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Q: Straight guy here in a one-sided open relationship. My wife and I opened our relationship just for her and to females only, so she could explore her bisexual side. I’m super proud of her for coming out and wanted her to feel fulfilled. When we agreed to this, I was naive and figured anything she experienced would be purely sexual and nothing more. She recently caught feelings and now has a girlfriend. She stays at her girlfriend’s place one to two nights a week. I get jealous and sick to my stomach when she is over there. She has that “new relationship energy” going and talks about her girlfriend all the time. Aside from the jealousy, I feel like I am not a priority. I’m hoping my feelings get better with time. Besides this, our marriage is great. I love my wife very much and want to support her in this. Are one-sided open relationships something that can work? Are my feelings unjustified and what can I do to better deal with them? The logic used when we talked about a one-sided open relationship was that I can’t satisfy the female side she desires. But since I’m hetero, I don’t have an “unfulfilled” side. —Home Alone

A: Your wife isn’t the first person to come out as bisexual after making a monogamous commitment to an opposite-sex partner and then ask for permission to sleep with other people—without wanting to extend the same permission to their straight spouse. Since she’s bi and can’t get pussy at home, the reasoning goes, she should be allowed to get pussy elsewhere. Since you’re straight and can get pussy at home (when that pussy is at home), you’re not entitled to the same allowance. But as your wife is demonstrating, HA, it’s not just pussy she’s getting elsewhere. While she’s getting one very specific need met outside your relationship—admittedly a need you can’t meet—she’s getting a lot more than that. In addition to pussy, she’s getting variety, adventure, unique experiences, new relationship energy, and two overnights a week. Why shouldn’t you have some of that too? Not to even the score, but to feel like you’re an equal partner in this marriage and, as such, entitled to equal terms, equal treatment, and equal benefits.

And it doesn’t sound like you two were on the same page when it came to what opening your relationship entailed. You seem to have assumed—or figured—that your wife would be seeking sex elsewhere, sex and only sex, but your wife “caught feelings” and now she has a girlfriend. Agreeing to a one-sided open relationship is not the same thing as agreeing to one-sided polyamory. If you didn’t agree to that, HA, your wife had no right to expect that from you or impose that on you.

That said, one-sided open relationships can be great, HA, but they work best when the person who isn’t seeking sex outside the relationship either isn’t interested in having sex with other people or is turned on by the erotic power imbalance of being forbidden something their spouse is allowed—basically, this could work if you were a cuckold. Which you’re not.

Q: I’m a straight man who has been married to a wonderful woman for 35 years. I’m the only person she has ever been with. Over the years she has evolved into a wonderful giving partner open to things that turn me on. I take pride in being able to give her multiple orgasms although she only wants to do this about once per month. She has been happy to give me pleasure multiple times per month even, but she talks of it like it’s a chore (“wifely duties”) and is always asking me why I want it so much. I tell her it is more normal for men to want it more, and I wish she would want it more as well! I have used porn to get off since my teens. She accepts this because it means fewer chores for her, but she doesn’t like it. Recently I started using my phone to take videos of her performing oral on me as I enjoy watching this and it cuts down on the porn. She checked my phone and was upset at what she saw. I told her I was sorry, but she says I should’ve asked for permission. I told her I would have asked for permission, but I knew the answer would be no! She said of course it would be no and she called it sick and gross! I tried to explain again that it is quite normal behavior for most men to want to watch and it is for my eyes only! As I said, she has evolved, as early in the marriage she would have never done some of things she has learned to do while pleasuring me! Long story short, any words of advice on this sexy-for-me, not-so-much-for-her activity. —Sincerely Appreciate Your Advice, Sweet Savage

A: It’s not OK to take photos or videos of someone performing a sex act without their consent, SAYASS, even if that someone happens to be your wife. Even if that someone happens to have a lower libido than you do, even if that someone would rather you not look at porn, even if that someone enjoys most of the things you want them to do—not only isn’t it OK, SAYASS, it’s a crime. It’s not normal behavior, it’s asshole behavior—and, again, in most places it’s literally criminal behavior. So your wife has every right to be upset. You violated her and did so knowingly; you say you didn’t ask for permission to make those videos because you knew she would say no. Dude. If your wife had been writing me, SAYASS, I would advise her to get a lawyer and divorce you. 

Download the Savage Lovecast at savagelovecast.com.

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Credit: Coco Picard

In a new exhibition, longtime collaborators Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger created an immersive multimedia installation that explores intimacy, distance, and the fluctuations between. The above comic captures their reflections on making together and materials in play. Text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability.

Our collaboration developed organically. We were both ceramic students at Illinois State University but did not collaborate (or date) at the time. We worked cooperatively as many craftspeople do, sharing tasks like making clay and firing kilns. We are both from large families where cooperation is necessary. 

A few years later, we started living together and working on collaborative performance pieces. Those performances grew out of a shared interest in performance and each other. 

The silhouette is very present in “Loving Repeating.” The silhouette is made from tracing a shadow. A shadow is a reminder that a body is present and a silhouette is a reminder that a body is gone. What is missing causes loneliness. In “Loving Repeating,” there is a large painted mural of our silhouette repeated many times to form a pattern. That pattern is then pushed into a forced perspective, creating an illusion of the mural receding into space. Some may see a hint to the infinite in this receding in space. 

“Loving Repeating: New Work by Miller & Shellabarger”
Through 9/3: Mon-Thu 10 AM-7 PM, Fri 10 AM-4:30 PM, Sat 10 AM-4 PM, Sun 10 AM-1:30 PM, Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520, hydeparkart.org

The name of the exhibition comes from a Gertrude Stein novel, The Making of the Americans. She talks about history being made by the repetition of the everyday over generations and that is a type of infinity. She also suggests that love is tied to loving the way that another [person] is repeating. These ideas of togetherness and separation run throughout most of our collaborative efforts.

We’ve done two other similar shows like the one at the Hyde Park Art Center. The ashes of both are included in [“Loving Repeating”] in their pine box urns. Like those shows, all the work—excluding the murals—are made of paper and after the show ends will be burnt and placed in a pine box urn.

We talk about our collaborative work all the time and everywhere: at breakfast, on walks . . . We have art dates where we hash out details about this and that. We’ve been working collaboratively for almost 30 years, so it comes easily—but it really always has. We’ve also had very separate solo art practices since the very beginning.

Don’t force your collaboration. If you give your work time and attention it will grow.

Miller & Shellabarger’s artist page at Western Exhibitions
westernexhibitions.com

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Q: I’m a straight guy, married to a straight woman for 15 years. Several years back, I opened up to my wife about my fantasies of her sleeping with other men. I was nervous about bringing it up. Her views on sex had always been traditional, and she had always expressed a very strict idea of monogamy and commitment. So, I was extremely relieved when her reaction was intrigue rather than disgust. She was curious about it and wondered if I really wanted it to happen or if it was just something I wanted to keep in our rotation of dirty talk. Fast-forward to this week, and my wife tells me she is interested in exploring this. (Note to other guys who want this from their wives: be respectful, don’t pressure, and give her time to think about it. Your patience might be rewarded!) Here is the problem: We both have careers that could be complicated or damaged by the stigma around “cheating.” I know about all the apps out there, but we live in a large city, and there is a nonzero chance that we might run into someone on the apps we are connected to professionally or socially. Are any of the apps out there geared toward folks who want to go about this carefully? Is it possible to minimize the risk of professional or social embarrassment here, or is this just something we must accept to pursue this lifestyle? —Hooking Up, Seeking Help

A: There are lots of dating apps for people and/or couples looking for casual sex and/or kinky sex (Feeld, 3Somer, #Open, et al.), and lots of people—single and partnered—looking for casual and/or kinky sex on regular dating apps (Tinder, OKCupid, Christian Mingle, et al.). But hookup/threesome/swinger apps, while perceived as sleazier, are a safer bet for a couple like you and your wife.

While there’s no way to eliminate your risk of being recognized on an app, HUSH, anyone who spots you on Feeld looking for extracurricular dick was on Feeld looking for and/or offering up a little extracurricular dick of their own. The threat of mutually assured destruction—if they gossip about you, you’ll gossip about them—is usually enough to restrain bad actors, as is the threat of the obvious follow-up question. (“Wait, why are you on Feeld?”) And most people on hookup apps aren’t bad actors, HUSH, but fundamentally decent people like you and your wife, i.e., singles and couples looking for a little fun, not for an opportunity to hurt anyone. A friend or a relative or a coworker who spots your wife in a bar with a strange man—or in the lobby of a hotel or on her way into your apartment—is likelier to cause you headaches than one of your fellow perverts online.

To minimize your risk of being spotted and outed on the apps, HUSH, don’t post face pics and only share them after you’ve established—to the best of your ability—the person you’re talking to isn’t a bot, a pic collector, or an extortionist. Again, there’s no way to fully eliminate the risk, but at a certain point you have to trust your gut and take a risk. You also have the option of creating a profile in a city you visit regularly but don’t live in, HUSH. After you’ve found and vetted a few good candidates, get yourself some airline tickets and a hotel room and have those drinks in a bar that a colleague, a fan, or your father-in-law is unlikely to walk into.

Q: There’s a story making the rounds on Reddit about people getting those metallic “bejeweled butt plugs” all the way into their asses and needing pretty intense intervention to get them out, ranging from partners pulling them out with their fingers (the unfun kind of double penetration) to actual surgery in a hospital (only fun for a very select few). The blame, apparently, is the fact that the base of these toys is rarely wider than the widest party of the head, which is pretty damning, and that lubed metal is slipperier than lubed silicone. So here are the operative questions: Are metallic bejeweled butt plugs safe or not so much? Are silicone bejeweled butt plugs any safer? Are there any safe bejeweled butt plug options out there? The world isn’t going to stop being obsessed with sparkly butt toys any time soon, so we’re going to need to find a way to do it safely. —Insertion Toy Extraction Messy Situation

A: I’ve seen those jeweled butt plugs in shops and in photos online—they’re usually made from stainless steel and have glass “gems” mounted at the end of an alarmingly narrow base—but I’ve never actually seen one in person. Or in a person, at least not in person. But knowing what I do about butts (and how they relax after some play), and knowing what I do about plugs (a flared base is your first line of defense against a trip to the ER), I would’ve worried too much about losing one to use one. As for safe bejeweled butt plug options, ITEMS, you’re going to want a flared base and a jewel that’s at least the size of Cullinan I Diamond, the fist-sized rock on the Queen of England’s royal scepter, which come to think of it . . .

Q: As you’ve surely heard, the conservative Supreme Court majority plans to overturn Roe v. Wade. While my wife and I were lamenting the state of this fucking country, she mentioned that nobody ever hears men talking about the abortions that kept their lives on track—even though that’s obviously a very common thing that happens. How many guys shat their pants after a condom failed during sex with a woman they weren’t that into? How many prominent men knocked up their mistresses or assistants or babysitters? How many Republican boys have pressed a wad of their parents’ money into a girl’s hand because having a baby would ruin his future? These men need to speak up. I’m not expecting actual Republicans to do so, but perhaps there are men out there who are willing to speak up and admit what we all know: Men benefit from abortion while bearing none of the shame associated with it. It’s time we heard from them. I’m sorry I don’t have a catchy name for this or a cute sign-off. I’m so tired and the world is falling apart. —Men Should Speak Up About Abortion

A: Now for some real worries. We are weeks away from American women being stripped of a fundamental constitutional and human right. And we face the prospect of an out-of-control and illegimate Supreme Court stripping us of a host of other rights: the right to contraception, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage, even the right to have sex for pleasure—you know, the sex most people have most of the time. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws that criminalized not just consensual gay sex, but consensual sex between men and women that wasn’t open to conception as well.

While it should be enough to hear from women who’ve benefited from safe and legal abortion—and it should be enough to know that women die from unsafe and illegal abortions, and enough to know that banning abortions doesn’t stop women from getting abortions—I happen to agree that cis men who support abortion rights and have benefited from them need to speak the fuck up about reproductive freedom.

“There are millions of men whose lives would have been worse without abortion,” the writer Jill Filipovic wrote on Twitter last week. “Men who wouldn’t have found their big loves, wouldn’t have their kids, wouldn’t have been as successful, wouldn’t have taken big risks” if they had become fathers before they were ready. To those men, to all men, Filipovic says, “This is your fight, too. Get in it.”

And gay men? The exact same arguments being used right now to strip women of the right to decide when and whether they want to bear a child—abortion isn’t within the “history and traditions” of the United States, abortion isn’t a right enumerated in the Constitution, abortion is a moral question—can and will be used to strip us of the right to have sex and the right to marry. Republican assholes are passing laws in red states right fucking now that force women to give birth to their rapists’ babies against their will. Don’t for a second think these same assholes won’t pass laws forcibly ending your gay marriage or throwing your gay ass in jail for getting your gay ass fucked. This is our fight, too, faggots.

Q: Is there a website where we can legally find out how to buy the abortion pills you’ve mentioned on the podcast? —Make It Stop

A: Everything you need to know about abortion pills—how they work and where to get them—can be found at plancpills.org. And anyone using those pills at home needs to read Dr. Jen Gunter’s essay “Your Medical Team Cannot Tell If You Had a Self-Managed Abortion” at vajenda.substack.com. And everyone should read Jill Filipovic’s advice on what we can do right now to fight back (“Get To Work, Get Informed, Get Brave”) at jill.substack.com. And if you can afford to donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, now would be a great time to do so. They’re at abortionfunds.org. And finally: don’t vote Republican, don’t fuck Republicans.

Download the Savage Lovecast at savagelovecast.com.

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Since January 2020, vocalist Julian Otis and Elastic Arts executive director Adam Zanolini have programmed AfriClassical Futures, a series offering an antidote to the overwhelming whiteness and deadness of the classical canon. Each AfriClassical concert invites a Black artist working in or springboarding from the Western classical tradition for an intimate live performance and conversation, though the exact form is up to the artist. Cellist Olula (who formerly performed as Olivia Harris), who came aboard as a curator of the series in its second season, explained this approach to Adam Zanolini for Elastic’s newsletter: “Because this is a ‘Western classical music’ series, it’s very important that we don’t bring in those hierarchies, that we don’t prop up the structures that we’re trying to fight against. . . . I want to continue to see a more expansive approach to [the question], ‘What is classical music?’” Previous AfriClassical guests have included chamber collective D-Composed, Milwaukee-based violin-and-cello duo Sista Strings, pianist and polymath Charles Joseph Smith, prolific composer and string player Renée Baker, and singer and composer Ayanna Woods, who’s behind some of the most engrossing choral music being written in Chicago right now. (Musical talent may be a family trait; her sister is Jamila Woods.) Next up in the series is the Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker, a Florida-born multi-instrumentalist and electronics artist whose cerebral, slow-developing music constantly reinvents itself. When she premiered her work “Strange Loops” here in October, the performance managed to amuse several AACM musicians—no small feat—by employing overlapping scales in different keys and directing musicians to bounce Ping-Pong balls inside a piano and use the bodies of other instruments as resonators, either by singing or blowing their horns into them. Ever out of the box, Baker will use this solo set to spotlight a harmonics guitar (specially designed by experimental luthier John C.L. Jansen) and the 16-channel speaker system at Elastic Arts, which the Chicago Laboratory for Electroacoustic Theatre installed just before the pandemic shutdown.

Elizabeth A. Baker, Sat 5/21, 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15, all ages

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“Eyeth—get it? In the Deaf storytelling tradition, utopia is called Eyeth because it’s a society that centers the eye, not the ear, like here on Earth.”

That’s the opener to “Ear vs. Eye: Deaf Mythology,” one of the many brief lessons sprinkled between the chapters of Sara Nović’s realistic fiction novel True Biz, released March 29 by Random House.

Charlie Serrano is a Deaf high school student in Ohio. Her cochlear implant has created language deprivation and family strife rather than improved hearing, but after her parents’ divorce, Charlie gets the opportunity to enroll in the fictional River Valley School for the Deaf, experiencing Deaf culture for the first time over the course of the book. Unfortunately, River Valley is at risk of losing its funding and shuttering. 

The point of view switches in third person between Charlie and other main characters with each chapter, denoted by the ASL symbol for the first letter of their name, but even when readers can’t focus exclusively on her point of view, chapter-break lessons allow us to look over Charlie’s shoulder at her coursework or research.

“Eyeth may be a pun, but it’s not a joke—it’s a myth.”

This particular lesson—meant to reinforce that Deaf culture is a culture, as well as to provoke questions about accessibility and designing a Deaf world—is one of many in Nović’s new book. They never feel dry or preachy, but I suppose I was primed to be interested from the get-go. 

I’m hearing, but learning the basics of American Sign Language (ASL) was an early quarantine hobby for me, and around the same time, my TikTok algorithm steered me deep into DeafTok. My “For You” page was full of Deaf creators, a wonderful mix of mini ASL lessons, stories, skits and jokes, and more. As immersive as TikTok, YouTube, and other resources can feel, I knew my experience of Deaf culture was still very limited and very online.

True Biz by Sara Nović
Random House, hardcover, 388 pp., $28, penguinrandomhouse.com

When I read the synopsis of True Biz—which is an expression in ASL that means “real talk” or “seriously”—I snatched the book up, and I was delighted to see the illustrations and bite-size lessons as I flipped through the pages.

Since Nović herself is Deaf, it initially feels like these teachings, like the Deaf mythology page, come directly from her to the reader. But the further you get into True Biz, the more you can tell that the lessons are for Charlie, from the other characters that Nović brings to life. 

We learn lessons like “Spelling Doesn’t Count,” on the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet, and “Deaf President Now,” a history lesson about a student protest at Gallaudet University, from the syllabus of Dr. February Waters, a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) and the headmistress at River Valley. We learn “Body Language,” a page full of illustrated instructions for signs like “naked,” “flirt,” and a range of other (dirtier) sexual words and actions, perhaps from Austin Workman-Bayard, Charlie’s mentor at school, whose family have been Deaf for generations. We also learn from Charlie herself, who encounters new concepts in the Deaf world and subsequently looks up Wikipedia pages such as “Black American Sign Language (BASL).” My personal favorites are her awestruck observations of her Deaf friends: Charlie marvels at their ability to ride the bus while signing with both hands, highly adept at balancing without holding on.

As Charlie gets more acclimated to River Valley, so too do we get acquainted with Charlie, her peers and family, and Deaf culture.

Nović’s writing is smooth and easy, even while jumping between perspectives. She balances dialogue in ASL, spoken English, and over text, with italics and alignment indicating who’s communicating. It’s interesting to read Deaf characters written by a Deaf author, as the use of sound as a key sense and descriptor is altered, but it’s no disadvantage. A key theme is language/sound access, and in many cases, Nović only lets us know what Charlie knows, creating vulnerability and slowing the pace of many conversations. A frequent refrain is Charlie seeing or hearing only a long blank space, signing or saying, “What?”, and someone having to repeat themself or fingerspell. 

Both in the chapter-break lessons and in the narrative sections, Nović manages to cover many intense topics without it feeling too jarring: bodily autonomy, Deaf “cures” and medical trauma, eugenics, anarchism, marital and family struggles, the cochlear implant debate, and more. In fact, Nović’s writing feels so steady that she never gives a true sense of urgency to even the most high-stakes parts of the plot, and the ending wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped. Still, True Biz is a page-turner, an intriguing character exploration, and an honest survey of the basics of Deafness.

It might be imperfect, but I finished the book ready to recommend it and full of renewed excitement for learning ASL, eager to consider how I too might work toward the ideals of Eyeth in my own everyday life.

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London-based Touch isn’t a record label in the traditional sense; it’s far more multifaceted. It might be more accurate to describe Touch as a collective that also extends into publishing, performance curation, and site-specific multimedia events driven by a loosely defined stable of international avant-garde electronic and sound artists, who include guitarist and producer Fennesz, experimental electronic composer Phill Niblock, multi-instrumentalist Oren Ambarchi, noise and techno producer Mika Vainio, and Icelandic composer Hilda Guðnadóttir. 

This year Touch turns 40, and it’s celebrating its big anniversary with a chain of showcases in the U.S. and Europe that kicked off in Berlin in January. The Chicago event, held at the International Museum of Surgical Sciences, has a great lineup. Ohio native and Los Angeles resident Jonathan Thomas Miller is a multi-instrumentalist and composer for film and TV, and his credits include the Life Below Zero documentary series. Last year his versatile style, which blends esotericism and whimsy, landed him a composer-in-residence position at Columbia College. Hard-working composer and sound artist Olivia Block has been one of the brightest lights in Chicago electronica and minimalism since the 90s. Her latest solo work, last year’s Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea, is absolutely mesmerizing. The track “En Echelon” recalls noise pioneers Suicide while also managing to suggest glitch culture, harpsichords, and drum circles—all within less than six minutes, a span that feels longer than it is in the best possible way. For this show, Block will collaborate with minimalist Chicago duo Cleared, aka percussionist Steven Hess (who also plays in Rlyr and Locrian) and guitarist Michael Vallera (also of Luggage). Block contributed a remix of a Cleared track to their 2020 album for Touch, The Key, and she’s collaborated with Hess in experimental group Haptic. Block will provide field recordings and synth organ for this performance, which she says will include a shared piece in two parts: one focusing on field recordings and electronics, the second on instruments and tones. The venue for the concert, the International Museum of Surgical Science, is a Chicago gem that deserves its own write-up—its environment creates an intense combination of the luminous and the grotesque, and these artists are perfect for threading that needle.

40 Years of Touch A showcase by London collective Touch featuring Jonathan Thomas Miller and Cleared with Olivia Block. Sat 5/21, 7:30 PM, Museum of Surgical Science, 1524 N. Lake Shore, $22, 21+

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For Chicago-based director Donterrio, the late-00s musical Passing Strange represents a road map for how an artist—no matter the medium in which they create—can live their life. 

The show’s story of a Black musician’s coming-of-age depicts “what happens once you have this crazy dream as a teenager to be an artist, and this is how you end up if you don’t cede to the message,” he explained. 

Porchlight Revisits: Passing Strange
Wed 5/18, 7 PM and Thu 5/19, 1:30 and 7 PM; Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $49.

Donterrio has been at the helm of Porchlight Music Theatre’s new production of Passing Strange, which will be presented this Wednesday and Thursday as part of the company’s ongoing Porchlight Revisits series, highlighting musicals that have fallen off the theater community’s radar.

Opening with much acclaim on Broadway in February 2008, Passing Strange was created by musician and playwright Stew. (Heidi Rodewald collaborated on the music.) The show depicts the life of a young musician—simply referred to as “the youth”—and his struggles with love and work as he searches to find his voice as an artist. Songs bridging numerous musical genres are interspersed throughout. The narrator, identified as “Stew,” was originally portrayed by Stew.  

The show was essentially a primer on how to be “a healthy, well-rounded artist,” according to Donterrio. “It says, ‘Watch out for these things. Spend time with your family. Be careful of the people who don’t love you back.’”

Passing Strange ran on Broadway through July 2008 and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning one for Best Book, and also received three Drama Desk Awards. But even after Spike Lee filmed two performances for a 2009 movie, Passing Strange has only rarely been performed in subsequent years. (The now-defunct Bailiwick Chicago—not to be confused with the also-defunct Bailiwick Repertory—produced a critically acclaimed staging of the show in 2011, directed by Lili-Anne Brown.)

Porchlight artistic director Michael Weber suspects the show’s original marketers had a difficult time selling the show since it “was a live, personal piece written for Stew to perform himself.” The Broadway milieu, he added, “is more tourist-based and more international-based, and they want to see things with the biggest-name actors or the biggest-titled shows like Wicked or Phantom of the Opera.”

Passing Strange, Weber noted, is a “thinking person’s show—it is very nuanced in terms of the vision it is trying to expound upon, and I think that made it a little difficult for people to put in a nutshell what the experience is. . . . I think that, had they had a star that everybody knew, it would have had a different life, but on the other hand, it would have lost everything it had [with] Stew there on stage.”

Donterrio, for his part, embraced the challenge of Passing Strange being so intrinsically interwoven with the personality and memories from its creator.

“If people look at the core of the story that’s there, it’s the story of any artist,” he explained. “With our production, we’re kind of able to dig into that. I think we’ll be able to open up to a new audience and we don’t have to rely on Stew’s being and his physicality, [and] the way he sang the material. We can just do the material, be honest to it, and it can kind of be like Pippin, where it can be any performer.” 

Donterrio further described the cast as “a roomful of multifaceted artists. The actors are [regularly] directors and costume designers, for example. They do other things as well, so it’s been a really fun creative process. It will be a really fun show to experience.”  

The Porchlight Revisits series has been featuring stagings of little-seen musicals since 2018. According to Weber, Passing Strange demonstrates that Porchlight is programming not just a retrospective of forgotten vintage shows but important and compelling shows that did not have a chance to connect with audiences.

“Passing Strange is definitely one of the newest shows we’ve done in the Porchlight Revisited series,” Weber said. “[But] it will always be a mix of the lesser seen shows that we think deserve a second look.”

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Walking down North Avenue with his bulky Home Depot purchases in tow, George Blakemore sparkled in a glistening metallic-toned ensemble he painted himself. “I think that we all are artists,” he said. “We all use our imagination and we all are creative. There was a Black gentleman that died called Mr. Imagination who would say everything begins with the mind. When you saw me and thought, ‘I would like to take a picture of this gentleman,’ it started from your mind. And so, even though you are a reporter for the Reader, that’s an art too because you are creating. 

“We all are artists because everything comes from the mind. And during the COVID-19 that was good therapy for me, and it would be good therapy for everybody to do something creative. Some people might sew, and might sing, and might dance, and all of that is using your imagination,” Blakemore said, always generously bringing his attention to the person he’s talking to. It is fair to say he interviewed me as much as I interviewed him on that bright Sunday afternoon earlier this spring. 

Activist and artist George Blakemore on North Avenue in Spring 2022. Credit: Isa Giallorenzo

“I paint Chinese umbrellas and I do canvas also. During my birthday party, they had a lot of my artwork there. A lot of people who came over made a purchase, and some of them gave me a little present,” says Blakemore, grateful for the 80th birthday party that the organization Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change (ECCSC) had just thrown for him. 

“I just thought it was wonderful that these young men and women were there to honor me. They are ex-offenders who are free now, and they’re doing good things in the Black community. I like to push positive things because there’s so much negativity that’s going on in our community. This is a grassroots organization whose founder, Tyrone Muhammad, stayed in the penitentiary for 21 years. Now he’s out trying to make positive contributions,” Blakemore explained.

An activist himself, Blakemore reminded me he’d been featured in the Chicago Reader 2015 People Issue, which presented him as “The Concerned Citizen.” That profile by Deanna Isaacs showcased Blakemore’s extensive history of attending meetings of local governing bodies and speaking his mind whenever he could. “The citizens have a responsibility and the elected officials have a responsibility. All of the above have dropped the baton,” he said in the article. 

A jaunty scarf and hat in a similar design complete the ensemble. Credit: Isa Giallorenzo

In his activism, Blakemore—a former civics teacher—fights for Black people to receive goods, services, contracts, and jobs in Chicago and Cook County. He considers those to be reparations that the Black community deserves. Having arrived in Chicago in 1970 at the end of the Great Migration, Blakemore said he has mixed feelings about the city he now calls home. “I’m working to make a better, more inclusive Chicago, where all people can benefit from living in this beautiful global city,” he said.

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Editor’s note: Chicago playwright, novelist, actor, director, and disability rights activist Susan Nussbaum died April 28 of pneumonia at 68. Playwright Mike Ervin, who collaborated with Nussbaum as cowriter on the comedy revue The Plucky and Spunky Show and whose 1999 play, The History of Bowling, was directed by Nussbaum, remembers his friend and mentor.

Everybody should read Susan Nussbaum’s novel Good Kings Bad Kings right now. Drop everything you’re reading or doing. 

Not only will it be one of the most satisfying reads you’ve had in a long time, but you’ll  understand why so many of us in the disability community are so broken up about her recent death.

When you read Susan’s book, you’ll hear clear and powerful voices telling the story of disabled teens in Chicago who have been dumped in a dead-end, state-operated segregated school for disabled youth. In the end, you’ll be sad that there is no more of this writing to come.

What comes through loud and clear in this book and all Susan’s writing about disability is her intense love for the disability community. But she wasn’t a touchy-feely, huggy person in the least. She expressed that love by undertaking projects that were exhilarating to those who participated in them. That project could be a street protest or a mutual support group for disabled girls or any number of other things.

I owe a debt to Susan for a lot of things, but mostly for getting me involved in the Chicago theater scene more than 30 years ago. My impact on Chicago theater may not have been monumental, but its impact has been monumental on me. I’ve met some of the finest, most admirable people I’ve ever known, and had some of the most fun, while doing my theater work.

Susan (and another guy whose name I don’t remember) wrote a disability-themed sketch comedy called Staring Back that was produced at Second City e.t.c. in 1983. Susan performed in it, too. I was jazzed up watching it. I’d never seen disability matters handled with such skewering humor! It was about time! That was the kind of stuff I wanted to write.

A few years later, Susan asked me if I wanted to write her next show with her. Of course I jumped at the chance. The result was another disability-themed sketch comedy called The Plucky and Spunky Show, which was produced at the good old Remains Theatre in 1990. The cast included Susan and another wheelchair user, a Deaf person, and a blind person.

I had never written for stage or been involved in theater in any way before then. Hell, I’d only seen a handful of plays. But I went on to write a play called The History of Bowling and it was produced at Victory Gardens Theater in 1999 and 2000. Susan was the director both times. After that, a play Susan wrote called No One as Nasty appeared at Victory Gardens and I helped with the production. These plays featured protagonists with disabilities. 

I’m real proud of all that. What I enjoyed most about being a theater collaborator with Susan was that our senses of humor were so in sync. We were both big fans of sarcasm, dark humor, and absurdity. Working on a show with her was exhilarating for me because it was a lot of laughs.

I have one more Susan story to tell. It doesn’t have anything to do with theater but it must be told.

Susan proudly called herself a socialist. She once told me that her dream partner who could satisfy her every need would be a “Marxist-Leninist wheelchair repairman.”

So of course Susan was one of the people who arranged for some disabled people from Chicago to travel to Havana to break bread with some disabled Cubans in 1988. Once again I was fortunate to be included in one of her projects. One day we Chicagoans were sitting outside in Cuba having lunch in perfect tropical weather. Susan began dictating a letter to another woman in our group, who was armed with a pen and writing pad.

Susan dictated, “Dear Esteemed Comandante.” The rest of us at the table ribbed her mightily for writing a letter to Fidel, telling him how enamored we are with his country and inviting him to visit us. What a hopelessly gringo thing to do, we all said. Good luck getting that letter to Fidel, and even if you do, fat chance he has time to meet with us. He’ll probably just laugh about what gringos we are.

A few days later, a stop on our itinerary was a rehabilitation hospital in Havana. As we spoke to the head doctor, our tour guide, Lilia, mentioned the letter. And the doctor said, “I’m a member of the Central Committee. I’ll see Fidel this afternoon. I’ll give him your letter.”

On the day we were to head back to the states, Lilia said, “I’m gonna miss you guys. Can we have a little party in the hotel lounge?”

So we all gathered in the hotel lounge and after a few minutes, in walked Fidel and his entourage, which included the rehab doctor. Fidel stuck around for two hours and talked with us about the Bible, public transportation, and a whole lot more. Earlier in the trip, Susan developed lung congestion and spent a couple days in a Havana hospital receiving respiratory therapy. Susan told Fidel about her hospital stay and mentioned that she received a bill for $250. Fidel apologized and said the only reason she received a bill at all was because she wasn’t a Cuban citizen. Susan assured Fidel that she wasn’t complaining about the bill. How much would two days in the hospital with respiratory therapy cost in the U.S.?

Shortly after Fidel left, the rehab doctor returned to the lounge and picked up the phone. He said to Susan, “I’m calling the hospital, Fidel said to cancel your bill.”

Can you see why so many people miss Susan so damn much?

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“Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman.” The repetition is a summoning spell which repeats the past in the present. Horror is a sound you can’t stop saying.

Bernard Rose’s 1992 film Candyman repeats its summoning spell as an echo that turns words into sounds and back again. Set around the Chicago housing project of Cabrini-Green, the movie features protagonist Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), a white anthropologist studying urban legends. She becomes fascinated by the story of Candyman, a Black artist in the 1890s who painted the picture of a white woman, fell in love with her, and was duly murdered. His hand was cut off and replaced with a hook and his genitals smeared with honey and exposed to bees. 

Candyman supposedly haunts Cabrini-Green, which stands on the ground where he was killed. If you look in a mirror and say “Candyman” five times, he appears, whispering loving, terrifying promises. “I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom.” Tony Todd’s incredibly sensuous voice drips with honey and blood. To say his name is to summon forth a sweetness of sound and terror; the pain, as he says, is “exquisite.”

Philip Glass’s soundtrack for piano, pipe organ, and chorus mirrors the repetition in the summoning spell. His iconic minimalist iteration, sketching the same figure over and over like images in glass, forms a backdrop for the boxes of Cabrini-Green, stark identical apartments and identical apartments stacked. Glass’s insistent, stark hum collapses, at key moments, into the white noise buzz of massed bees, the carefully ordered divisions of space and sound pressed together into a single trauma crawling on the rib cage, an iron hook dragged through a honeycomb.

The most famous theme from the film is “Music Box,” in which Glass’s characteristic repetition mirrors the tinkling loop of a child’s toy. “Music Box” is introduced early in the film; it’s the background music for one of Helen’s interviews, in which an informant tells her the story of Candyman. 

Per the informant, a woman was babysitting when a lover came over. The babysitter tells him the story of Candyman, the story in the story culminating in the repetition of the name and the wet sounds of death. 

Glass’s music is a theme for the baby. But its maddening loop is also an auditory mirror of the loop of story which is also the loop of history. The past is a story repeating in the present. Horror is a sound you can’t stop saying.

Nia DaCosta’s 2021 Candyman sequel/reboot is scored by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. His incidental music is influenced by Glass, holding up a kind of buzzing electric mirror to Glass’s crystalline compositions. 

Lowe does reproduce one piece from the original score, though. Glass’s “Music Box” theme is used in a scene that reprises and retells the events of the previous film. 

In a flashback sequence told through artist Kara Walker’s eerie shadow-puppet cutouts, we see Helen Lyle start to investigate Candyman and then go insane. She makes snow angels of blood and throws a child into a fire. 

Glass’s music tinkles and chimes as the words grind on, echoing the horror story campfire tale of the first movie. The story the shadow puppets tell here is garbled, though; in the “real” events of the first movie, Candyman, not Helen, was the murderer, and the baby lived. To reflect this, Lowe adds ambient hiss and echo. The music box fades toward white noise buzz, space and sound collapsing into a single trauma, a bloody hook dragged through a honeycomb.

The “Music Box” theme has a final, clearer rendering at the end credits of the 2021 film. By this point we’ve walked again through the razed, gentrified landscape of Cabrini-Green. The baby rescued in Candyman, artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), has become ensnared in the story, learning to his sorrow that Candyman isn’t one ghost, but a genre, or a hive. A Black man who moves into a house in the wrong neighborhood; a Black boy executed for a crime he didn’t commit; a Black man accused of putting razor blades in candy—they all die and are born again as a story of death. Racist violence repeats in a predictable path, like a bee following a scent trail. 

Kara Walker’s puppets reprise each story in a ritual of dark and light as the music box repeats its unending theme. The movie is the music is a sound is a story is a word. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Horror is a sound you can’t stop saying.

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