 

Live After DeathTue 12/13 8:30 PM, Lincoln Lodge, 2040 N. Milwaukee, 773-251-1539, thelincolnlodge.com, $15

Your mom was at one of the shows I saw on a clip you sent. How has she reacted to your doing this personal material in front of audiences?

She’s been wholly supportive. There’s never been a moment where I was thinking, “I should probably run this by her or something,” only because ultimately this is my truth. So she has no say, but there were a couple things within the show that at first I was a bit hesitant about her seeing. Just in terms of, “Is this gonna trigger her?” I was worried that there’s one moment in the show that’s pretty vulnerable in exposing our shared loss and our experience with it. [The grandfather and uncle that Wasserman lost were his mother’s father and brother.] I was worried that she would break down crying in the middle of the show, but then she was just cracking up the whole time. That was nice.

Was developing it at a funeral home a deliberate choice? Did you just call up the funeral home director and say, “Hey, I’m a comedian, and I’m doing a show about death?”

I’ve done it in a funeral home. I have it lined up next year for a couple more funeral homes and cemeteries and a casket factory. It’s very purposeful. My friend is a funeral director and was, at the time, the funeral director of Sparrow Funeral Home [in Brooklyn]. We were at a party, and I was telling her that I had this new show that I’m gonna start workshopping, and she was like, “Oh, you should do it at the funeral home.” Then a few months later, I did the first one at the funeral home and it sold out. Then we were like, “Hey, let’s do this every month.” 

Were people more accepting of the premise since it was outside the realm of a usual comedy venue?

I’ve done the show in regular comedy venues, bars, jazz clubs, record stores, and funeral homes. And I would say that people come to the show at the funeral home with a bit more—it’s hard to say if it’s more openness, but definitely there is, like, an extra something in the air. The funeral home shows were always really special. The vibe in the room was one of, “Oh, we’ve all lost people, we’re all in community together based on that.” And now we’re sharing in this wacky, chaotic show experience kind of thing. I don’t love thinking of comedy as an art, but I would say that this show in the funeral home or in a cemetery or something like that does do something along the lines of creating a more special environment for people to approach the material and to open up. Because a lot of the show is interactive, I think it engenders a little bit of vulnerability and openness and just sort of, like, gets death on the mind in a way that a regular comedy venue might not necessarily.

It feels cliche to say “COVID changed everything,” but what’s it like doing this show in light of the pandemic?

Before all the shutdowns in 2020, I had finally decided, “OK, here’s a full-length solo show I can do about grief and loss, and I’m gonna hit the road.” The tour was slated for the last week of March 2020. Obviously that wound up being canceled. And then I spent the next almost two years just watching everyone deal with loss. And it sort of shifted my perspective on what this show could be or should be. Before COVID hit, the show was very much about my loss and my experience with grief and super autobiographical and yada yada yada. And then once it was, like, obvious that everyone was in some way grieving, and quite robustly, I was like, “It would be more interesting to kind of engage with others about their loss.”

I had an extra two years to kind of—not get over it, but get more accustomed to my grief, and know that life continues. The initial emotional balance of the material wasn’t hitting as much for me personally anymore. And so I thought it would be more interesting and probably more conducive to the vibe of the show if I shifted from it being exclusively about my losses and more kind of just creating a conversation about everyone in the room’s experience with loss and grief and deaths and mortality.

Read More

On Inauguration Day 2017, New York-based comedian Ben Wassermanʼs father died—the first in what would turn out to be a series of deaths in his life over the next three years, including his grandfather, his uncle, and four friends. Wasserman, whose past comedic work included a segment for MTV where he painted with his butt, takes a deep dive into grief in Live After Death, an interactive comedic solo show he developed in part through performances in an actual funeral home. (At one point, Wasserman juggles balls representing the people he’s lost while an audience member reads prompts about other things going on in his life, including his grandmother’s dementia and his battle with kidney stones.) He’s now touring the show and will be performing December 13 at Lincoln Lodge. Maggie Winters, a Reader Best of Chicago 2021 winner for “best comedian (non stand-up)” opens.

I talked to Wasserman about what it’s been like for him to perform what he called “the last show I’d ever wanna have to do.” 

Kerry Reid: You hadn’t really leaned into autobiographical material prior to doing this show, correct?

Ben Wasserman: I, for the most part, was always just sort of like your standard-issue goofy weirdo guy who would go up with some sort of high concept. I’ve got bits where I’m like a meditation coach and the whole joke is just that I’m an angry guy trying to make people meditate. Or I would be Britain’s number one insult comedy duo, and then it would only be me, and I’d get an audience member to help me insult the rest of the crowd in a British accent. Really untethered, goofy, stupid stuff. And then I started losing people, and I could not help but talk about it. And I happened to be on stage, and so it sort of just bled into my comedy.

How much of your previous performing persona is still present in Live After Death?

Oh, it’s all there. This sounds gross to say out loud. But I would say I’m firing on all cylinders in terms of who I am, my comedic voice. And I’m also meeting people with material that’s a little bit more approachable, maybe. The whole goofy sensibility and fun persona kind of thing is still thoroughly there. It’s just now mitigated by, you know, more somber topics. 

Live After DeathTue 12/13 8:30 PM, Lincoln Lodge, 2040 N. Milwaukee, 773-251-1539, thelincolnlodge.com, $15

Your mom was at one of the shows I saw on a clip you sent. How has she reacted to your doing this personal material in front of audiences?

She’s been wholly supportive. There’s never been a moment where I was thinking, “I should probably run this by her or something,” only because ultimately this is my truth. So she has no say, but there were a couple things within the show that at first I was a bit hesitant about her seeing. Just in terms of, “Is this gonna trigger her?” I was worried that there’s one moment in the show that’s pretty vulnerable in exposing our shared loss and our experience with it. [The grandfather and uncle that Wasserman lost were his mother’s father and brother.] I was worried that she would break down crying in the middle of the show, but then she was just cracking up the whole time. That was nice.

Was developing it at a funeral home a deliberate choice? Did you just call up the funeral home director and say, “Hey, I’m a comedian, and I’m doing a show about death?”

I’ve done it in a funeral home. I have it lined up next year for a couple more funeral homes and cemeteries and a casket factory. It’s very purposeful. My friend is a funeral director and was, at the time, the funeral director of Sparrow Funeral Home [in Brooklyn]. We were at a party, and I was telling her that I had this new show that I’m gonna start workshopping, and she was like, “Oh, you should do it at the funeral home.” Then a few months later, I did the first one at the funeral home and it sold out. Then we were like, “Hey, let’s do this every month.” 

Were people more accepting of the premise since it was outside the realm of a usual comedy venue?

I’ve done the show in regular comedy venues, bars, jazz clubs, record stores, and funeral homes. And I would say that people come to the show at the funeral home with a bit more—it’s hard to say if it’s more openness, but definitely there is, like, an extra something in the air. The funeral home shows were always really special. The vibe in the room was one of, “Oh, we’ve all lost people, we’re all in community together based on that.” And now we’re sharing in this wacky, chaotic show experience kind of thing. I don’t love thinking of comedy as an art, but I would say that this show in the funeral home or in a cemetery or something like that does do something along the lines of creating a more special environment for people to approach the material and to open up. Because a lot of the show is interactive, I think it engenders a little bit of vulnerability and openness and just sort of, like, gets death on the mind in a way that a regular comedy venue might not necessarily.

It feels cliche to say “COVID changed everything,” but what’s it like doing this show in light of the pandemic?

Before all the shutdowns in 2020, I had finally decided, “OK, here’s a full-length solo show I can do about grief and loss, and I’m gonna hit the road.” The tour was slated for the last week of March 2020. Obviously that wound up being canceled. And then I spent the next almost two years just watching everyone deal with loss. And it sort of shifted my perspective on what this show could be or should be. Before COVID hit, the show was very much about my loss and my experience with grief and super autobiographical and yada yada yada. And then once it was, like, obvious that everyone was in some way grieving, and quite robustly, I was like, “It would be more interesting to kind of engage with others about their loss.”

I had an extra two years to kind of—not get over it, but get more accustomed to my grief, and know that life continues. The initial emotional balance of the material wasn’t hitting as much for me personally anymore. And so I thought it would be more interesting and probably more conducive to the vibe of the show if I shifted from it being exclusively about my losses and more kind of just creating a conversation about everyone in the room’s experience with loss and grief and deaths and mortality.

Read More

Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

Read More

South-side native and Chicago soul artist Manasseh has all the skills to become a superstar. His sumptuous voice and incisive lyrics, as well as his stellar craftsmanship as a vocal and instrumental arranger, have made all his recordings knockouts. His most recent release is the March 2022 full-length Monochromatic Dream, whose delicious earworms of psychedelic soul traverse a glorious kaleidoscope of tones and moods. Needless to say, this wolf is breathless with anticipation for his forthcoming EP Variations V1: I’ll Be, set to drop early in 2023. Manassseh will likely give you some idea what to expect and when during his Museum of Contemporary Art concert at 6 PM on Tuesday, December 13. It’s part of the museum’s Soundtrack series, which invites local musicians to respond to the themes of a current exhibit—in this case, the multimedia piece She Mad Season One by Los Angeles artist Martine Syms. Manasseh will be joined by his stellar backing band, the Fam: drummer Brandon Cameron, bassist Lamonté Norwood, keyboardist Remon Sanders, and vocalists Blake Davis and Lisha Denise.

Manasseh’s most recent album, the March 2022 release Monochromatic Dream

On Thursday, December 8, local hip-hop blog FromChicagoToTheWorld and podcast Real Ones host a showcase at Cole’s Bar called the Igloo. The concert features four emerging vocalists who bring an R&B sensibility to hip-hop and pop: S-O-S, Sherren Olivia, Sydny August, and Ine’a J. Tickets are $20 ($15 in advance), and doors open at 9 PM.