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Addiction, eye color, boob shape, serotonin deficits: we’re all encumbered by our genetic hand-me-downs. Sometimes, all they require is therapy and/or time to sort out. Sometimes, like for Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) in Bones and All, it’s a bit more complicated. Or as Maren’s pedo-vibey, would-be mentor Sully (Mark Rylance) puts it: “I ate my own granddad while we were waiting on the undertaker.” For cannibals, it’s a lot more complicated. 

Despite its preponderance of blood and guts and sinew-slathering, bone-smacking gore, Bones and All isn’t exactly a movie about cannibalism. Based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis and directed by Luca Guadagnino (screenplay by David Kajganich), it’s more about trying to survive when your damage has no cure and is embedded in your very DNA. And, in the case of Maren and Lee, when your non-cannibal parent leaves you to figure it out on your lonesome because they can no longer deal with you snacking on the neighbors. 

Maren’s father (André Holland) leaves Maren on her own following a sleepover gone very wrong. He leaves behind a cassette and a birth certificate. These are clues that set Maren on a picaresque adventure across the country in search of the mother she’s never known but who shared her dietary proclivities. Along the way, she learns to smell out other “eaters,” Rylance’s grotesquely paternal Sully and Chalamet’s fiercely protective Lee predominant among them. 

Chalamet and Russell deftly navigate this over-the-top horror, buddy comedy, coming-of-age drama, and sweet romance. As for Rylance, he is an International Treasure for his ability to sell the relatability of anyone, even a gross old man in tighty-whities up to his chin in the innards of somebody’s dead grandma. R, 130 min.

Wide release in theaters

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In Her Hands starts 19 months before the fall of Kabul in 2021, when the Taliban—whose territory surrounded the capital of Afghanistan—captured the city where 4.6 million people live. 

Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s film centers on Zarifa Ghafari, the female mayor of Maidan Shahr, and her efforts to bring light to women’s rights and keep girls in school. The documentary, produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, is a bold portrait of the youngest mayor in Afghanistan. We see her cry in front of citizens, helpless and frustrated, and we watch her mourn her father’s death, as he was shot in front of his house by the Taliban.

It isn’t a conventional biography by any means. We don’t know a lot about Ghafari’s childhood, background, or personal life. We are introduced to her bodyguard, Massoum, who believes in the future Ghafari can offer, and we also see locals who believe in the country’s conservatism. 

Various scenes in the documentary are tense—Massoum driving with a gun on his lap, Ghafari’s scorched hands reading a death threat, her and her mother holding on to one another on a boat—but we don’t see much of what Ghafari actually does. We see her talking to a sea of men in rooms or on the street, but we hardly get more than her impassioned speech. Scenes are short and abrupt; they move from one motion to the next. We are given a baseline understanding of Afghanistan’s struggles, but the viewer is often left with more questions than answers. The film is an introduction to Ghafari’s activism and career, but it shouldn’t be the end of it. 

Once the Taliban take over the city and Kabul falls, the viewer is thrown into the midst of the conflict and expected to hang on. PG-13, 92 min.

Netflix, limited release in theaters

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The Chicago Cubs are one of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball. They are also a team that plays in one of the oldest ballparks in league history. Wrigley Field is iconic and known worldwide by baseball fans all over the planet.

Some news came out on Thursday in regard to the MLB All-Star Game and the future locations of the mid-summer classic.

The 2023 version is going to take place at T-Mobile Park which is the home of the Seattle Mariners. That should be very fun as the Mariners are now one of the most exciting fun teams in the league.

The 2024 All-Star Game is going to take place at Globe Life Field which is a brand-new stadium and the home of the Texas Rangers. It should be really fun to see the big game (and Home Run Derby) played at a state-of-the-art stadium like that.

The 2026 All-Star Game is going to be at Citizens Bank Park which is home to the defending National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies. Any time that city is involved in something big sports-wise, it is must-see TV.

The Chicago Cubs could be getting the All-Star Game in the near future.

For some reason, however, the 2025 All-Star Game still remains a history. Bob Nightengale of USA Today named the Chicago Cubs as one of the leading candidates to land that event along with the Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles, and Atlanta Braves.

The fact that they are being considered for this one makes you think that even if they don’t get it, they are in line to have one soon. The next available year is 2027. That would certainly be an amazing event for the city of Chicago.

Both sides of town would be able to see their favorite players play in the big All-Star game if one of the two stadiums hosted the event which would be so fun. The last time that the All-Star Game was in Chicago was when the Chicago White Sox hosted it in 2003.

The last time that it was at Wrigley Field was in 1990. This would only be the 4th time in 100-plus years that they hosted it which is kind of crazy to think about. If something like this were to happen, everyone should be very excited. We can only hope that our teams are good by then.

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Sir Theodore Beartholomew (aka Sir the Cat) tries to make sense of the Chicago City Wire Credit: Vivian Gonzalez

Poor Darren Bailey.

The Chicago City Wire, the so-called newspaper intended to scare people like me into voting for him, arrived on Election Day, a week after I’d already voted early for someone else.

Blame it on the U.S. Postal Service, Senator Bailey.

In fact, I was paging through the City Wire while the results came in, showing Governor Pritzker was mopping the floor with Bailey, winning reelection with 54 percent of the vote, roughly the same amount he got against Bruce Rauner in 2018.

Apparently, all that toxicity and hate in the City Wire and in the pro-Bailey commercials (all those dire stories about crime running wild in Chicago) didn’t really bring out the Republican vote.

In fact, it was just the opposite: a blue wave for Illinois’s Democrats. They won everything on the ballot from governor to attorney general to comptroller to treasurer to secretary of state to two all-important seats on the state supreme court.

Those judicial wins make it a five to two Democratic margin on the top bench, which will keep MAGA from undoing whatever legislation, most notably abortion rights, Pritzker and the Dems have passed or will pass for years to come.

In the aftermath, there are several takeaways. One is that the southern strategy is not as effective as it once was. It’s at least not as pivotal as concerns about abortion rights. I’ll get to that.

The other is that gerrymandering works. So three cheers to Speaker Chris Welch and his Democratic mapmakers for sticking it to Republicans the way Republicans generally stick it to Dems.

Yes, yes, I know … In a perfect world, there would be no partisan mapmaking. No, in a perfect world, legislative boundaries would be drawn by computers without regard for partisan advantage.

But the world’s far from perfect, my friends, as you have undoubtedly realized by now. So, please, Democratic voters (especially you squishy liberal types), do not fall prey to the pleas of “reformers” who want to go to independent mapmaking. Not until Republicans do the same in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Texas, and so forth. Which will be never.

The point of gerrymandering is to use decennial census redistricting as an excuse to minimize your opponents’ power by packing the opposition into a handful of districts. Which is what Speaker Welch and his mapmakers so effectively did.

As evidence, allow me to offer the results from the recent congressional elections.

The state’s three Republican congresspeople coasted to reelection. Mike Bost, Mary Miller (of “Hitler was right” infamy), and Darin LaHood won with over or close to 70 percent of the vote.

In contrast, the Democratic congresspeople outside of Chicago—Nikki Budzinski, Sean Casten, Bill Foster, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Brad Schneider, Eric Sorensen, and Lauren Underwood—faced tense campaigns and won with narrower margins.

The key being . . . they won. The margin doesn’t really matter, as a miss is as good as a mile in a congressional race. That is, Casten doesn’t get less of a vote in Congress than Miller just because her margin of victory was greater.

As a result of Welch’s mapmaking, Illinois has one more Democrat in Congress than it had before the election, even though the state lost one overall legislative seat because of its declining population.

If by chance the Dems hold on to Congress—and they’re still counting votes in the western states—Speaker Pelosi should send Speaker Welch a bouquet of roses. Too bad New York’s Dems are too freaking clueless when it comes to mapmaking—another story for another time.

While we’re at it, Welch’s mapmakers did the same thing with the state supreme court map.  Drew it just right to maximize Democratic votes and keep MAGA from winning the judicial seats they needed to turn Illinois into a northern version of Texas on labor, abortion, environmental regulations, and other matters.

Now onto the Southern strategy . . .

It was devised in the 60s by President Nixon to take advantage of white grievances over civil rights laws which had angered southern, white Democrats into turning Republican, almost overnight. And the party of Lincoln became the party of Jim Crow.

Nixon figured out that if you scare working-class and middle-class white people with their worst fears of Black people, you can get them to vote for Republicans, even if it’s not in their best interests. And the Republicans will be free to pass tax breaks for the rich.

Bailey ran hard on his own version of the Southern strategy, calling Chicago a “hellhole” and predicting the state would be awash with crime if he didn’t save us from Pritzker before it’s too late.

Actually, that tagline came from the Chicago mayoral campaign of a Republican named Bernie Epton, who ran his own version of the Southern strategy against Harold Washington in 1983. But you get the point.

As far as I can tell, the brain behind Bailey’s strategy was Dan Proft, a hardball campaign tactician. Proft’s PAC was backed with millions of dollars in contributions from Richard Uihlein, an arch-conservative billionaire, to run commercials and distribute “newspapers” that favored Bailey.

Proft lives in Florida. So I guess we should call it the Florida strategy.

I remember interviewing Proft in 2006 when he was running Tony Peraica’s unsuccessful campaign against Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

In those days, Proft was a principal with Urquhart Media, a consulting firm named for Francis Urquhart, the Conservative member of Parliament in the BBC version of House of Cards. 

Urquhart is so diabolically evil, he murders two of his rivals to get to the top. I urge Democrats to watch that show so they have no illusions about what they’re up against with Proft.

I can’t say for certain that the Southern strategy is dead. As long as there’s MAGA—and, don’t kid yourself, MAGA still exists—it will be employed.

Oh, brother, here I go, getting pessimistic. As Democrats tend to do. So let’s end the way we began, on a positive note . . . 

Against all odds, the red wave turned into a blue one. Well done, Illinois voters, well done!

The Latest from the Ben Joravsky Show

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Sir Theodore Beartholomew (aka Sir the Cat) tries to make sense of the Chicago City Wire Credit: Vivian Gonzalez

Poor Darren Bailey.

The Chicago City Wire, the so-called newspaper intended to scare people like me into voting for him, arrived on Election Day, a week after I’d already voted early for someone else.

Blame it on the U.S. Postal Service, Senator Bailey.

In fact, I was paging through the City Wire while the results came in, showing Governor Pritzker was mopping the floor with Bailey, winning reelection with 54 percent of the vote, roughly the same amount he got against Bruce Rauner in 2018.

Apparently, all that toxicity and hate in the City Wire and in the pro-Bailey commercials (all those dire stories about crime running wild in Chicago) didn’t really bring out the Republican vote.

In fact, it was just the opposite: a blue wave for Illinois’s Democrats. They won everything on the ballot from governor to attorney general to comptroller to treasurer to secretary of state to two all-important seats on the state supreme court.

Those judicial wins make it a five to two Democratic margin on the top bench, which will keep MAGA from undoing whatever legislation, most notably abortion rights, Pritzker and the Dems have passed or will pass for years to come.

In the aftermath, there are several takeaways. One is that the southern strategy is not as effective as it once was. It’s at least not as pivotal as concerns about abortion rights. I’ll get to that.

The other is that gerrymandering works. So three cheers to Speaker Chris Welch and his Democratic mapmakers for sticking it to Republicans the way Republicans generally stick it to Dems.

Yes, yes, I know … In a perfect world, there would be no partisan mapmaking. No, in a perfect world, legislative boundaries would be drawn by computers without regard for partisan advantage.

But the world’s far from perfect, my friends, as you have undoubtedly realized by now. So, please, Democratic voters (especially you squishy liberal types), do not fall prey to the pleas of “reformers” who want to go to independent mapmaking. Not until Republicans do the same in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Texas, and so forth. Which will be never.

The point of gerrymandering is to use decennial census redistricting as an excuse to minimize your opponents’ power by packing the opposition into a handful of districts. Which is what Speaker Welch and his mapmakers so effectively did.

As evidence, allow me to offer the results from the recent congressional elections.

The state’s three Republican congresspeople coasted to reelection. Mike Bost, Mary Miller (of “Hitler was right” infamy), and Darin LaHood won with over or close to 70 percent of the vote.

In contrast, the Democratic congresspeople outside of Chicago—Nikki Budzinski, Sean Casten, Bill Foster, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Brad Schneider, Eric Sorensen, and Lauren Underwood—faced tense campaigns and won with narrower margins.

The key being . . . they won. The margin doesn’t really matter, as a miss is as good as a mile in a congressional race. That is, Casten doesn’t get less of a vote in Congress than Miller just because her margin of victory was greater.

As a result of Welch’s mapmaking, Illinois has one more Democrat in Congress than it had before the election, even though the state lost one overall legislative seat because of its declining population.

If by chance the Dems hold on to Congress—and they’re still counting votes in the western states—Speaker Pelosi should send Speaker Welch a bouquet of roses. Too bad New York’s Dems are too freaking clueless when it comes to mapmaking—another story for another time.

While we’re at it, Welch’s mapmakers did the same thing with the state supreme court map.  Drew it just right to maximize Democratic votes and keep MAGA from winning the judicial seats they needed to turn Illinois into a northern version of Texas on labor, abortion, environmental regulations, and other matters.

Now onto the Southern strategy . . .

It was devised in the 60s by President Nixon to take advantage of white grievances over civil rights laws which had angered southern, white Democrats into turning Republican, almost overnight. And the party of Lincoln became the party of Jim Crow.

Nixon figured out that if you scare working-class and middle-class white people with their worst fears of Black people, you can get them to vote for Republicans, even if it’s not in their best interests. And the Republicans will be free to pass tax breaks for the rich.

Bailey ran hard on his own version of the Southern strategy, calling Chicago a “hellhole” and predicting the state would be awash with crime if he didn’t save us from Pritzker before it’s too late.

Actually, that tagline came from the Chicago mayoral campaign of a Republican named Bernie Epton, who ran his own version of the Southern strategy against Harold Washington in 1983. But you get the point.

As far as I can tell, the brain behind Bailey’s strategy was Dan Proft, a hardball campaign tactician. Proft’s PAC was backed with millions of dollars in contributions from Richard Uihlein, an arch-conservative billionaire, to run commercials and distribute “newspapers” that favored Bailey.

Proft lives in Florida. So I guess we should call it the Florida strategy.

I remember interviewing Proft in 2006 when he was running Tony Peraica’s unsuccessful campaign against Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

In those days, Proft was a principal with Urquhart Media, a consulting firm named for Francis Urquhart, the Conservative member of Parliament in the BBC version of House of Cards. 

Urquhart is so diabolically evil, he murders two of his rivals to get to the top. I urge Democrats to watch that show so they have no illusions about what they’re up against with Proft.

I can’t say for certain that the Southern strategy is dead. As long as there’s MAGA—and, don’t kid yourself, MAGA still exists—it will be employed.

Oh, brother, here I go, getting pessimistic. As Democrats tend to do. So let’s end the way we began, on a positive note . . . 

Against all odds, the red wave turned into a blue one. Well done, Illinois voters, well done!

The Latest from the Ben Joravsky Show

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The Chicago Blackhawks are in a bit of a slump. After a hot start, they are starting to look like the team that we thought they were going to be at the beginning of the year. They have one of the league’s worst rosters, and it is starting to show on the ice.

In an effort to continue growing some of their young players, they made an exciting transaction on Friday morning. Ian Mitchell is being recalled and will make his season debut with the Blackhawks on Saturday night against the Boston Bruins.

Mitchell has made his NHL debut in the past and has played in 47 career games. In those 47 career games, he has scored three goals and has five assists for eight points as a defenseman. At 23 years old, the former second-round pick is looking like he is about to take that next step.

He has earned this call as he has been off to a great start for the Rockford Ice Hogs of the AHL this season. He didn’t play in training camp or the first month of the AHL season for Rockford as he dealt with an injury.

Ian Mitchell has earned this call-up with the Chicago Blackhawks right now.

Since coming back from the injury last week, he has two goals and three assists for five points in three games. All of his points came in the last two Rockford contests as he was still getting his skating legs going in the first one back.

He can contribute a lot to this Blackhawks team. We are waiting for him to break out in the NHL and there are a few signs that suggest that he will soon. It took him a little while but sometimes that happens with high ceiling/low-floor defensemen.

His first NHL game of the season is certainly not going to be an easy one. The Boston Bruins are the top team in the NHL right now in terms of the standings. They are likely just the best team in the league because of how they win.

Mitchell might be sheltered from guys like Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand, and Taylor Hall as much as he can be but it might be difficult on the road.

This is going to be a great chance for him to show his stuff. He is one of the bright young players that this team would love to see take a big step this year. He has a chance here in the coming months to solidify himself as a part of the future.

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The death of Myrna Salazar, cofounder and executive director of the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), in August, a month before the fifth annual Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival kicked off, was a huge blow to the performing arts community, including Jorge Valdivia, who worked closely with Salazar and CLATA in his role as director of performing arts for the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA). Now Valdivia can both honor Salazar’s vision and bring his own ideas to the table: last week, CLATA announced that he was taking over as executive director.

The museum was one of the founding partners for CLATA, so in a sense, it’s a sort of homecoming for Valdivia, who also curated the annual Sor Juana Festival at NMMA (named in honor of the 17th-century Mexican nun, poet, playwright, and mathematician). He notes, “Both the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance have always worked in close proximity to one another. And we’ve always felt it’s like family, like they were our cousins.” He adds, “Myrna was a legend and I had such high respect for her—for her professionalism, and for her ambition, and for her being a woman, and sometimes being the only woman at the table and demanding the respect that she deserved.”

According to CLATA’s director of communications Sara Carranza, this year’s Destinos “outpaced last year’s attendance.” (Two shows from the festival, Ricardo Gamboa’s Wizardsand Nancy García Loza’s Bull, finish their runs this weekend.) So that’s a good place to be as Valdivia prepares to take over. He officially assumes the role in January, but says, “There’s so much that needs to be addressed now,” including preliminary planning for next year’s Destinos. I mention that Marty Castro, CLATA’s board president, told me in August that one of the last conversations he had with Salazar was on the subject of acquiring an arts center.

Valdivia says, “When they asked me to take on this role, one of the things that came up in the conversation was—and this is something that I’ve always understood—I’ve always known that the goal was to have a space in downtown Chicago. It was really important in terms of visibility. I fully understood that.” 

That goal is still on the table for discussion, but Valdivia also highlights the importance of building better networks year-round for supporting Chicago Latinx companies that are working in communities throughout the city, like Teatro Tariakuri in Marquette Park, UrbanTheater Company in Humboldt Park (which is about to embark on a capital campaign for its move to a new 99-seat venue in the Nancy Y. Franco Maldonado Paseo Boricua Arts Building), and Aguijón Theater (the oldest Latinx company in the city) in Belmont Cragin.

“I think we can do both. The fact that [a new CLATA center] would be centrally located doesn’t mean that we have to stop investing in or supporting the theater that is happening in different communities throughout Chicago. Because without theater there, there is no theater downtown,” says Valdivia. “It’s how CLATA started and it is also such a core part of its mission. It is not just about bringing theater to downtown. And it’s not just about elevating the presence of Latino theater, but it’s also about making sure that theater is accessible to our communities for people that look like us.”

One of the other areas that Valdivia is interested in exploring with CLATA is the possibility of creating or fostering more work that can tour outside of Chicago, in addition to bringing in shows from outside the U.S., as Destinos routinely does. 

“I’m putting on my hat as someone who’s worked in the museum field for quite some time, where I’m sitting on committees where we have these conversations around programming that complements and travels with an exhibition. Is there a possibility where CLATA members can develop or adapt work so it can travel more easily?”

Valdivia continues,”I don’t like the term master class, I really hate it, but maybe we can offer workshops that help professionals, whether they be playwrights or directors, to sort of gain a different perspective and help them further develop their skill sets. It’s not to say that they’re not already doing that on their own because they are. Honestly, I have seen a fire in every single, [CLATA] group here in Chicago this year. And it’s been amazing. I think we can give them an opportunity to sort of sit down with someone who’s put a play together from beginning to end and have them learn early on how to make a play adaptable to travel.

“We just want them to continue focusing on the work that they’re producing and the different playwrights that they’re working so hard to bring to the stages. And if we can work out ways to help support them around all that and help elevate that work, that’s how we’re able to complement one another.”

3Arts Awards 

3Arts, the nonprofit that makes annual awards recognizing “Chicago’s women artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists who work in the performing, teaching, and visual arts,” presented this year’s awards in a ceremony on November 7. The honorees included dance artists Winifred Haun and Sarita Smith Childs, UrbanTheater Company artistic director Miranda González, and playwright Omar Abbas Salem (whose comedy Mosque4Mosque opens this weekend with About Face Theatre). Each received $30,000.

There were also theater and dance artists represented in the 3Arts Make a Wave program, an artist-to-artist grant in which a previous recipient of the 3Arts Award selects someone to receive $4,000 in support of their work. This year’s Make a Wave recipients included playwright, actor, and director Terry Guest (The Magnolia Ballet, Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes); singer, songwriter, director, and educator Maggie Brown; storyteller, singer, and multidisciplinary teaching artist Zahra Glenda Baker; dancer and educator Elisabeth YJ Seonwoo aka Kerberus; and actor, director, choreographer, and playwright Wai Yim (a cofounder of Token Theatre, which is presenting When the Sun Melts Away this weekend at the Greenhouse Theater Center).

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The death of Myrna Salazar, cofounder and executive director of the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), in August, a month before the fifth annual Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival kicked off, was a huge blow to the performing arts community, including Jorge Valdivia, who worked closely with Salazar and CLATA in his role as director of performing arts for the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA). Now Valdivia can both honor Salazar’s vision and bring his own ideas to the table: last week, CLATA announced that he was taking over as executive director.

The museum was one of the founding partners for CLATA, so in a sense, it’s a sort of homecoming for Valdivia, who also curated the annual Sor Juana Festival at NMMA (named in honor of the 17th-century Mexican nun, poet, playwright, and mathematician). He notes, “Both the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance have always worked in close proximity to one another. And we’ve always felt it’s like family, like they were our cousins.” He adds, “Myrna was a legend and I had such high respect for her—for her professionalism, and for her ambition, and for her being a woman, and sometimes being the only woman at the table and demanding the respect that she deserved.”

According to CLATA’s director of communications Sara Carranza, this year’s Destinos “outpaced last year’s attendance.” (Two shows from the festival, Ricardo Gamboa’s Wizardsand Nancy García Loza’s Bull, finish their runs this weekend.) So that’s a good place to be as Valdivia prepares to take over. He officially assumes the role in January, but says, “There’s so much that needs to be addressed now,” including preliminary planning for next year’s Destinos. I mention that Marty Castro, CLATA’s board president, told me in August that one of the last conversations he had with Salazar was on the subject of acquiring an arts center.

Valdivia says, “When they asked me to take on this role, one of the things that came up in the conversation was—and this is something that I’ve always understood—I’ve always known that the goal was to have a space in downtown Chicago. It was really important in terms of visibility. I fully understood that.” 

That goal is still on the table for discussion, but Valdivia also highlights the importance of building better networks year-round for supporting Chicago Latinx companies that are working in communities throughout the city, like Teatro Tariakuri in Marquette Park, UrbanTheater Company in Humboldt Park (which is about to embark on a capital campaign for its move to a new 99-seat venue in the Nancy Y. Franco Maldonado Paseo Boricua Arts Building), and Aguijón Theater (the oldest Latinx company in the city) in Belmont Cragin.

“I think we can do both. The fact that [a new CLATA center] would be centrally located doesn’t mean that we have to stop investing in or supporting the theater that is happening in different communities throughout Chicago. Because without theater there, there is no theater downtown,” says Valdivia. “It’s how CLATA started and it is also such a core part of its mission. It is not just about bringing theater to downtown. And it’s not just about elevating the presence of Latino theater, but it’s also about making sure that theater is accessible to our communities for people that look like us.”

One of the other areas that Valdivia is interested in exploring with CLATA is the possibility of creating or fostering more work that can tour outside of Chicago, in addition to bringing in shows from outside the U.S., as Destinos routinely does. 

“I’m putting on my hat as someone who’s worked in the museum field for quite some time, where I’m sitting on committees where we have these conversations around programming that complements and travels with an exhibition. Is there a possibility where CLATA members can develop or adapt work so it can travel more easily?”

Valdivia continues,”I don’t like the term master class, I really hate it, but maybe we can offer workshops that help professionals, whether they be playwrights or directors, to sort of gain a different perspective and help them further develop their skill sets. It’s not to say that they’re not already doing that on their own because they are. Honestly, I have seen a fire in every single, [CLATA] group here in Chicago this year. And it’s been amazing. I think we can give them an opportunity to sort of sit down with someone who’s put a play together from beginning to end and have them learn early on how to make a play adaptable to travel.

“We just want them to continue focusing on the work that they’re producing and the different playwrights that they’re working so hard to bring to the stages. And if we can work out ways to help support them around all that and help elevate that work, that’s how we’re able to complement one another.”

3Arts Awards 

3Arts, the nonprofit that makes annual awards recognizing “Chicago’s women artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists who work in the performing, teaching, and visual arts,” presented this year’s awards in a ceremony on November 7. The honorees included dance artists Winifred Haun and Sarita Smith Childs, UrbanTheater Company artistic director Miranda González, and playwright Omar Abbas Salem (whose comedy Mosque4Mosque opens this weekend with About Face Theatre). Each received $30,000.

There were also theater and dance artists represented in the 3Arts Make a Wave program, an artist-to-artist grant in which a previous recipient of the 3Arts Award selects someone to receive $4,000 in support of their work. This year’s Make a Wave recipients included playwright, actor, and director Terry Guest (The Magnolia Ballet, Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes); singer, songwriter, director, and educator Maggie Brown; storyteller, singer, and multidisciplinary teaching artist Zahra Glenda Baker; dancer and educator Elisabeth YJ Seonwoo aka Kerberus; and actor, director, choreographer, and playwright Wai Yim (a cofounder of Token Theatre, which is presenting When the Sun Melts Away this weekend at the Greenhouse Theater Center).

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Death is an often unwelcome teacher. It descends into our lives suddenly, without warning, or takes its sweet time. No matter when it finds us, Grief is right behind Death, bringing myriad reactions that we do not always see coming. Such is life for Jess in Emily Schwend’s A Mile in the Dark, when Jess and her father Roger must deal with the sudden death of Carol, Jess’s beloved stepmother. 

A Mile in the DarkThrough 12/11: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 11/28 8 PM and Wed 12/7 8 PM, no performances Sat 11/19 and Thu 11/24; Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge, 773-334-7728, interrobangtheatreproject.org or rivendelltheatre.org, $35 ($25 seniors; limited number of pay what you can tickets at each performance)

Schwend’s play, making its world premiere with Interrobang and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, is 90 minutes of sideways glances, awkward silences, and stumbling words. While that series of events can be the harbinger of death for most live theater, those moments of discomfort are Schwend’s bread and butter as a storyteller. Death is messy, so it is fitting that the fallout is just as uncomfortable. This keen playwright has a tight grip on naturalism that few dare to approach. 

Director Georgette Verdin’s ensemble cast meticulously assembles this slice-of-life drama into moments so many would wish away. Liz Sharpe as distanced childhood friend Kayla rounds out the bristling moments between Roger (a varied Keith Kupferer) and perfectly pensive Laura Berner Taylor as Jess. As Jess tries to piece together the final moments of her stepmother’s life, we observe with bated breath the most uncomfortable realization: that we never really know someone. 

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Death is an often unwelcome teacher. It descends into our lives suddenly, without warning, or takes its sweet time. No matter when it finds us, Grief is right behind Death, bringing myriad reactions that we do not always see coming. Such is life for Jess in Emily Schwend’s A Mile in the Dark, when Jess and her father Roger must deal with the sudden death of Carol, Jess’s beloved stepmother. 

A Mile in the DarkThrough 12/11: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 11/28 8 PM and Wed 12/7 8 PM, no performances Sat 11/19 and Thu 11/24; Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge, 773-334-7728, interrobangtheatreproject.org or rivendelltheatre.org, $35 ($25 seniors; limited number of pay what you can tickets at each performance)

Schwend’s play, making its world premiere with Interrobang and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, is 90 minutes of sideways glances, awkward silences, and stumbling words. While that series of events can be the harbinger of death for most live theater, those moments of discomfort are Schwend’s bread and butter as a storyteller. Death is messy, so it is fitting that the fallout is just as uncomfortable. This keen playwright has a tight grip on naturalism that few dare to approach. 

Director Georgette Verdin’s ensemble cast meticulously assembles this slice-of-life drama into moments so many would wish away. Liz Sharpe as distanced childhood friend Kayla rounds out the bristling moments between Roger (a varied Keith Kupferer) and perfectly pensive Laura Berner Taylor as Jess. As Jess tries to piece together the final moments of her stepmother’s life, we observe with bated breath the most uncomfortable realization: that we never really know someone. 

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