Jack Off the Beanstalk at PrideArts, Natasha Leggero, and more

PrideArts’ Jack Off the Beanstalk

The Evolved Network is a recently established not for profit organization founded by Sebastian White in order to bring therapeutic services and financial literacy to young Chicagoans through farming and culinary training. The organization is currently raising funds that will go in part toward a permanent space in which to host its restaurant management and cooking programs, and tonight’s Eat & Evolve with the Evolved Network event at the Avondale restaurant Eden (2734 W. Roscoe) will hopefully help fill the coffers. Food stations will be available from a variety of Chicago restaurants and chef pop-ups, including Saigon Sisters, the Publican, and Prairie Grass Cafe, and cocktails and mocktails alike are offered from Eden’s cash bar. It’s $20 to enter, and tickets can be purchased through the Evolved Network’s website. (SCJ)

In Great Britain, the Christmas pantomime, or “panto,” is a beloved tradition (and no, it doesn’t involve actual mimes). PrideArts gets in on the Fractured Fairy Tales-style fun with Jack Off the Beanstalk, which has its first preview tonight at 7:30 PM at PrideArts Center (4139 N. Broadway). The famous climber of beanstalks and slayer of giants is joined in this romp by love interest Princess Jill and Fairy Flick Bean. Directed by Bryan McCaffrey, the show is recommended for 18+, and promises “outrageous humor, raunchy puns, and sexual innuendo,” along with pop songs made famous by artists like Kelly Clarkson and Whitney Houston performed by the cast and a live four-piece band. The show runs through 12/18; tickets and information at pridearts.org. (KR)

A few music choices for this evening:

Chicago singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth’s project Advance Base plays Beat Kitchen tonight, with MJ Lenderman and Spencer Radcliffe opening. (8 PM, 2100 W. Belmont, $18, 17+, tickets at Ticketweb)
Indie-rock band Wild Pink performs at Sleeping Village tonight, with Dave Benton’s Trace Mountains project opening. (8 PM, 3734 W. Belmont, $22, 21+, tickets at Etix)
Bassist Jeremiah Hunt brings his Mingus Band to Jazz Showcase tonight for two shows. (8 and 10 PM, 806 S. Plymouth, $15-$25, all-ages, tickets at Eventbrite)
Chicago dream pop band Harvey Waters is on the bill for Free Monday at the Empty Bottle; Bled Tape headlines as the show is also their EP release party, and Stalled opens. (8:30 PM, 1035 N. Western, free, 21+, reservations encouraged at Eventbrite) (SCJ)
Part of a Kristen Toomey set at the Laugh Factory from October 2022

Rockford native and Illinois State University alum Natasha Leggero visits City Winery (1200 W. Randolph) tonight for a round of stand-up and stories culled from her new book, The World Deserves My Children, a collection of essays on motherhood and family in our “post-apocalyptic world.” She’ll be joined by fellow actress and Chicago comedian Kristen Toomey, who will open the 8 PM show. Tickets are $18-$37 and available at the City Winery’s website. (SCJ)

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Editor’s note: I remember

The who’s who of local journalism gathered recently at the Newberry Library for the 83rd annual Chicago Journalists Association awards. As the organization’s first in-person ceremony since the pandemic took its grip, a buoyant feeling was in the air (aided perhaps by an open bar), as Chicago journalists rocked their finest duds (props to Sun-Times columnist Ismael Pérez for outshining us all), and took a beat to look back at their work across the past year—and its resulting community impact.

The night was an extra special one for the Reader, as publisher Tracy Baim received a Lifetime Achievement award, and our own Kelly Garcia was chosen as the Emerging Journalist of the Year. If that weren’t enough, staffers Katie Prout and Mike Sula were nominated for Sarah Brown Boyden awards, and freelance contributor Matthew Ritchie took home a first place distinction. 

During the pre-awards mixer, Reader managing editor Salem Collo-Julin asked if I’d picked up an index card and written down a query for Baim’s Q&A session. I’m not sure if it was the free-flowing bourbon, but for some unexplained reason, I brushed it off as a joke.

The ceremony underway, Baim was called to the lectern, and the emcee mentioned that in lieu of a stuffy speech, the honoree had decided to have an informal chat featuring questions from the audience. Panic set in. My boss was about to take the mike, and she might not be able to fill her allotted space. I needed to do something. Swiftly, I pulled out my phone and looked up “Windy City Times,” the storied LGBTQ+ publication Baim launched alongside Drew Badanish, Bob Bearden, and Jeff McCourt, and that’s when I saw it: Founded 1985.

I immediately felt a knot in my stomach, as even as a schoolboy, I remembered the significance of that time, and what it meant in the queer world I would one day grow up to be a part of: the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Tracy Baim and Enrique Limón

Gladly, Tracy is a talker, and didn’t need my help filling up time thanks to her extensive mental Rolodex of experiences, including interviewing Mayor Harold Washington, and taking him to task on the city’s poor economic response to the nascent health crisis. 

Still, for a moment that seemed eternal, I dissociated, remembered being in Catholic school and having the nuns show us a news report mentioning this new condition, which they packaged as God’s welcomed punishment. At that moment, not having experienced my first crush, long division, or having even shaved for the first time, I remember thinking, I know what I’m going to die of. Moreover, I knew that no one would come to my funeral, and that my sole existence would be my family’s forever shame. That’s a lot for a grade schooler to take in. 

Anyone who has ever taken a rapid HIV test knows how mortifying those 20 minutes between being swabbed and getting your results can be. Imagine prolonging that over two weeks, which was the norm at the time, way before pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was a glimmer in science’s eye; when the White House press secretary used the syndrome as a punchline during a briefing; and when, as one poignant scene in a sitcom of the time put it, it was believed AIDS was “killing all the right people.”

The scene in question, from the second season of the sitcom Designing Women, first aired on October 5, 1987

The LGBTQ+ community desperately needed allies in those primordial days, and the “L” in the acronym stood hand in hand with their brethren. They organized, marched, rallied, screamed, and fought like hell. Baim did all that while informing, dispelling misinformation, pairing a human face to the crisis, and saving lives along the way. She won’t want to hear this, but I say give her all the awards.

Ahead of Thursday, December 1, World AIDS Day—a commemoration that started in 1988 as the first-ever global health day—it’s worth noting that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS if left untreated, is now a manageable condition with multiple treatment options, and that while the threat of infection seems like something for the history books, the World Health Organization estimates that 650,000 people died from HIV-related causes globally last year alone, adding to the more than 40 million worldwide deaths since virologists first classified it.

AIDS, and the stigma it carried, robbed the world of a whole generation of artists, thinkers, performers, storytellers, and everyday folk who hid their true identities till the end because the world around them wasn’t ready to hear it, let alone accept it. To them I say I remember, and I thank you for being at the forefront. I, and many others, are indebted to you for paving the way, for taking the brunt of this epidemic, and for bringing exposure to a community that had long become used to living in the shadows. I also say thanks for allowing yourself to love when chances are that, like me, you were conditioned at a young age to think you’d never be worthy of it. Thank you from that little boy who was not able to properly word it, and would pray at night for God to make him “normal.” Thank you from the adult who still prays, and now gives thanks for every single thing that makes him unique, and asks for a more compassionate and caring world—one where our mere existence isn’t an open invitation for banishment, derision, or violence.

I remember.

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Black Arts Movement School, Looking for Jean-Luc, and more

It’s the final week to catch the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s “SAIC Faculty Sabbatical Triennial” exhibition, which features work produced by 38 faculty members who completed a sabbatical or a similar paid leave during the last three academic years. Not only does this show represent the breadth of ideas and creative practices at an influential local arts institution, but it also demonstrates how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the artistic inquiries of these instructors. There’s some great Chicago history hidden in the show, including documentation of art historian Romi Crawford’s Black Arts Movement School Modality, which “explores the ideological structures that emerged in Chicago from the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.” New media artist Mary Patten debuts the video Hokey Sapp Does SPEW, which features Kate Schechter as the facetious media character Hokey Sapp interviewing people at SPEW: The Homographic Convergence, a zine convention hosted at Randolph Street Gallery in 1991. SPEW is recognized as a crucial connection point for midwestern queer culture in the 90s, including what led to the Homocore punk shows. Patten edited and shaped the piece this year using video footage that she shot with Schechter in 1991. The “SAIC Faculty Sabbatical Triennial” is on view at SAIC Galleries (33 E. Washington); open hours from 11 AM-6 PM today through Saturday 12/3. Saturday also offers a closing program and meet and greet with artist Ruth Margraff and other SAIC faculty from 4-6 PM. (MC)

If you’re a fan of French New Wave cinema—you know, the 60s experimental film movement heavy with jump cuts, mod style, and ennui—then you’ll want to check out Looking for Jean-Luc, an online-only panel discussion of director Jean-Luc Godard. Independent filmmakers Joël Akafou and Thavary Krouch, Chicago International Film Festival programmer Sam Flancher, and University of Chicago Cinema and Media Studies department chair Dan Morgan will gather to discuss the work of the director known for films such as Breathless and Weekend. Join them via Zoom at 6:30 PM. This event is organized by Alliance Française de Chicago. If you are not a student, or a member of Cinema/Chicago, the Gene Siskel Film Center, or Facets, Alliance Française kindly requests a $15 donation to support similar future programming. (MC)

Here are three music options for tonight:

Pianist and composer Robert Glasper starts a four night run at City Winery tonight, with two shows scheduled each evening. Unfortunately, all of the 7 PM shows are currently sold out, as is the 10:30 PM Friday show, but waiting list information as well as tickets for the remaining 10:30 PM shows are available at the venue’s website. (Today through Fri 12/2, 7 and 10:30 PM, 1200 W. Randolph, $55-$78, all-ages, tickets here)
British singer-songwriter Beabadoobee visits Riviera Theatre for an all-ages show; Lowertown opens. (7:30 PM, 4746 N. Racine, $30-$45, tickets at AXS)
A record release show for two improvisational ensembles, the Gilgamanians and Maku Sica (formerly Mako Sica) happens tonight at Elastic. More at Reader contributor Bill Meyer’s concert preview. (8 PM, 3429 W. Diversey, second floor, $15, all-ages, tickets at the door) (SCJ)

Previews begin tonight at 7:30 PM for Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol at Writers Theatre (325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe). The company originally created the piece as a live Zoom play during the pandemic, and now the story of Aunt Trudy, a grieving widow finding it hard to find holiday cheer, gets a full live production, featuring Manual Cinema’s usual array of puppetry, live music, and projections to give a contemporary twist to the Dickens classic. The show runs through 12/24 and is recommended for 6+; tickets are $35-$90 at writerstheatre.org. (KR)

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Monologuing: Title Ten at Artemisia Theatre

Int. messy Chicago apartment, unseasonably hot end of November. 

Being a theater critic can be so isolating when you don’t fit the story being told. Most of the time, I sit through shows that center on the cishet male experience or at the very least shows that don’t pass the Bechdel Test. I am not shy about how much I loathe theater that rehashes the same, tired narrative. Yet, every once in a while I get a glimpse of something new which, even then, can be struck a deadly blow if one voice demands it. 

[increasingly exasperated] 

I have a master’s degree in writing, rhetoric, and discourse with a certificate in women and gender studies. I’ve written for Ms. Magazine. I’ve worked for Planned Parenthood. I grew up Catholic. I have polycystic ovary syndrome, which means I have fertility and period issues. Title Ten at Artemisia Theatre, written and codirected by artistic director Julie Proudfoot (Willow James also directs), should have been my cup of tea. [pause] But it wasn’t. 

Title TenThrough 12/18: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, artemisiatheatre.org, $25-$44

[cross to center] 

Nine monologues over the course of 90 minutes. The play is a two-hander asking far too much of the two actors (Kaitlyn Cheng and Melanie McNulty) in its employ. A well-timed monologue is one thing, an excellent opportunity for epiphany, but there are some stories that are best served by dialogue. Especially with a topic like abortion, folks with uteruses spend a lot of time talking to themselves or feeling like they’re talking to a wall. When we’re given the chance to talk about Title X so openly, some of our stories are best served through an act of showing rather than telling. 

[realizes the irony of that last statement as this is a crude monologue at best]

If we’re going to tell intimate stories of tribulation, let’s really dig into them. Give audiences a full scene of a credible fearful interview between an immigration officer and an asylum-seeking mom. Allow us a chance to see the interaction not just from the side of the problematic officer. Let audiences see how harmful the process is. Parcel out monologues along with dialogue. Give us moments to really sink our teeth into. Play devil’s advocate at times, sure, but show us the pro-birthers protesting at clinics with more authenticity. 

Kaitlyn Cheng in Title Ten at Artemisia Theatre Credit Willow James

[increasing intensity] 

Give in to the vitriol, pain, heartache, and joy. Really give us the experience of what it is to exist in a world, as the text says, that demands so much of us simply for existing in these bodies. 

[hand over heart, three deep breaths]

Just let the stories really breathe.


Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art

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Season of the Grinch

After earning rave reviews during its Chicago premiere last year, Matthew Lombardo’s provocative take on a holiday classic makes a triumphant return to Theater Wit. Who’s Holiday follows a now 40-year-old Cindy Lou Who (Veronica Garza) as she tells the story of the infamous night she met The Grinch Who Stole Christmasand the not-so-heartwarming events that followed after they crossed paths. 

Who’s Holiday Through 12/30: Thu 7 PM, Fri-Sat 7 and 9:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Tue-Wed 12/20-12/28 7 PM, Sun 12/18 7 PM, Fri 12/2-12/9 and Sat 12/3 7 PM only, no performances Sat-Sun 12/24-25; Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, theaterwit.org, $36-$50

With Garza and director Christopher Pazdernik at the helm, Who’s Holiday transcends the Dr. Seuss story it’s based on and the expectations of anyone who might come in anticipating a typically wholesome Christmas story. Garza is a brilliant comedian who nails each of Cindy’s raunchy quips, droll physical quirks, and moments of frank sentimentality. From the moment she steps into Cindy’s humble trailer on the outskirts of Whoville, decked in festive garb and a grown-up take on her iconic hairdo, it’s clear that Garza thoroughly embodies an edgy variation on the classic character. 

Throughout the show’s 65-minute run, Garza commands and captivates, inviting the audience to laugh, riff, sing, and even cry with her as she recounts Cindy’s plight in the same rhyming cadence as the show’s source material. While Lombardo’s script isn’t afraid to go there in its humorand its whimsy, the honesty that Garza brings to Cindy makes this story feel totally earnest and enduring.


Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art

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American Blues plants a whole holiday garden

Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic film is packed frame-by-frame with small moments of storytelling perfection, and as I get older, there’s one that just guts me like a fish. Exhausted, panicked, and facing certain financial and reputational ruin, George Bailey tries in vain to cajole Zuzu, his littlest one, to bedtime. “I’m not sleepy,” she whispers. “I want to look at my flower.”   

“I know, I know,” he says through tears in the dark. “But you just go to sleep, and then you can dream about it. And it’ll be a whole garden.” For all the melodrama and feel-good sweetness of It’s A Wonderful Life, it’s a story whose bell rings true precisely because it sees the cold cruelty of the world eye-to-eye and takes its blows right on the bloody lip. That contrast—a bit of grace and fellowship against life’s bleakest hardships—is the heart of American Blues Theater’s joyful 1940s radio broadcast rendition, now in its 21st year and the first in its gorgeous and fitting home at the Chopin.   

It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! Through 12/23: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; also Wed 12/21 7:30 PM and Fri 12/23 4:30 PM; Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 872-205-9681, americanbluestheater.com, $25-$55

Director Gwendolyn Whiteside’s production may run as smooth as a well-oiled machine, but there’s nothing rote about it. This year’s ensemble of returning veteran players, including Brandon Dahlquist (George), Audrey Billings (Mary), Manny Buckley (Joseph), Dara Cameron (Violet), Joe Dempsey (Clarence/Mr. Potter), and Ian Paul Custer (Harry) creates a wholly encompassing theater-of-the-mind, honoring the traditions of Wonderful Life’s well-trodden lines while making them their own. And the radio play format (featuring foley art by J.G. Smith) heightens the inherently nostalgic vibe of Christmas festivities, as does announcer and music director Michael Mahler’s crowd work and sing-along scoring at the piano. The mark of a worthwhile holiday show, I find, is whether or not it feels like a celebration. And by that metric, American Blues Theater has created and maintained one of the great Chicago Christmas traditions that welcomes its audience like family and overflows with holiday spirit. 


Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art

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God bless us, once again

At a preshow reception introducing the Goodman’s new artistic director, Susan V. Booth, executive director Roche Schulfer talked about how the theater’s production of A Christmas Carol, which turns 45 this year, has grown from an annual tradition to something of a public trust and an institutional responsibility. And indeed, though it may be a cash cow (no shame in that—we need a whole herd of fiscal cattle to come through for live performance right now), the show continues to thread the needle between hewing to the original while providing just enough dashes of contemporary references to blow away the seasonal cobwebs. (This year, the show begins with a young woman, Rika Nishikawa, singing a Ukrainian carol while wearing a wreath of yellow and blue flowers in her hair.)

In that way, it mirrors the holiday experience for many families, which blend past and present. Children get older, move out, and perhaps have kids of their own that they bring to the gathering. People die, but their memories live on in the stories their surviving loved ones tell. (This year’s production is dedicated to William J. Norris, who first played Scrooge for the Goodman and died a year ago this week.) There is comforting sameness in traditions—as long as we don’t get lost in the mazes of memory, unable to find our way back to the needs of the here and now.

A Christmas Carol Through 12/31: Wed-Thu 7 PM, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 7 PM; also Tue 12/6 7 PM, Tue 12/20 2 and 7 PM, Thu 12/1 and Wed 12/7 11 AM, Wed 12/14 noon, Wed 12/21-12/28, Thu 12/15-12/22, and Fri 12/23-12/30 2 PM, Sat 12/24 and 12/31 2 PM only, no performances Fri 12/30 7:30 PM or Sat 12/25; audio description Sat 12/10 2 PM, ASL interpretation Fri 12/16 7:30 PM, open captions Sun 12/18 2 PM, Spanish subtitles Sun 12/18 7 PM; Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $25-$159

Larry Yando, returning for his 15th season as Ebenezer Scrooge, also knows how to thread that needle. The production never hits harder than when we see the losses that shriveled his heart during his journey with the Ghost of Christmas Past (played with ethereal charm by Lucky Stiff, who looks like a harlequin in costume designer Heidi Sue McMath’s shimmery, icy-blue ensemble, with a crescent moon on the cap serving as a subtle reminder of the waxing and waning of days). From the harshness of the boarding school where young Ebenezer (Jalen Smith) is held in by forbidding iron gates to the temporary reprieve with his beloved sister Fan (Ariana Burks), his earliest holiday memories seem to weave together harshness and light. Jessica Thebus’s staging incorporates a bit of the surreal in this segment, as we see a white stag—the traditional symbol of innocence, great change, and even Christ himself—walking just beyond those gates.

This year’s production also leans heavily on the talents of the women in the cast, suggesting how much Yando’s Scrooge has lost over the years by running away from the nurturing offered not just by Fan, but by his first boss, Mrs. Maud Fezziwig (played with infectious bonhomie by Cindy Gold) and his lost love, Belle (Amira Danan). The cross-gender casting continues with Frida (Dee Dee Batteast), Scrooge’s niece, who’s determined to keep the spirit of Christmas no matter how many “bah, humbugs” are tossed her way.

The splendid Bethany Thomas as the Ghost of Christmas Present also nimbly walks the line between jolly and stern, her admonitions to Yando’s Scrooge taking on sharp urgency as her own time on Earth draws to a close. (In place of the usual gigantic pile of presents and a holiday repast, Scrooge’s gloomy room is transformed into a green and glorious bower of plants for Christmas Present’s arrival, and a sprig of evergreen remains behind to remind Scrooge of his spectral adventures once his transformation is complete.) Thomas J. Cox’s Bob Cratchit and his “good wife” (Susaan Jamshidi) embody the mundane, but miraculous, comforts of loving companionship in an otherwise harsh world. 

As usual, much of the comedy in Yando’s performance comes from Scrooge’s growing sense of vanity. He smooths his hair as he awaits the arrival of the first spirit (well, the first after Kareem Bandealy’s fearsome Marley, that is.) At one point, Yando’s miser is looking at himself in the mirror, his back turned to the audience, and begins twitching his posterior like Hugh Grant’s prime minister in Love Actually. It’s endearingly ridiculous, but also reinforces that loving others does indeed begin with loving oneself enough to believe you can actually make a difference in the world, no matter how small.

The appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Future (Daniel Jose Molina) is suitably grim. The spirit looks like a cross between the Grim Reaper and a plague doctor with his beaky mask, and there’s a company of others wearing the same mask gathered wordlessly behind him, as if to remind us of those we’ve lost in the past few years. But despite the inevitable mournfulness evoked by that image, Tom Creamer’s adaptation remains a stouthearted study in the power of transformation. (Minor quibble: Andrew White is fine as the narrator, but I’ve never felt Creamer’s version has figured out exactly how much to bring the character into the story itself.)

It’s perhaps easy to view A Christmas Carol with seasonal cynicism, given how many versions compete for audience dollars this time of year. But after several seasons away from the Goodman’s production, it was good to be there opening night, remembering past productions, absent loved ones, and the importance of treasuring the ones who remain.


Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art

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Black Ox Orkestar return after 15 years to explore modern socio-political strife though Jewish diasporic traditions

The Yiddish language originated in the 900s and peaked in the early 1940s with around 11 million speakers, primarily in Europe’s Ashkenazi Jewish communities. But of the six million Jewish people murdered by the Nazis during World War II, 85 percent of them were Yiddish speakers. Just as the worldwide Jewish population has not yet fully rebounded from that extraordinary loss of life, neither has Yiddish; in 2014 UNESCO labeled it endangered, and as a daily language it continues to languish, at least outside ultra-orthodox communities. 

The klezmer revival that began in the 1970s carried Yiddish to new ears, and in 2000 four musicians from Montreal’s vibrant postrock and experimental-music community built on that foundation, convening as Black Ox Orkestar and producing two darkly powerful acoustic Yiddish-language albums. Overlapping in membership with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, Sackville, and other groups, Black Ox Orkestar aimed to explore their Jewish heritage, especially the musical and cultural traditions of the Jewish diaspora, combining influences from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Pressure from outside commitments broke up the band after 2006’s Nisht Azoy. Godspeed and Mt. Zion bassist Thierry Amar became a studio producer; violinist Jessica Moss (also a member of Mt. Zion) established a solo career; clarinetist and guitarist Gabriel Levine (from Sackville) leaned into his work as a teacher of performance and cultural theory; and vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Scott Levine Gilmore (Mt. Zion), the group’s main composer, became a human-rights attorney in Washington, D.C.

Black Ox Orkestar reunited in 2020 after coming together for a group interview with the magazine Jewish Currents. The new Everything Returns (recorded with Greg Norman at Electrical Audio and released by the group’s old label, Constellation) mixes Black Ox Orkestar’s classic sounds with a heavier dose of jazz and the dark, piano-driven music of singer-songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave. Their storytelling and their arrangements of folk instrumentals arise from Jewish diasporic traditions, but the material is also a product of today’s tumultuous sociopolitical climate, with its progressive uprisings (the Black Lives Matter movement) and its atavistic regressions (the rise of neofascism). The band see things through the lens of Gilmore’s human-rights work: “Perpetual Peace” recalls his great-grandfather’s flight from religious persecution in tsarist Russia and invokes the refugee experience in all times and places, a theme that also emerges on songs such as “Mizrakh Mi Ma’arav” and “Viderkol.” The title of the latter is the Yiddish word for “echo,” and it weighs the hope of finding familiarity and comfort against heart-wrenching displacement. Though Yiddish remains Black Ox Orkestar’s primary language, the richly textured instrumentation and broader musical palette of Everything Returns are sure to draw new listeners, no matter what they speak—its message of strength, compassion, and defiance is universal.

Black Ox Orkestar’s Everything Returns is available through Bandcamp.


Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art

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Op-Ed: Keep the Pretrial Fairness Act as-isandon November 28, 2022 at 12:00 pm

Pretrial justice reform was sorely needed in Illinois to address the harm the money bond system has caused Black, Brown, and poor communities. As former public defenders and current clinical law professors, we know firsthand how the money bond system created an unfair, constitutionally-suspect, wealth-based approach to pretrial jailing outcomes.

Legislators took a major step in the right direction by passing The Pretrial Fairness Act in 2021. The legislation, set to go into effect in January, is aimed at reducing incarceration by ending the money bond system in Illinois. The purpose is simple: to ensure that people are not held in jail simply because they cannot afford to buy their freedom. But now, state legislators are considering amendments to the Pretrial Fairness Act that would undercut the purpose of the legislation and exacerbate the very issues the Act is meant to address. 

The Pretrial Fairness Act allows people charged with serious crimes to be detained if they pose a flight risk or risk to public safety while limiting the scenarios in which people charged with low-level crimes can be jailed. The Illinois State’s Attorney’s Association has seized upon confusion created by a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign paid for by fringe political advocates to propose changes to the law. Provisions in the proposed amendments would remove the guardrails set up to achieve the law’s goal of reducing pretrial jailing while protecting public safety. The result of adopting these changes would be devastating; they would increase pretrial jailing, worsen racial disparities, and make our communities less safe. 

Under the Pretrial Fairness Act, prosecutors are required to show that release would pose “a specific, real, and present threat” to a person or persons. But the proposed amendments allow prosecutors and judges discretion to incarcerate people for indefinite periods of time, based on vague, broad standards that a person poses a general threat to the community.

An essential check on prosecutorial power is limiting which charges are eligible for pretrial detention. Under the current law, as it has existed for years, prosecutors do not have unlimited power to hold people without bail. Holding people without the possibility of monetary release is limited to only the most serious charges. 

But if the Illinois State’s Attorney’s Association has its way, people who are charged with low-level crimes and legally presumed innocent could be held in jail for months or even years. Prosecutors would be empowered to ask a judge to jail any person, irrespective of the crime for which they are charged. This is an authority that prosecutors have never had even under the state’s current cash bail system. 

Taken together, the expansion of the number of charges eligible for detention and the weakening of the legal standards needed to prove dangerousness would result in a dramatic increase in the number of people detained pretrial, undermining the primary purpose of the Act.

Research confirms that the kind of broad prosecutorial and judicial discretion contained in the proposed legislation would disproportionately impact Black and Brown people and exacerbate racial disparities in Illinois jails.  

Studies show that in large urban areas, Black people are over 25 percent more likely to be held pretrial than their white counterparts; young Black men are 50 percent more likely to be detained than whites. According to 2017 data, Black people constituted nearly half of Illinois’ jail population despite making up only 15 percent of the state population. Brown people are also significantly more likely to be detained pretrial than their white counterparts.

The incalculable human cost of pretrial incarceration would make our communities less safe. In addition to producing wrongful convictions, coercive and unfair plea deals, and longer sentences, pretrial detention disrupts interpersonal relationships and community ties and increases the likelihood of future arrests

Increased incarceration creates devastating collateral consequences for individuals, families, and communities. People experience an average of 34 days of pretrial incarceration in Illinois, with many jailed for far longer, leading to the loss of jobs and housing. If and when people are released, they have been stripped of the means they need to support themselves and their families. 

More than half the people held pretrial are parents of young children. Parental detention causes financial hardships for families and forces children into the foster care system. It traumatizes children due to the effects of family separation on par with divorce, domestic violence, and abuse. We have long known that incarceration does not make us safer; if it did, the United States would be the safest country in the world.  

The proposed changes are not “clarifications” or “tightening language.” Instead, they seek to gut the law’s core mechanisms—aimed at reducing the harm the money bond system has caused Black, Brown, and poor communities—and replace them with measures that would increase the power of prosecutors and judges to incarcerate people awaiting trial.

We stand behind the Pretrial Fairness Act, not just because the proposed amendments will lead to increased incarceration and devastation for our communities, but because pretrial justice works in Cook County and in jurisdictions across the country. It is clear to us that the Pretrial Fairness Act is the path to a fairer, safer justice system.

Craig Futterman and Herschella Conyers are clinical law professors at the University of Chicago Law School.

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Laos to Your House goes live at the next Monday Night FoodballMike Sulaon November 28, 2022 at 10:05 pm

Each week “Lucky” and “Pam” Seuamsothabandith walked the floor of the Seaford Clothing factory in Rock Island, Illinois, taking egg roll orders. The plant, which once famously made suits for Barack Obama, was where the couple (Phiengvilay and Phengphanh, respectively) found work after fleeing Laos in the late 70s.

When she was a kid, Stacy Seuamsothabandith woke up at 4 AM each Friday to the sizzle of her parents’ side hustle. “My mom was constantly working,” she says. “It was a nine-hour day in a really hot factory, then coming home to make a hot meal. I would sit down at the kitchen table with her to get two minutes with my mom first thing in the morning. She would always fry me a couple of egg rolls and I would go back to bed.”

Pam’s egg rolls. Credit: Laos to Your House

Pam passed away seven years ago, and the Seaford factory now sits empty, but her egg rolls live on in the family’s Lucky’s Eggrolls food truck, sustaining Quad Cities farmers’ market strollers and late-night bar goers since the late 90s. They arrived here in Chicago last June, when Stacy, her brother chef Keo Seuamsothabandith, and husband Byron Gully launched Laos to Your House, a biweekly virtual restaurant that reps Chicago’s only Lao food.

And now, on December 5, Laos to Your House is cooking live at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn in Irving Park. Over the decades Chicago has had only rare opportunities to taste Lao food made to order, and though Pam’s egg rolls are now legendary, they only scratch the surface of this undersung Southeast Asian cuisine.

The LtYH crew will emerge from their new HQ at The Hatchery to assemble their signature Lao Bento Boxes and Laocuterie boards, featuring an assortment of grilled meats (brisket, sausage, chicken wings), sauces, and sticky rice; plus kua mee, sweet, caramelized wok fried rice noodles with pork and fresh herbs; nam khao, a crispy rice salad with tangy fermented pork, coconut, and red curry; and of course, Pam and Lucky’s beef egg rolls.

They’re also featuring a trio of specials you won’t typically find on their regular menus: the yellow chicken and potato curry gang garee gai, with a side of French bread to soak it all up; goong hom pha, whole shrimp swaddled in wontons and deep fried; and gingery sweet or spicy chicken wings.

“Keo, he learned to cook from Stacy’s mom,” says Gully. “She always wanted to have a restaurant, so every time we cook in that kitchen, it really feels like a tribute to her.”

There’ll be a limited number of walk-in orders available, so place your preorder right now. It all goes down beginning at 5 PM, Monday, December 5 at 4100 N. Kedzie.

Meanwhile check out the remaining Foodballs on the 2022 schedule below. New 2023 lineup coming soon.

Phengphanh “Pam” Seuamsothabandith and Phiengvilay “Lucky” Seuamsothabandith on their wedding day, Laos, 1975

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Laos to Your House goes live at the next Monday Night FoodballMike Sulaon November 28, 2022 at 10:05 pm Read More »