Chicago Reader print issue of September 18, 2025 (Vol. 54, No. 50)

By Joshua Eferighe, p. 18

The Chicago rapper reunites with Shawnna for

THIS WEEK

FOOD & DRINK

05 Reader Bites | Renken The Monte Cristo at Hamburger Mary’s

NEWS & POLITICS

06 Feature | Mulcahy What really happened when ICE killed Silverio Villegas González?

07 Make It Make Sense | Brown Northwestern looks to foster “enlightened disagreement.”

ARTS & CULTURE

08 Cra Work | Cardoza Artist Alessandra Norman makes lamps that playfully riff on the act of seeing.

09 Art of Note Recommended group exhibitions at Chicago Artists Coalition, Junior., and Point Blank

THEATER

12 Preview | Reid The U.S. premiere of Gangsta Baby brings the story of a queer sex worker and his mobster father to Open Space Arts.

14 Plays of Note The Neo-Futurists examine preppers in Abby Paj Tries to Stay Alive, Rabbits in Their Pockets celebrates Black joy, and Instrumental Theatre Company debuts with a sitespecific production of The Seagull

FILM

15 Preview A Reader writer’s guide to the 43rd iteration of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival

16 Moviegoer It’s gonna be matinee

17 Movies of Note A Big Bold Beautiful Journey takes big swings, and Riefenstahl paints a complex and contradictory portrait.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

18 City of Win Chicago rapper Lstreetz runs it back with her old mentor, Shawnna.

20 Secret History of Chicago Music Lani Hall fueled the late-60s bossa nova boom in the States.

22 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Wardruna, Die Spitz, Che, and Sextile

26 Gossip Wolf Album Runs loads up on goodies for run number 25, Sullivan Davis starts as Color Club’s head booker, and more.

BACK

25 Savage Love Rebounding and cra ing a personal ad CLASSIFIEDS

26 Jobs

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Lstreetz is featured in City of Win. Photo by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney.

from top le ) Lamp designed by Alessandra Norman COURTESY THE ARTIST

We

m letters@chicagoreader.com Find

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food

FOOD & DRINK

There are two things I love in this world: drag and food. Unfortunately, not all drag bar food is created equal. I’ve never had bad food at a show, but there are places that certainly leave something to be desired. Not Hamburger Mary’s. Five years after their pandemic shuttering, the iconic drag restaurant is back in Chicago, and there’s one item on the brunch menu I can’t stop thinking about: the Monte Cristo brunch’wich.

cious jack cheese and slices of ham between two flu y but not saccharinely sweet pieces of French toast. I’m not usually a ham person, but this sandwich makes me a believer. Paired with a bottomless mimosa or a cup of co ee, enjoying this dish is an excellent way to spend a leisurely late morning.

Of course, what makes the food even more delectable are the excellent drag performers twirling their way around the Edgewater eatery. Whether you’re sitting by the stage or the bar, the queens and kings are dancing, and there’s really not a bad seat in the house. Watching the community welcome back this long-missed staple, every bite tastes sweet. —CHARLI RENKEN HAMBURGER

Served with your choice of breakfast taters, fresh fruit, or french fries, the Monte Cristo is the perfect balance between sweet and savory. The apricot preserves are a golden, treacly delight paired with deli-

MARY’S 1055 W. Bryn Mawr, $14, 773-754-0524, chicago.hamburgermarys. com v

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

the Pulse of Poetry

Experience it at the Poetry Foundation with FREE entry and events

VS Podcast: Live Farewell

September 18, 6 PM

Join powerhouse poets Cornelius Eady and Major Jackson as we bid a fond farewell to this acclaimed podcast

September 20, 2 PM

Attend the opening of an exhibition by Chicago artist Victoria Martinez featuring murals and ceramic paintings that respond to the life and work of Peruvian poet and activist Magda Portal

poetryfoundation.org/events

Poetry Foundation 61 W Superior St

Victoria Martinez: Frente a la vida / Facing Life

The Monte Cristo at Hamburger Mary’s

NEWS & POLITICS

What happened to Silverio Villegas González

An immigration agent shot and killed an unarmed 38-year-old father in Franklin Park on Friday—and their initial narrative of events was quickly disproven by videos captured by witnesses.

By STEVE HELD, RAVEN GEARY, DAVE BYRNES, AND SHAWN MULCAHY

This story was copublished with Unraveled.

Less than one week into President Donald Trump’s surge of deportation arrests in Chicago, an immigration agent shot and killed a man during a traffic stop on a near suburban street Friday morning.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified the man as Silverio Villegas González, confirmed by the Mexican consulate as a 38-year-old Mexican citizen from the state of Michoacán. An unidentified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot him in the heavily Latine Chicago suburb of Franklin Park during what DHS described as a “vehicle stop,” according to an official statement.

The statement, which was immediately

quoted by media outlets, places much of the blame on Villegas González for his own death.

The agency also claimed Villegas-Gonzalez drove his car at ICE agents conducting the vehicle stop, resulting in serious injuries.

“He refused to follow law enforcements [sic] commands and drove his car at law enforcement officers,” the statement reads.

“One of the ICE o cers was hit by the car and dragged a significant distance. Fearing for his own life, the o cer fired his weapon.“

Bystander videos and eyewitness accounts, however, tell a di erent story.

Security footage near the scene in Franklin Park, as reported by CBS News, shows two plainclothes agents approaching a silver sedan that had been blocked from moving by an unmarked SUV. The sedan eventually

reverses away from the two agents, and the o cer on the passenger side points his firearm at the vehicle.

As Villegas González drives away from the agents—not toward them, like DHS claimed— the agent on the passenger side aims his weapon at the back of Villegas González’s car. Two gunshots can be heard in a separate security video. The second agent is not visible during the shooting, and it remains unclear which agent fired their weapon.

Other footage that circulated on social media following the shooting, recorded by on-scene witnesses, shows two men in body armor pulling Villegas González out of his vehicle after it crashed into the undercarriage of a semitruck about one hundred feet away from the initial tra c stop.

The pair of agents, who appear to be operating alone, are then seen laying Villegas González’s bloodied body on the ground and providing first aid. One can be heard yelling for bystanders to call 9-1-1. Neither appears seriously injured.

“He got blood . . . all over his neck and his head,” said a local witness, who asked not to be identified, of Villegas González’s condition when an ambulance arrived. The witness emerged from her apartment building to see plainclothes agents in body armor with no agency lettering wrapping Villegas González gunshot wounds in gauze.

Villegas González was pronounced dead after

being taken to the nearby Loyola University Medical Center, according to a Friday evening statement from the Village of Franklin Park. DHS reports the allegedly injured o cer is in stable condition.

Witness video obtained by Unraveled appears to show no other agents present in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

A search of Cook County court records shows the beloved father and community member was cited for four minor vehicle violations between 2010 and 2019. Just one involved a moving violation—speeding—more than 12 years ago in May 2013.

Verified ICE sightings around the greater Chicago area in the last week already show a pattern of tra c stops that have led to immigration enforcement arrests. A mix of plainclothes agents and members of the Chicago field office’s special response team (SRT), in fully militarized gear, have been spotted pulling over drivers.

This so-called “jump out” maneuver has been used for years by the Chicago Police Department’s tactical teams. Police departments in urban areas will often use an unmarked SUV to quickly cut o a target vehicle in tra c, as plainclothes officers jump out and bark orders at the vehicle’s occupants. The tactic is predominantly used to stop Black and Latine drivers, and the stops cause confusion and panic for drivers boxed in their cars, frequently leading to violent police encounters.

Silverio Villegas González’s crashed car in Franklin Park, Illinois SHAWN MULCAHY ICE IN CHICAGO

A similar maneuver led to the death of Dexter Reed in Chicago in March 2024. Officers involved in Reed’s death have since received suspensions for violating multiple department policies in how they conducted tra c stops.

ICE agents are rarely seen wearing body cameras, and municipal police department policies do not apply to any of their law enforcement activities. Likewise, federal agencies are not mandated to identify agents who fire their service weapon. There is no set time frame in which they have to release relevant records via the Freedom of Information Act, and no policy Unraveled is aware of mandates time o -duty for federal agents involved in a shooting.

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were seen processing the crime scene. As of press time, it remains unclear if the Illinois State Police or any other local law enforcement will be involved in the investigation into the incident.

There is a short history of state police investigating fatal shootings by federal agents—in 2024, the Arkansas State Police investigated the shooting death of a local o cial by agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and in 2021, the Connecticut State Police investigated a shooting involving an FBI agent. Prosecutors declined to prosecute either case.

The incident has sparked uproar in the community amid the Trump administration’s targeting of Chicago for heightened immigration enforcement.

“This blood that was spilled today will be a stain on the history of our nation,” said Illinois state senator Karina Villa of Villegas González’s killing at a press conference on Friday afternoon.

Community remains defiant

Also on Friday, only a few miles south of where Villegas González was killed, protesters demonstrated for more than 12 hours outside an ICE processing facility in the suburb of Broadview.

The demonstration overlapped with a long-running weekly prayer service for migrants detained inside the facility.

According to a September 2 statement from Broadview mayor Katrina Thompson, ICE will continue operating out of the Broadview facility as part of a “large-scale enforcement campaign”—part of the Trump administration’s so-called Operation Midway Blitz—until at least mid-October.

Protesters, armed with handmade signs and sidewalk chalk, repeatedly confronted heavily armored federal agents in face coverings as the agents moved vehicles in and out of the facility over the course of the day. These included a transit van with captives banging from the inside.

Immigration rights organizations are unable to provide an accurate estimate of the number of people snatched by federal agents over the last several days, surely in part due to the chaotic and dispersed nature of the ICE operation.

“I don’t have a sense of a number except to say that it is certainly higher than what ICE is reporting publicly,” said a spokesperson for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights in a statement. “We know ICE’s history of exploiting personal tragedies to conduct broad and unnecessary operations with increasingly aggressive, and now fatal, tactics. We also know that our partners have conducted legal intake for individuals who are not among those on DHS’s press release from earlier this week, and that abductions are still happening into the weekend.”

Before dawn, protesters blocked the main vehicle entrance to the ICE facility. Agents shifted to using a separate garage attached to the building after sunrise, repeatedly sending out teams to guard vehicle transfers. Local police from Broadview and Maywood, who were also on scene, joined with the agents’ line on at least one occasion, and at other times formed a loose line in front of the facility itself.

At multiple points over the course of the day, agents took to the facility’s roof, some armed with long guns and others seemingly recording the crowd with smartphones. One agent also appeared to be piloting a drone over the crowd around 10:30 AM.

Video captured by witnesses shows the agents becoming more aggressive as the day wore on and the crowd thinned.

Hours after an ICE agent fatally shot Villegas González in Franklin Park, SRT agents deployed projectile chemical munitions on the crowd. These included chemical gas, as well as pepper balls fired at a protester who was using a mobility aid.

“They are hurting families, and they need to stop,” said one protester at the Broadview facility, who asked not to be named, of the immigration agents’ activity in the Chicago area. “We don’t want them in Chicago. We don’t want them here in the United States.” v m smulcahy@chicagoreader.com

Northwestern looks to foster

“enlightened disagreement”

Northwestern University president Michael Schill announced earlier this month that he’s resigning from a three-year tenure that was marked by a whirlwind of campus scrutiny. Schill presided over a football hazing scandal, a student encampment protesting Israel’s genocide in Palestine, and disengenuous accusations from congressional Republicans and interest groups that he allowed anti-Semitism to fester on campus. Partisans in congress also targeted a Northwestern legal clinic in March for providing free representation to activists who organized an anti-Israel blockade on the highway.

The day of Schill’s resignation, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN), a self-proclaimed alliance of Jewish and non-Jewish stakeholders connected to Northwestern, released a statement that called on the university’s board of trustees to “take new, concrete steps that return Northwestern to its original mission of academic excellence, integrity, and student safety. . . . The University’s failures span years and include tolerance of antisemitic activism.”

A new center on campus seems to be the university’s attempt to get ahead of its critics, like CAAN. The day before Schill announced his resignation, Northwestern unveiled the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement. The center will reportedly help the university

nurture “constructive engagement and discourse in an increasingly polarized world.” A $20 million donation from trustee Jennifer Leischner Litowitz and her husband, Alec Litowitz, made the project possible—and its timing seems conspicuous.

The Litowitz Center will infuse “principles of logical thinking and enlightened disagreement into the learning goals” of a first-year seminar at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, according to a press release. One thousand incoming students are required to take the course as part of their curriculum each year.

The center will also partner with the university’s student affairs office to develop a curriculum, supposedly based on research, that will prioritize cultivating “open-mindedness,” identifying internal biases, and collaborating with people with whom students disagree.

“The intent of the center is to teach this type of critical thinking to create a foundation of understanding for constructive discussion and debate,” said Alec Litowitz in the press release. “The result may not be agreement, but something equally valuable: enlightened disagreement. Jen and I see this gift as an investment in the future of the Northwestern community that will help drive real progress and change.”

—DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB) v

Make It Make Sense is a weekly column about what’s happening and why it matters.

Jennifer Leischner Litowitz and Alec Litowitz

DANIEL KELLEGHAN

ARTS & CULTURE

CRAFT WORK

Let there be light

Making lamps is both metaphor and meditation for artist Alessandra Norman.

By KERRY CARDOZA

Alessandra Norman is constantly rearranging the lighting in her East Pilsen apartment, which doubles as her studio. It makes sense—filled as it is with lamps of the artist’s making: Some are large, some small, some are hanging or mounted on the wall, others are more like floor sculptures. All are gorgeously designed and impeccably executed.

“A lot of living here has been learning how I live and think about objects,” she said.

The El Paso-born artist got into lampmaking by happenstance, though in many ways it dovetails perfectly with her more formal art practice, which is concerned with image proliferation and perception. Both allow Norman to ruminate on how information is conveyed and received visually (hence the desire to rearrange her lighting). She keeps a stash of light bulbs of various colors and wattages to put in the lamps, depending on the vibe.

“It’s fun to me because you can also totally change the environment just based on the light and how it’s cast,” Norman said.

Norman started making lamps during the early days of COVID. She was unemployed, a year out of grad school, and sharing a studio with Lesley Jackson, who had a wealth of knowledge about woodworking (and a lot of free scrap material). “I had the ultimate amount of time to, like, dive into a new hobby, and I started just researching everything from scratch,” Norman said. A lot of these early lamps were conceived around whatever scrap wood was around: a Pac-Man-shaped block of wood painted yellow, with cheeselike holes, some of which sprout small clear or white bulbs; a series of small cylindrical lamps with multicolored flame-shaped bulbs; a plusshaped wooden form that sits at a tilt, dotted with round bulbs.

This was technically not Norman’s first time making a lamp. While in grad school for print media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), she wanted to fabricate a window with the blinds drawn, flashing blue and red lights behind them. So she took an art and technology class, which offered an

introduction to electronics. She learned basic wiring; it was also the first time she set foot in the school’s woodshop. (Norman now works at SAIC’s Sullivan Fabrication Studio.)

“Before that, I was just drawing and doing printmaking, and I was, like, ‘I just need to make this, and I need to ask how.’ So that

Compared to the labor and time required to make her paintings—which can take 60 to 70 hours to complete—the act of lampmaking has been freeing. “These [lamps] didn’t represent that type of investment risk,” Norman said. “You have nothing to lose. If you don’t like it, just make another one, and then you’ll do it better.”

Her lampmaking has always been more profitable than her artmaking. Most of her lamps weren’t on view in her studio because they’d been sold. Typically, as soon as she posts a new lamp on her Instagram, someone is interested in buying it. She’s also sold works at Tusk and at World of Variety pop-ups. She’d like to formalize these sales but finds there’s a lack of places in Chicago that sell artist-made, designed objects.

started everything. It started me working with found objects. It started me—I hate the word ‘woodworking,’ but, like, fabrication, and then it started with lights and with windows, and it’s just gone in those di erent directions.”

Norman’s paintings frequently reference windows. Drawing the Blinds , an enamel painting on medium-density fiberboard, looks like hanging window blinds with the shadows of tree branches showing through. Another enamel work, Forest Through the Trees , resembles window shades with an otherworldly green sky filtering through.

More recently, Norman has been experimenting with making lamps from both virgin material, like plastic, and waste material. A prototype she’s been working on features a 3D, traditional pleated lampshade popping out of a larger rectangular sheet of wall-mounted plastic. A bulb sits inside the “shade,” and is plugged into the wall.

A residency last fall at High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree inspired Norman to work more intentionally with waste material. Because the residency is located in the desert without many creature comforts—there are

RNORMAN alessandranorman.com/lamps

compostable toilets, outdoor showers—it got her thinking about how much trash we produce. “The world doesn’t need another vanity object. It feels really bad to be making new stu , especially stu that’s meant to be infinitely reproduced with new materials,” Norman said. “It feels less bad if I’m just taking stu out of the trash stream. So I’ve started hoarding interesting materials.”

It helps that Norman works at SAIC, where usable material is often discarded—not just o cuts of wood, but computer parts, television components, neon tubes. Though Norman wants to be careful with the way she talks about reusing material or found objects. “I never want to be seen as a recycled-materials artist. I feel like that’s doing a disservice to the potential of reuse,” she said. Even the term “reuse” puts the focus on the way a material is being used for a purpose other than what it was intended for. “It kind of devalues the material itself.”

These new directions have led to a realization that her art practice and her lampmaking practice come from the same interest in making images and understanding how meaning is constructed. Still, making lamps helps her feel grounded; it’s also more conducive to entering a creative flow state. “I just let my mind wander,” she said. “I don’t have that in the other parts of my practice, even drawing—it’s so freeing to work this way. It’s so freeing to just respond to material. It scratches all the ASMR itches.”

Norman works both at SAIC’s facilities and in her home studio—an open, organized space at the front of her apartment. When coming up with lamp ideas, she’ll often pull out materials that she’s been vibing on—strands of heat shrink, acrylic tubes, a purple dildo. Before my arrival, Norman contemplated taking all her lamps and setting them up in the studio but decided against it. “I want you to see as much as my lamps are a part of how I live and think about my space and myself in my space. All of this stu allows me to just sort of sit and soup in my ideas when I’m washing dishes,” she said.

She’s working at appreciating objects in themselves, divorced from any preconceptions—it’s also what she hopes her work inspires in others. She pulls out a shiny metal object that looks vaguely electronic. “I mean, isn’t this so beautiful?” she marvelled. “It’s a heat sink for a [computer] server. And it looks beautiful.” v

m kcardoza@chicagoreader.com

Alessandra Norman with cats Bob and Jasper and a selection of her lamps COURTESY THE ARTIST

ARTS & CULTURE

EXHIBITIONS

RArtists at Point Blank posit the body as a battleground

“Bodybuilder” brings full attention to the perverse demands thrust upon the body.

The body is a battleground for the constant construction and reconstruction of meaning—a process brought to the forefront in the aptly titled “Bodybuilder” on view at Point Blank in Logan Square. There, curators Gia Theodoropoulos and Connor Totten have staged an intense confrontation with the human form, forcing a reconsideration of how we reckon with it in a post-Internet world.

Inkjet prints by Reeves Beckley underscore how the body can become an alienated object for entertainment when we are inundated with its images. Beckley’s prints appear to be pulled from early 2000s home videos: a still image of two young children in a bathtub, a closeup of a man throwing back a beer, kids playfully curled up in dog crates. The images share the bulging warp and RGB color model of cathode-ray tube TVs and computer monitors, reflecting an early catalyst in our obsession with the digital reproduction and consumption of figures.

Continuing the dialogue of digital engagement, You Were Never Good Enough by Totten bears the impressions of computer keyboards. The individual components of the modular plaster sculpture are shaped and stacked like beams or cinder blocks but o en twist and cave in, distorting the keyboards on their surface. The work implies pressure: on each piece of the sculpture holding itself up, on the plaster surface forming its contorted surface, and on bodies through the relentless digital crusades of keyboard warriors.

Sexuality and spectacle are also considered, as seen in the neon wool wall-based works of Kate Hassett and the charcoal drawings of Eldon Stephan; race and marginalization are explored in a steel and Dura-Lar book by Marley Lyon. Together, the works in “Bodybuilder” probe positionality and meaning-making, bringing full attention to the discomfort of the perverse demands thrust upon the body. —NATALIE JENKINS “BODYBUILDER” Through 9/21: Sun 3–6 PM or by appointment, contact@pointblankchicago.com, Point Blank, 3317 W. Fullerton, pointblankchicago.com

RAt Junior. gallery, it’s a mood

There’s no unifying mood to be found in “Pure Moods,” but maybe that’s the point.

Mood is everything—at least, that’s the compelling central proposal of “Pure Moods,” up now at Junior. gallery in Lawndale. With this amorphous framing, the exhibition allows its works ample room to engage with affect on their own terms. The result is a refreshing centering of focus on the experiential quality of the art object.

Particularly for children who grew up with the Internet (like myself), paintings by Cj Shaw are hypnotizing, drawing from the text/image structure and nonsensical content of memes. HOW CAN I GET INTO SOMEONE’S DREAM, featuring bold text in Impact font blaring the same message as its title, brings the unashamed obsession characteristic of many digital spaces to a static physical realm. With the figure of a man in a suit with his back turned and accompanying text reading “THOSE EYES” and “THAT MOUTH,” it’s easy to imagine some rogue Sigma-type fantasizing over an out-of-reach crush—feelings familiar to socially deprived screen users with whom this kind of image is most recognizable.

Collages by Xavier Ford-Legrand are attentive in a way that is less frenetic and more contemplative. Ford-Legrand gathers sometimes subtle, sometimes off-putting textures and patterns into surprisingly delicate compositions. In bdrllrd, quilt squares, pooling ink, florals, hair clippings, and small weavings combine to create what feels like a map for a dream. In this state, narrative escapes and form evades recognition but psychic impression lingers.

Tatiana Sky’s sculptures cultivate a powerful spiritual sensibility. The twisting arms and black-silver gradient of Subsoil conjure the divine energy of ancient reliquaries. Wing, a wall-based sculpture, resembles a wrought iron sconce with its darkened exterior and molded protrusions. But divinity is also frightening, and these works lean into that holy fear. Subsoil seems to subsume what looks like a small crucifix at its base, and close examination reveals Wing to be a chimera of cast ornamentals like the fleur-de-lis.

There’s no singular unifying mood to be found in the works of “Pure Moods,” but maybe that’s exactly the point—mood as the ever-ambulating, all-encompassing site for presence and exchange. —NATALIE JENKINS “PURE MOODS” Through 9/28: by appointment, jrjrjr.biz@gmail.com, Junior., 1950 S. Troy, jrjrjr.biz/ exhibitions

RTo hold and to be held

“Sacred Containers” at Chicago Artists Coalition showcases vessels of culture, history, and identity.

What is a container? What does it contain?

Curated by Christina Nafziger, “Sacred Containers: Capsules, Conduits, and Other Stories,” on view at Chicago Artists Coalition, juxtaposes shapes, forms, and metaphors. The exhibition visualizes divine vessels that hold the very fiber that makes up civilization and identity, documenting memories, histories, traditions, and transformations.

Visitors are immediately greeted by works by Cecilia Beaven, whose multimedia practice forms an original mythology that transcends popular folklore and Mexican identity portrayed in mainstream narratives. One piece, titled Unbroken, is an 80-foot scroll

ink drawing. It extends along the top of the gallery wall, around a corner, then drapes down to the floor on the other side. The ink drawings begin with a humanoid monster. Its mouth enlarges and devours its own body, then it digests, and transforms into a sacred deer, an incense burner, and, eventually, a hyena’s head through whose mouth a new person is born.

Next in the exhibition are FÁTIMA’s metal sculptures forged using traditional metalsmithing techniques. One would instantly notice some unique mediums on their labels: protection, presence, earth, water, air, fire, aether. These sculptures, some minimal and others intricate, are containers holding the act of making; they are artifacts of FÁTIMA’s spirit and existence.

The final portion of the exhibition feels like an archaeological excavation of history and heritage,

highlighting multimedia installations by researcher, publisher, and multidisciplinary artist bex ya yolk, whose research-driven practice is deeply rooted in reproductive histories, rights, and design. Yolk’s pieces are artifacts with intimidating rawness. They call for the complete surrender of existing biases and consciousness, so our human brains can understand the unspoken violence in stone babies lying on metal stands and fabric that resembles the spread legs of someone in labor. —XIAO DACUNHA “SACRED CONTAINERS: CAPSULES, CONDUITS, AND OTHER STORIES” Through 10/9: by appointment, contact@chicagoartistscoalition.org, Chicago Artists Coalition, 1431 W. Hubbard, Suite 201, chicagoartistscoalition.org/events/sacredcontainers-capsules-conduits-and-other-stories v

Relax, & Meet YouR NeighboRs!

Follow an aging Heiress thirsting for love, meet a Black musician who connects with a Tibetan artist. See a High-Society megalomaniac collide with a slick hustler in Boystown. Enter a life changing in Pilsen, listen to a homeless woman, a desperate Gold Coast doorman, and a faith healer. Will a unfamiliar philanthropist save a confused teen-age boy? What happens on the South Side, Lake Forest, in a Beauty Parlor, and Nigeria? And that’s just part of it!

Work by Kate Hassett at Point Blank

COURTESY POINT BLANK

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Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) impact every community, with devastating effects. In 2020, the Illinois Lottery launched a specialty Instant Lottery ticket called The End of Alzheimer’s Begins With Me, designating 100 percent of its profits to the Alzheimer’s Association, Illinois Chapter. In 2024, the Illinois Lottery expanded this commitment with the launch of the 7X Bingo Multiplier, a joint specialty ticket where a portion of the profits raised supports Alzheimer’s care in Illinois, along with nine other worthy causes. Together, these efforts have raised more than $5.7 million for the Alzheimer’s Association Illinois Chapter, which provides care and support services for individuals and families grappling with ADRD as well as education and public outreach programs. The ticket, which has a cheery brightgreen color, costs $5 and is available for purchase at more than 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers throughout the state. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information.

Alzheimer’s Disease is a progressive medical disorder in which amyloid plaques and bundles of fibers called neurofibrillary tangles build up in the brain, slowly destroying cognitive function and eventually interfering with everyday life. In the U.S., Illinois has been at the forefront of Alzheimer’s awareness, research, education, and support services since 1980, when a group of family caregivers, physicians, and researchers led by Jerome H. Stone founded the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago. Today, the association maintains a robust presence in all 50 U.S. states, serving more than seven million people living with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) and nearly 12 million caregivers.

The Alzheimer’s Association’s Illinois Chapter—which remains headquartered in the Windy City—serves more than 250,000 people living with ADRD and 351,000 caregivers across 87 coun-

ties throughout the state. Funding the chapter receives from the Illinois Lottery’s 7X Bingo Multiplier Instant Ticket supports its education and outreach programming, including those tailored to marginalized communities, which help empower the public to learn more about the condition, access screenings, and, if necessary, connect with medical providers and other resources.

Since it was first discovered in 1906, Alzheimer’s has been considered incurable, and treatments have focused on slowing down its progression and managing symptoms rather than targeting the underlying cause of the disease. But in recent years, a number of scientific and medical breakthroughs have flipped the script on what we know about Alzheimer’s, providing new hope for many of those living with ADRD along with millions of people worldwide who are at risk of developing the condition during their lifetime.

“A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s today is not the same as a diagnosis 10 years ago—there truly is hope.” says Delia Jervier, executive director of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Illinois Chapter.

Much of that hope comes in the form of new medications, including the groundbreaking monoclonal antibodies Lecanamab (Leqembi) and Donanemab (Kisuna), which received FDA approval in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Both medications clear amyloid plaques from the brain in patients in the early stages of ADRD. Though neither is a cure for the disease, clinical studies have shown that when administered to people with mild symptoms, patients’ ability to live independently was prolonged by eight months with Donanemab, and ten months with Lecanamab.

The success of those medications have been a game-changer for people more and only helping medications but plaques there Researchers lifestyle the exciting recent tion at the maceutical Participants od of including Medical “Basically, the diet), week,

2024 Walk to End Alzheimer’s. Photo courtesy Courtesy Alzheimer’s Association, Illinois Chapter

Data:

diagnosis executive includ(Leapproval amyloid ADRD. have symptoms, eight for

people in the early stages of ADRD, who are now able to spend more time with family and loved ones, participate in clinical trials, and experience a higher quality of life. “For the last 20 years, the only medications [for Alzheimer’s] that were on the market were for helping with the symptoms of the disease,” Jervier says. “So you had medications to help with agitation and to help calm people down, but there hadn’t been anything that actually addressed removing plaques from the brain that cause Alzheimer’s disease—and now there are.”

Researchers have also made major inroads in understanding how lifestyle changes can delay progression of ADRD or even reduce the risk of developing it in the first place—and some of the most exciting work has been conducted in Illinois. Jervier points to a recent U.S. Pointer study, supported by the Alzheimer’s Association with additional support from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), concerning nonpharmaceutical approaches to the treatment of cognitive decline. Participants were given strict programs and tracked over a period of two years by clinicians in six institutions across the country, including Chicago’s Advocate Health Care and Rush University Medical Center.

“Basically, [participants] were given a very strict diet to follow, the MIND diet (which is kind of a Mediterranean-based type of diet), they were given exercises to do consistently three times a week, they made sure they slept at least eight to nine hours, and

controlled their blood sugar very tightly,” Jervier says.

The results, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association’s annual international conference in July, showed a marked improvement in cognitive function among participants in both the study’s structured and self-guided programs. “That was really a breakthrough, because we are now able to actually talk about brain health and really definitely make the statement that ‘If you do these things, we can’t say they’ll definitely prevent, but we can say they will reduce the risk of developing this disease,’” Jervier says. “Some of the individuals in the study started functioning at an age level of about two years younger than what they actually are.”

Jervier credits much of the developments in ADRD research to an influx of funding over the past decade, which in turn, she says, stems from increased awareness and interest in the conditions on a public level. “About 10 years ago, it was only about $400 million that was dedicated at the NIH for research of Alzheimer’s,” she says. “Now, through the advocacy of the Alzheimer’s Association, we’re at about $3.8 billion in research dollars dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.”

That means that every dollar the association receives through the Illinois Lottery’s specialty ticket can make a difference in fighting Alzheimer’s and improving the lives of those living with ADRD. “The sooner a diagnosis can be made, the sooner people can get on those treatments, and slow down cognitive decline and remove

the plaques from the brain,” Jervier says. “So we’re now ramping up our efforts around education—around the signs and symptoms of the disease and what we call modifiable risk factors—because now we can talk about things like brain health and what you can do now to slow down cognitive decline or delay as much as possible the onset of the disease at all—and possibly prevent it.”

For more information on the Alzheimer’s Association’s Illinois Chapter, visit www.alz.org/illinois. If you or a loved one is living with ADRD and or have specific questions about the condition or support services, you can call their 24/7 helpline,1-800-272-3900, which accommodates more than 200 languages, to speak to a master-level clinician.

This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

Data: Alzheimer’s Association. Infographic by Amber Huff

THEATER

PREVIEW

Gangsta Baby moves from London to Uptown

Cameron Raasdal-Munro’s semi-autobiographical story of growing up queer with a mobster father gets its U.S. premiere at Open Space Arts.

By KERRY REID

The chance meeting behind the story of how Cameron Raasdal-Munro’s first play traveled from the UK to its U.S. premiere at the tiny Open Space Arts in Uptown sounds like something out of a screenplay. But then, so does the raw and twisted plot of Gangsta Baby—even though it draws quite a bit from the 26-year-old author’s own life.

Raasdal-Munro was working as a host at a restaurant in London’s Soho neighborhood right before the run of Gangsta Baby at the Hope Theatre in January 2024. One night, Chicago writer and producer G. Riley Mills (who goes by Gary informally) came into the restaurant.

“He was very American and was very friendly and said, ‘Hey, how you doing?’” recalls Raasdal-Munro. “And I was like, ‘I’m great.’ And I was a bit too honest ‘cause I was a bit excited. I went, ‘I’ve just written my first play and it’s gonna premiere in London in January.’ And he went, ‘Holy moly, I’m a playwright too.’ He was like, ‘What’s the play about?’ And then he went, ‘Who are you? No, tell me about you. Tell me who you are.’ So I kind of went through my life story—who I am, where I come from, all of this di erent stu , and my experiences. And he went, ‘Man, that’s an amazing story. So what’s the play about?’ And I went, ‘Well, I just told you.’”

In Gangsta Baby , Raasdal-Munro plays Junior, a queer sex worker in the English seaside town of Hastings who is dealing with generational trauma embodied by his mobster father, Senior, whose own preference for men doesn’t stop him from abusing Junior and Junior’s trans half-brother, Pete, who is a street artist in Hastings. Director Rikki Beadle-Blair, who has been with the play since its first reading, also helms the Open Space Arts production.

GANGSTA BABY

Through 10/5 : Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; Open Space Arts, 1411 W. Wilson, openspacearts.org, $ 30 ($25 students/seniors)

setting (the basement theater seats less than 30 patrons) was tempting. It also provided an opportunity to rework some of the script.

Beadle-Blair, 64, has long been a champion of new queer voices onstage and onscreen in the UK, and runs the multimedia production company Team Angelica. He met Raasdal-Munro through the young artist’s former drama school in London.

“I mentor a lot of artists, so I was doing a whole kick-up-the-backside kind of workshop and making them all do something towards

of Junior’s clients, becomes involved in the struggle between Junior and Senior, engaging in class-based role-playing with Junior. But there is also tenderness, particularly in the scenes between Pete and Junior. (Chicago actors Josh Odor, Bryan Nicholas Carter, and Jensen Knudsen play Senior, Mitch, and Pete.)

Raasdal-Munro says, “As human beings, we are really deeply complex. I am a very proudly queer writer, so I love writing queer stories. But there’s so much within a person’s life that being queer will conflict with and sometimes harmonize with. So for me, it was bringing everything to the forefront—whether it’s about class, whether it’s about sex work, whether it’s about addiction, or queerness—and how they all coincide and how they all collide. And also just how di cult it is to be a parent, how di cult it is to be o spring.”

Though the script is going through some changes for its U.S. premiere, one thing that both writer and director have resisted is the temptation to make it any less British in its references and locutions. Says Beadle-Blair, “We wanted to really communicate with but not patronize the American audience. We wanted to connect with them and give them opportunities to learn new phrases and new slang, but in ways that they can take in rather than feel alienated by.”

“I am a very proudly queer writer, so I love writing queer stories.”

After their encounter, Mills asked Raasdal-Munro to send him the script. “He got back to me the next day. We met up and he kind of chatted through, helped me with talking about how to do a production and talking about doing your first play. He was very supportive and very kind. And then he came on as a producer. We did it in London. We did very well. And I came out [to Chicago] for Thanksgiving [2024] and Gary was like, ‘Let’s just do a reading at Facility Theatre.’”

Open Space artistic director David Zak was at the reading, and Raasdal-Munro and Beadle-Blair both decided that the prospect of remounting the show in such an intimate

their ambitions before they left the room,” says Beadle-Blair. “And Cameron attended, and he had a play he’d written.” Beadle-Blair told Raasdal-Munro to get a group of actors together the next day for a reading. After some stops and starts, Gangsta Baby began to take shape. “I often tell people they should write the story that only they could tell,” says Beadle-Blair. “That doesn’t mean it has to be autobiographical. Just maybe a passion. Maybe you’ve been obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and know so much about her. You can write something that other people have missed.”

Gangsta Baby is about undeniably violent events, and Junior brings the audience into his story from the first moments, talking to them as if they are potential tricks. Mitch, one

“I always try and write for one specific audience member as truthfully as I can and as authentically as I can, as honestly as I can. Because then it will connect to everybody,”

Raasdal-Munro says.

Adds Beadle-Blair, “The big thing as well was we’re going to Chicago. We’re not going to LA. We’re going to a place that is known for cutting-edge theater, that digs into human truth.”

Raasdal-Munro hopes to turn his play into a film down the road, and he has other scripts he’s working on. “But right now we’re just really, really happy to be here in Chicago. I’m in love with this city. It’s gorgeous.” And his experiences working on his play locally reflect that first encounter with Mills. “Everyone’s so kind but really honest. People let you know what they think, and I’m about that.” v

m kreid@chicagoreader.com

Cameron Raasdal-Munro as Junior in Gangsta Baby TADHG MITCHEL

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THEATER

OPENING

R Prepper, Neo-Futurist style

Abby Paj Tries to Stay Alive is a humorous and uneasy manifesto.

72 hours—that’s the amount of time the preppers reckon we have, should a catastrophic event obliterate our societal structures, before humans turn full-on feral. And Abby is going to be ready for it! Especially if it means they can avoid dealing with their own more pedestrian anxieties like navigating social conflict or personal deadlines.

It’s apt that Abby Paj Tries to Stay Alive is at the Neo-Futurists, because at least one-third of it is built on Neo-Futurist vibes. Their commitment to nonillusory theater means the person is representing their actual self, telling a story, and simultaneously doing things— usually things that make the little neurons in the back of your brain connect to the ones in the front as you make symbolic associations in the context of your own life.

But there is another significant fraction of the show that is its own unhinged exploration of the weird subculture of survivalism, and that is purely the brainchild of writer-performer Abby Pajakowski, working under the keen direction of Sammy Zeisel.

Abby sets us up early for the ride, enlisting volunteers should 911 be needed, and clearly indicating the emergency exits, especially the existential exit that they feel both zero desire and a strange compulsion to move through. Soon, we are enjoying their deep dives into survivalist subreddits, learning how to purify water right along with mini history lessons on the commodification of survivalism during the cold war. But don’t imagine a dry presentation of facts you will never remember. Instead, picture a panoply of gadgets paralleling a similar onslaught of revelations as Abby explores their anxious trajectory through their life.

When not preparing lemon water or stacking canned goods, Abby commandeers portable prepper LED lighting (Spencer Meeks and Ryn Hardiman designed lights and sound), transistor radios, thoughtful audience interaction, and the occasional moment of dance to counterbalance their freak-outs and fears. The oscillations between these tasks and emotional states have a disconcerting but lulling effect. It all feels oddly familiar, like the personal path we each take daily to navigate horrific news cycles, growing social unrest, and our role in the world while also being mindful to reserve enough mental capacity to keep the power on and food on the table. Peppered with lemons, poignant anecdotes, and shadow play, Abby Paj Tries to Stay Alive is not just a play; it’s a snapshot of now, as well as a humorous and uneasy manifesto for a generation. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE Through 10/4: Thu–Sat 7 PM; also Mon 9/22 7 PM (industry night), ASL interpretation Thu 10/2, Neo-Futurist Theater, 5153 N. Ashland, 773-878-4557, neofuturists.org, pay what you can or $20

Basketful of symbolism

Ghost Fetus feels underdeveloped at Trap Door.

A giant picnic basket (think Yogi Bear) sits on an otherwise bare stage. A young person sleeps in front of it. Three other young people enter the scene, then split into two couples and mime lovemaking while intoning churchy songs. A woman in a diaphanous dress emerges from the basket. She says she’s the ghost of an aborted fetus who’s come back to haunt the young woman, as

well as the other three, for the choices they’ve made.

Suz Evans’s play, directed by Anna Klos in its world premiere at Trap Door Theatre, is a series of disconnected scenes meant to evoke the struggles of queer couples in a small, intolerant Christian community. These are performed through song, movement, and occasional dialogue.

I have no doubt of the sincerity of the playwright and admire the commitment of the performers, but I couldn’t connect either emotionally or intellectually to anything shown. The trouble starts with the oversize picnic basket. We’re told it’s meant to represent a woman’s body and what it carries, but also reminds a character of a basket her grandmother gave her; then she goes on to say she carried the remains of her aborted child in it. This basket becomes a kind of moving target, standing in for whatever the characters are talking about, which le me completely confused.

There’s a violent death toward the end, but no real resolution to much of what’s been shown. This is a bunch of thoughts and feelings needing a much sturdier container. —DMITRY SAMAROV GHOST FETUS Through 9/27: Thu–Sat 8 PM; Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland, 773-384-0494, trapdoortheatre.com, $22

RBlack joy and healing

Rabbits in Their Pockets at Lifeline is heartfelt and smart.

At the center of Rabbits in Their Pockets, the new play by Kimberly Dixon-Mays now at Lifeline Theatre under Christopher Wayland’s direction, are two sisters, their beliefs in different technologies, and how those technologies help them thrive.

A er their parents’ death, semi-estranged siblings Ash and Harley reunite to sell their childhood home. Ash (LaKecia Harris) is a rocket scientist, while her sister, Harley (Simmery Branch), has committed herself to improvisation, which she calls “a Black technology” in all its forms, and is developing a culturally informed improv center. When Ash accepts Harley’s invitation to help her fix up the house, she uses the remodel as an opportunity to test out a system she has invented that collects and redistributes Black joy.

from each other, creating something new and lasting in the process. —ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER RABBITS IN THEIR POCKETS Through 10/5: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, lifelinetheatre.com, $45

RInstrumental Theatre Company spreads its wings

A lakeside production of The Seagull provides a lovely introduction.

Instrumental Theatre Company’s inaugural production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull is the third site-specific staging of the Russian playwright’s work I’ve seen this year, a er New Theatre Project’s Uncle Vanya at the Servi-Sure factory in January and Sandbox Theatre Collective’s Three Sisters at United Church of Rogers Park last month. This trend doesn’t upset me, to say the least.

Instrumental’s staging, directed by company artistic director Skylar Grieco, begins outside the Berger Park Cultural Center’s north mansion (originally the home of pharmaceutical executive Samuel Gunder). The lakeside setting provides a felicitous backdrop for the first act, in which aspiring playwright Konstantin (Levi Denton-Hughes) presents his attempt to create “new forms” in theater. He also wants to stick a thumb in the eye of his actress mother, Arkadina (Jennifer Mohr), and her writer paramour, Boris Trigorin (Ian Rigg), whose work Konstantin thinks is pedestrian and pandering.

lined 105-minute version (adapted by the company) offers a fine introduction. When the action moves from the first scene into a parlor and dining room in the Gunder mansion, we feel the walls closing in, as they do for all the characters. The actors also all play instruments, including guitar, accordion, and harmonica, giving several interludes a jangly folk-pop vibe under Morsovillo’s music direction.

Denton-Hughes’s Konstantin is both a self-absorbed man-child and someone who sees through the pretensions of his mother, without quite understanding Arkadina’s own struggles to stay afloat in a world that isn’t kind to aging women. Rigg’s Trigorin knows himself well enough to know that he’s incapable of really changing. And Gibson’s Nina leaves us wondering what she’ll make of herself a er she leaves the mansion one last time. I’m eager to see what Instrumental comes up with next.

—KERRY REID THE SEAGULL Through 9/27: Thu–Fri 7 PM, Sat 5 PM; Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan, instrumentaltheatre.org, $20 (limited number of $10 tickets at each performance); sold out, but waitlist may be available

RBacking away from the cliff

TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix deconstructs “bury your queers” tropes.

Musical adaptations of 90s hits are so hot now (see Death Becomes Her and the upcoming 10 Things I Hate About You). That’s not quite what TL;DR: Thelma Louise; Dyke Remix, now running at Theo, is. EllaRose Chary and Brandon James Gwinn’s take on Callie Khouri and Ridley Scott’s 1991 film explores representation and the “bury your queers” trope to the sound of pop-punk.

Dixon-Mays’s comedy, developed through Lifeline’s BIPOC Developmental Workshop, extends Lifeline’s focus on literary adaptation, using Black folktales such as Br’er Rabbit as a jumping-off point. Emily McConnell’s observant costume design distills Dixon-Mays’s study of contrasts, and Shokie Tseumah’s carefully considered set is full of surprises, coming alive in an excellent coup de theatre. Felisha McNeal as Inola, a mysterious woman who takes an interest in Harley, and Marcus D. Moore as Jasper, a childhood friend of the sisters, support Branch and Harris’s warm and witty performances. As they look for a way out of grief, the sisters come together, using their respective approaches to center Black joy. Rabbits in Their Pockets, both heartfelt and extremely smart, celebrates how the sisters learn how to heal

His muse is Nina (Ruby Gibson), a young neighbor who dreams of escaping the suffocating home of her father and stepmother by going on the stage.

As is so o en the case with Chekhov, unrequited dreams and passions are the order of the day. Masha (Sarah Cushman), whose father runs the country estate for Arkadina’s ailing brother, Sorin (DC Cathro), loves Konstantin, but he won’t give her the time of day, while impoverished school teacher Medvedenko (Jack Morsovillo, a delightfully understated scene-stealer) pines for Masha. Trigorin seems most interested in fishing in the lake, but he’s really setting the line to snag Nina for reasons that he himself doesn’t understand.

If you’ve never seen the play before, this stream-

When T and L (thanks, copyright law!) are conjured by a queer punk band, they finally embark on a relationship, only to grapple with their place in today’s queer community. The tension between Gen X’s embrace of openness and Gen Z’s penchant for jargon plays out in the heroines’ conversations with the band, but Chary’s book trips over itself with a few too many interludes, circling its points without biting.

It’s a good thing, then, that Gwinn’s score and Claire DiVizio’s sharp direction more than compensate for TL;DR’s book.

In the titular roles, Carolyn Waldee and Claire Guthrie are stellar singers and actors, and the band under the musical direction of Ellie Kahn is excellent—particularly Jeff Rodriguez, whose comic timing is matched by her outrageous drumming chops. Designers Rose Johnson (set) and Ellie Fey (lights) have transformed Theo Ubique into a riot grrrl rumpus room—all string lights and posters for feminist punk icons like Bikini Kill and X-Ray Spex. (Think Hedwig on the set of Wayne’s World.) Not everything about TL;DR works, but the things that do are excellent. Through the power of its incredible cast and riotous music, TL;DR transcends its shagginess, a full-throated testament to the power of love. —ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER TL;DR: THELMA LOUISE; DYKE REMIX Through 10/12: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 6 PM; Howard Street Theatre, 721 N. Howard, Evanston, 773-939-4101, theo-u.com, $39-$44 v

Abby Paj Tries to Stay Alive JUSTIN BARBIN

RREELING: THE 43RD CHICAGO LGBTQ+ INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Fri 9/ 19–Sun 9/28, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, 2828 N. Clark, Chicago Filmmakers, 1326 W. Hollywood, festival passes $ 65 –$150, $ 55 –$130 Reeling members, single tickets $15 general admission, $12 Reeling members (excludes special admissions), reelingfilmfest.org

FESTIVAL PREVIEW

It’s Reeling!

A Reader writer’s guide to the 43rd iteration of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival

By ANDREA THOMPSON

The Reeling LGBTQ+ International Film Festival has returned, and as one might expect, there’s quite a bit to say in a time when queer communities are being subjected to vicious attacks that seek to strip people of not only hard-fought rights, but also personhood itself. It’s hardly a surprise that a common theme in many of the 2025 festival offerings is perseverance, whether through religious or political intolerance, economic trouble, personal tragedy, or conflicts of self. Whether your interests lean toward animation, documentary, personal drama, experimental film, or comedy, Reeling has something for everyone to enjoy.

American Schemers (2024)

Two small-time con artists decide to impersonate the heir to a wealthy estate for one last job. What could possibly go wrong? In the hands of Chicago director Jack C. Newell, about as much as you’d expect and then some. After Kara (Sydney Blackburn) and Oly (Michael Waller) head to Wisconsin, what seems like a simple get-rich-quick scheme turns hilariously complicated thanks to a community filled with backstabbers and schemers in their own right, quickly culminating in a caper with far more at stake than a case of mistaken identity. Sun 9/21 2 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 85 min.

Cactus Pears (2025)

Because he’s in his 30s and still unmarried, Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) is already something of an oddity when he returns to his rural hometown in Western India for the melancholy ten-day mourning ritual following his father’s death. Set in a traditional environment that demands conformity, Rohan Kanawade’s Cactus Pears is a tender study in the cinema of repression, as the lonely Anand reconnects with childhood companion Balya (Suraaj Suman), finding freedom from the stifling expectations of their community in the lush isolation of the

natural world. But both men also have to reckon with whether their tentative romance will be yet another tryst, or if they can break out of their confined roles when Anand returns to Mumbai. Tue 9/23 6:30 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 112 min., in Marathi with English subtitles

Censurada

(2025)

Continuing on a theme of religious and societal repression in beautiful rural environments, Censurada follows two very different young women in 1960s Spain: Salome (Nerea Rodríguez), a dyslexic organist, and Miranda (Sena Ortiz de Zárate), a fiery rebel who steadfastly refuses her mother’s attempts to marry her o . When the pair learn of a songwriting contest with a cash prize, both of them see a chance to escape to more open-minded shores, but the community’s vicious attempts to crush their love affair threaten to have devastating and permanent consequences. Sun 9/21 6:45 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 6, 81 min., in Spanish with English subtitles

Dreamers (2025)

When home can be taken from you at any moment, what does it look like, and is it even possible? And if you manage to find home in another person, what happens if that person can be taken from you as well? Such are the questions Isio (Ronke Adékoluejo), an undocumented Nigerian migrant, must wrestle with after she is forced to flee her home country, only to be imprisoned in a UK detention center. Terrified of deportation, Isio finds unlikely guidance and warmth from the other women also living with constant uncertainty; she even begins a tender romance with her roommate, Farah (Ann Akinjirin). But as the system repeatedly fails them both, Isio begins to contemplate taking her fate into her own hands. Sat 9/20 2:45 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 78 min.

Drive Back Home (2024)

There’s a grim recognition of the open persecution of the queer community in the 1970sset Canadian tragicomedy Drive Back Home, which sees New Brunswick plumber Weldon

(Charlie Creed-Miles) reluctantly traveling to Toronto to bail out his estranged brother Perley (Alan Cumming) after he’s arrested for having sex with another man in a public park. Inspired by director Michael Clowater’s family history, the brothers are forced to grapple with the prejudices of the time, their disturbing family history, and the complicated love they share as they make their way back one thousand miles to the place they once both called home. Sun 9/21 6:30 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 100 min.

If You Should Leave Before Me (2025)

Is there ever a way to really cope with the fact that it isn’t only us who will die one day, but also those we love? Probably not, even for the solid Mark (Shane P. Allen) and mischievously chaotic Joshua (John Wilcox), blissful marrieds whose job is to guide the restless souls of the deceased into the afterlife. As various doors appear in their home—leading to handmade sets that symbolize the baggage the recently departed still cling to—Mark and Joshua must also confront the tragedy that is

Clockwise from top le : Stills from If You Should Leave Before Me (2025), It's Dorothy! (2025), and Censurada (2025) COURTESY REELING

continued from p. 15

trapping them as surely as any of the spirits they’ve committed themselves to helping. Sat 9/20 4:30 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 120 min.

It’s Dorothy! (2025)

Why have Dorothy and the story of The Wizard of Oz continued to have such a hold on us, to the extent that wildly successful films continue to be made about her and her world? The documentary It’s Dorothy! tries to answer that question, enlisting the aid of various fi lm and Oz historians, as well as the many women who have found joy and liberation in playing the title character. The result is a playful journey much like that of the winning Kansas resident, as it delves into her origins, the landmark 1939 adaptation of the story, how and why Judy Garland’s performance cemented her status as a beloved queer icon, and the various incarnations of Dorothy since. Sun 9/21 4:15 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 97 min., postscreening Q&A with director Jeffrey McHale and Oz historian Ryan Jay

Jimmy (2024)

For his portrait of an artist that will always fascinate, photographer and filmmaker Yashaddai Owens takes the experimental route in a black-and-white, 16 mm film perspective of James Baldwin’s early years, when he arrived in Paris for the first time at age 24. Filmed in mostly intimate spaces, Owen imagines Baldwin interacting with his environment, discovering a new sense of self and a more erotic liberation as a gay man while he begins to become the literary giant we know. Thu 9/25 8:30 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 6, 67 min.

Lesbian Space Princess (2024)

When your toxic bounty hunter ex-girlfriend is kidnapped and held for ransom by Straight White Maliens, what’s a royal to do? Well, if you’re the introverted, perennially anxious Saira (Shabana Azeez), you leave the safety of gay space and go on the run with a sentient, very problematic 21st-century spaceship, picking up a runaway pop idol in the bargain. And on the way, you might just get that confidence you were missing, along with a very adult magical girl transformation. Fri 9/19 7 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 7, 87 min., postshow after-party tickets available, costumes encouraged

She’s the He (2025)

Gender may be a construct, but some of the patriarchy’s ways stay strong . . . or do they? This much-needed fresh take on the gender-swap comedy made by and for queer people starts in a way that is both conventional and very 2025: Longtime high school besties Alex (Nico Carney) and Ethan (Misha Osherovich) pretend to be trans women to put rumours that they’re gay to rest—and so Alex can get closer to his crush, Sasha (Malia Pyles). Elated to have access to o -limits spaces like the girls’ locker room, things are bound to escalate, especially after Ethan realizes that what started as a joke might actually be sincere. As the truth comes out, Alex and Ethan’s friendship is tested like never before, and they must both reckon with the consequences of their actions. Thu 9/25 8:15 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 4, 82 min.

The Silence of My Hands (2024)

Mexican filmmaker Manuel Acuña’s feature debut follows two deaf Mexican women who struggle to stay connected as their lives and ambitions start to diverge. Rosa Casillas is determined to become Guadalajara’s first deaf lawyer, while her partner Sai Yunuen Medina's journey takes her to California as she begins questioning her gender identity. Told almost entirely in sign language, the two find creative ways to stay connected as they try to hold onto their goals as well as each other. Sat 9/20 4:15 PM, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Theater 6, 80 min., in Spanish and sign languages with English subtitles v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

I’ve never thought much about the concept of the matinee; it’s the French word for “morning,” but in our language it denotes “a musical or dramatic performance or social or public event held in the daytime and especially the afternoon.” I wonder why this necessitates its own term—does it matter when one sees a play or movie?

Ever since I moved to Chicago, I’ve enjoyed matinees, especially at the Music Box Theatre. I distinctly remember one of my first times going there, before I had made friends or met anyone to see movies with. I went to see King Vidor’s The Crowd (1928) as part of organist Dennis Scott’s defunct Silent Saturday matinee series. (The Chicago Film Society now programs most of the theater’s silent film offerings.) Fourteen years ago, I loved films, especially classic films, but I didn't know much about silent cinema. The Crowd blew my mind, and I look back to that as a defining moment in my evolution as a writer, critic, cinema lover, and all-around moviegoer. I’ve been thinking about it lately, as last Wednesday, as part of CHIRP Radio’s First Time reading series at Martyrs’, I read a story about how I saw my now-husband for the second time at a screening of Leos Carax’s Holy Motors (2012) at the Music Box; the film opens with a reference to a famous scene from The Crowd in which a camera pans high above an audience of people watching a movie. I often imagine myself as part of that crowd, considering what it means to be a member of an audience both as a refuge from the loneliness of modern society and as one among the homogenous masses.

But I digress. Matinees have been top of mind because this weekend I enjoyed two of them at the Music Box. First, on Saturday, I

A

saw Tsui Hark’s Peking Opera Blues (1986); then on Sunday, I saw Erich von Stroheim’s 1919 silent film Blind Husbands , presented by the Chicago Film Society and featuring always-excellent accompaniment by pianist David Drazin. Narratively and culturally, the films couldn’t be more different, but the experience of watching them bright-eyed on a weekend morning, ca eine coursing through my veins and the whole day ahead of me, united them and my weekend, making each day all the better. Peking Opera Blues had an illuminating introduction by Carson Wang, a graduate student in U. Chicago’s master of arts program and a political organizer with Asian American Midwest Progressives and Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago. The film is bright, colorful, and zany; any kind of plot is secondary to its freneticism, which moves the story along at a pace that often makes it di cult to follow (whilst still being enjoyable on other levels). On the other hand, Blind Husbands is black-and-white—visually and morally—and altogether more intense. But there are moments of cinematographic sublimity that showcase von Stroheim’s preternatural gift as a filmmaker.

On Saturday, I also went to see Darren Aronofsky’s latest, Caught Stealing (2025), at the Alamo Drafthouse. I’m mostly ambivalent about the trendy theater chain but confess to appreciating it more when it’s not as crowded, such as during the day. I sat by the windows facing Clark Street for a spell and enjoyed secondhand the hubbub following a Cubs game. But ultimately, I was going where I wanted to go, which was to a movie—and not a bad one at that. It was darker than I had anticipated from the trailers but still more fun than other Aronofsky films, and there's a cat in it.

Last week, I intended to see more at the Music Box’s Noir City festival, but, reader, life got in the way. I’m going through a major life change that may only serve to make this column more interesting, but in the moment left me bereft. The movies have certainly helped; they’re a constant in my life that I can’t take for granted, and part of this change is reclaiming the passion I have for art, especially cinema.

Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.

still from Peking Opera Blues (1986)

A still from Jimmy (2024) COURTESY REELING

FILM

NOW PLAYING

RA Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Just in case anyone missed the “bold” in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’s title, the first two minutes include credits on almost blindingly bright colored backgrounds, Phoebe WallerBridge hamming it up with an absurd German accent, and a conversation about performance allowing us to find truth. It may be the film warning viewers that if you’re not willing to buy into the silliness and earnestness, there’s no way you’ll enjoy what’s to come.

The titular journey—guided by a mysterious rental car agency—takes David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie), two single adults who no longer believe in love (if they ever did), back through several major moments in their lives. Going through these experiences together allows them to face their pasts and learn about each other as they alternate his and hers traumas. On paper it sounds awful, but the vast majority of it works.

Farrell and Robbie may well be the key to that, as their stardom and chemistry help sell some of the film’s more cloying lines from writer Seth Reiss’s script. Even when they aren’t talking, they’re pulling off magic tricks of charm. When she smiles, Robbie’s eyes are nothing less than miraculous, and Farrell, in a light-blue suit with salt-and-pepper scruff, lighting up a cigarette while leaning against a pillar, contends for the hottest anyone has ever looked onscreen. They both also wholeheartedly commit to a musical number that feels like director Kogonada’s (very strong) case for a studio letting him direct a big-budget classic musical.

Costume designer Arjun Bhasin, production designer Katie Byron, and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb deserve credit too; they make these stars and the world around them look amazing. A sequence in a museum a er-hours lit only by flashlights, Robbie’s various red and yellow ensembles, and the smattering of sunsets are all truly stunning.

It’s frustrating, then, that A Big Bold Beautiful Journey can’t seem to help but push beyond the limits of what it can get away with. In the back half, the movie’s big swings stop connecting, leaving us with an odd push-and-pull of emotionally impactful and distancing scenes. It doesn’t help that one of these scenes reads, to be unkind, as breeder propaganda, highlighting that this is a movie about a very specific form of monogamous, heterosexual romance.

Whether the big swings work or not, though, it’s a welcome surprise to see a colorful, midbudget studio film that’s willing to take them. —KYLE LOGAN R, 108 min. Wide release in theaters

R Riefenstahl

Andres Veiel paints a complex and contradictory portrait of the film director most responsible for selling the glory of Nazi Germany to the world. Instead of condemning Leni Riefenstahl’s lies about her part in a genocidal totalitarian enterprise, Veiel lets her equivocate and massage her legacy through the many public interviews she gave throughout her long life. She hangs herself again and again and yet is allowed to keep lying freely till the end of her days.

What makes this chilling film so relatable to our current time is the way it shows a public person doubling and tripling down on obvious falsehoods and, rather than being shunned, being rewarded for it. To be sure, there are voices that call out Riefenstahl for the loathsome propagandist she was, but Veiel plays dozens of audio recordings of supporters and fans showering her with praise and longing for the restoration of the glory days when she was a star and their country was the envy of the world. It’s all so familiar as to make one nauseous.

This is a person who lived to a ripe old age, never once publicly acknowledging her complicity in an epic crime. She ran around the world filming beautiful bodies and celebrating her idea of perfection, insisting she had nothing to do with politics, concerned only about art for art’s sake. I don’t know how many dead bodies must be presented at one’s doorstep in order to admit involvement, but Riefenstahl showed through her words and actions that even millions might not be enough.

Our own leaders have learned her playbook by heart. It is clearly a surefire recipe for triumph and glory.

—NOAH BERLATSKY 115 min. Siskel Film Center v

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

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CITY OF WIN

with Shawnna. She got me around 2011, but she knew of me since 2009. She already had reached out and everything,” Lstreetz says. “But Shawna was going through her own situation.”

blues guitarist Buddy Guy, and her full name is Rashawnna Guy). The death of her mother last year pushed her to focus on the operation.

Lstreetz runs it back with her old mentor

A er a decade apart, she’s reunited with Shawnna for a joint album that proves the power of women working together in Chicago rap.

By JOSHUA EFERIGHE

City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Joshua Eferighe that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.

Kanye West’s May 2012 remix of Chief Keef’s “I Don’t Like” featured Pusha T, Jadakiss, and Big Sean, and it helped catapult drill from Chicago’s streets to the mainstream. Heavyweights such as Rick Ross, Chris Brown, and T.I. soon followed with their own versions.

Only one remix, though, had Sosa himself in the video: the one where 34-year-old Shawnna rapped alongside her 24-year-old protege, Lstreetz.

Shawnna was already a star, having been part of Chicago rap duo Infamous Syndicate and signing to Ludacris’s label Disturbing tha Peace (DTP) in 1999. Her guest spots with Luda on “What’s Your Fantasy” (2000) and “Stand Up” (2003) remain all-time classics. Lstreetz, born Laqueise Pettigrew in upstate New York, had found some success of her own—she’d scored a local hit with the single “On a Hunnit,” from her 2009 mixtape A Nightmare on L Street.

The two women’s cosign from Keef not only helped them command space in a maledominated genre but also demonstrated the possibilities of synergy as mentor and mentee.

Yet within a year, Lstreetz and Shawnna would part ways.

“I’m going to be very honest. In 2012, I was

Shawnna had an affinity for Lstreetz, not just because of her talent but also because they had similar stories. “She reminded me of the younger me, before the industry got a hold on me,” she explains. “I’ve always had this mamabear kind of aura, so I immediately wanted to get around her before some of the people that would try to make her compromise. So when I did that, we had insane chemistry, and I just took her on the road with me. Iron sharpens iron. So I let her open my shows. We would always be in the studio together. She would motivate me to stay to my roots of where I started and who I was in the beginning, so it was really complementary.”

But Lstreetz wanted more of Shawnna’s bandwidth than her mentor could give. “She had so much stuff going on—she didn’t even have a label,” Lstreetz says. “Here I am, like, going crazy and going up, and I felt like she didn’t really have attention. I just feel like I’m being at a standstill.”

In the years since, Lstreetz has found her own path, and she’s far from at a standstill. At 37, she’s a professional gamer, and through the content-creator program of games company 2K, she’s partnered with top-selling franchises NBA 2K and Borderlands . Her 2024 single “Dipset” appeared on the NBA 2K25 soundtrack, and she’s been scanned into the game as a digital character for NBA 2K26. Through her gaming and music imprint Jiedao 街道 (Chinese for “street”), she streams and interacts with fans.

More important, after over a decade, Lstreetz has reunited with Shawnna—on July 23, they released the joint album Run It Back, produced entirely by ChurchBoy Scotty. You might have caught the duo throwing the ceremonial first pitch at a White Sox game on August 28 or seen the Thelma & Louise –themed video for their single “Counterfeit,” which premiered in July—and which features a cameo from west-side legend Twista. Earlier this month, they performed album track “Look Aye” on Purple Box Videos.

Reunited in 2024, Lstreetz and Shawnna have moved in lockstep ever since. What changed? Timing. Their paths converged again as they each resurfaced in Chicago’s rap scene.

In 2019, Shawnna had established her label, Guy Entertainment Group (she’s a daughter of

“I really wasn’t coming back to say, ‘Hey, I’m still that, that girl,’ or trying to come and take anybody’s spot,” Shawnna says. “I just still love hip-hop, and I was able to finally get away from a couple of personal things I was going through. I lost my mom in ’24, and when I lost her, that’s when I really just hit the ground running. It just all came to me: It was like, ‘You know, just come with your label.’”

Lstreetz had been in California for around a decade when her own mother su ered a stroke in 2023. She decided to come home to Chicago in 2024.

“I just wanted to spend time with my parents, because everybody getting older, and that was such a scare,” Lstreetz says. “I almost lost my mom. And I had spent so much time away from family that I can’t get back. So I’m like, OK, this chapter, I want to be around for a while.”

Lstreetz developed into a stronger, more polished artist in California. She’s also more professionally aligned with Shawnna, who’s learned from the setbacks she faced while signed to Disturbing tha Peace and vows to avoid them with her own label.

“DTP was a start-up company,” Shawnna says. “So they were learning as they were going. That was a problem I would always have with Def Jam and DTP—I felt like they were taking on too many artists. So I use all my experiences in what I’m doing. The good thing is I don’t have to eat o my artist, so I can take my time. For instance, when I get Streetz to hit like that, I’m not going to go try to hurry up and sign somebody else up under it. I’m a label now. I’m not just the artist—I’m the CEO of Guy Entertainment Group, and I am presenting to you my artist.”

As a woman who owns a hip-hop label, Shawnna is already shattering industry norms, and she plans to platform more women with the Guy Entertainment Group.

“Think, right now,” she says. “Can you name one female of the OGs that started her own label and wants to give back to the city and come back and create an avenue for artists to be able to thrive and utilize resources?”

For Lstreez, signing with Guy Entertainment Group was a no-brainer. She’s come to understand how di cult it is to navigate the music business, and when she reflects upon her first run with Shawnna, she wishes she’d shown more empathy and not been so anxious for her mentor’s attention.

Lstreetz at Buddy Guy’s Legends. Her mentor, Shawnna, is Guy’s daughter.

“This is my mentor— I literally learned from her. I’m like the second coming of her. I could do exactly what she do.” —Lstreetz

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“That taught me a valuable lesson about patience with this industry,” Lstreetz says. “The difference between Shawnna and other situations was that she was very genuine about hers. Shawnna has money. She had me living in her crib for two to three years. Who does that? That’s one thing I learned, just doing the young dumb artist thing—because I also feel like I should have waited and not left and allowed certain stu to fix.”

Lstreetz says her reunion with Shawnna is the inspiration behind the title of Run It Back. “Yup, we running it back,” she says. “We finishing what we started—that was the meaning behind that. This is what we should have been did a long time ago.”

“I was still young, but I knew from the first time when we was around each other that our chemistry was always dope,” Lstreetz continues. “This is my mentor—I literally learned from her. I’m like the second coming of her. I could do exactly what she do. She got her stu together now. She got the label going; I’m on her label, so we’re doing this the right way this time. . . . All the love that we’ve been getting is crazy. So it’s working out. I’ll be sitting some days and be like, damn, she really did this.”

Shawnna echoes that sentiment. “We didn’t even think about it until people started saying it, like, this is a dynamic duo—Batman and Robin. Oh my god. Y’all, chemistry is crazy,” she says. “I think that the success that we’ve

attained right now is just all due to sticking to our roots, sticking to what we love, sticking to what first turned us on and made us fall in love with hip-hop. And that’ll never go anywhere, no matter how many times the fads change, the trends change. The love of the artistry will always be the foundation.”

All nine tracks on Run It Back overflow with that love of hip-hop. It’s full of songs that feel like something to put on before a night out. Shawnna says that’s a by-product of the duo’s process.

“We didn’t sit down and say, ‘OK, we got to focus on making music that makes people happy,’” she explains. “We were literally just happy, and we chose the beats that kept that emotion going. We were done with that within four to six weeks.”

Shawnna is now in full executive mode. On deck is a video for “Look Aye,” the next single from Run It Back . Her focus going forward will be pushing Lstreetz. “With Streetz, it’s putting out music, being at the top of the game, touring, selling merchandise, and killing in the streaming. When she’s doing that, I know I’ve done my job,” Shawnna says.

In three years, Shawnna says, she sees herself working with a new artist—after she’s done with Lstreetz, of course. She also hopes to own a space where she can build o ces, studios, and podcast rooms. “God willing, whatever I could do to host and have somewhere

where the youth can come and learn how to engineer, how to edit, and how to digitally market themselves,” Shawnna says. “I would like one building where I can host all of those jobs and opportunities in one place.”

Lstreetz plans to maintain her momentum by releasing a solo project and by capitalizing on the intersection of gaming and music. She thinks the Chicago scene has a lot of room to grow in that department.

“I look at our creators, even the comedians and stuff,” she says. “I’m like, damn—if they knew how to expand and maximize who they are, they could take the streaming world by storm. None of them has figured that out yet, and I’m so shocked by it. I know how to maximize that area.”

Lstreetz and Shawnna’s renewed partnership has the potential to bring new infrastructure and resources to Chicago rap—as well as the combined knowledge of two artists who’ve already found success. Run It Back isn’t just a reunion album—it’s the closing of an old loop and the start of a new one. v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Shawnna (L) and Lstreetz at a White Sox game on August 28, where Lstreetz delivered the game ball and Shawnna threw out the fi rst pitch. CLARK AIRLINES

THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

Lani Hall helped Brazilian pop find its fans in the States

This Chicagoan’s sweet, supple singing—in English and Portuguese—fueled the U.S. bossa nova boom in the late 60s.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

I’ve seen hundreds of concerts, maybe thousands, and one of my favorites of all time was this past summer: Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass played the Harris Theater on their first tour in 35 years, celebrating the 60th anniversary of their album Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Still spry at 90, Alpert danced and blew impeccable trumpet solos, and his wife, supple-voiced singer Lani Hall, made an appearance as well.

This was a moving surprise, because Hall has been debilitated by the Epstein–Barr virus since the 80s. Though she’s a decade younger than Alpert, she needed assistance getting onstage. Hall performed a short medley of favorites she’d sang with Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66, and her chemistry with Alpert—aged to perfection over half a century of marriage—brought tears to my eyes. From their snappy banter, I also learned about Hall’s upbringing in Albany Park, which inspired me to dig deeper into her story.

Leilani Hall was born in Chicago on November 6, 1945, and grew up near Kimball and Lawrence. “In winter, people huddled inside the tiny train station on my corner to avoid the bitter cold on the outside platform,” she recalls in her 2012 book, Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories. The Kimball stop is the last on the Brown Line (then called the Ravenswood Route), and Hall loved catching a train there and riding through the city’s neighborhoods, looking at the “sun-dried clothes suspended

from laundry lines that stretched across a maze of back porches” and “black wrought iron fire escapes wrapped around red brick buildings.”

Hall’s blue-collar Jewish family— with a Polish immigrant mother and a Russian immigrant father—were basically the demographic twins of my own Chicago grandparents. Hall has loved singing for as long as she can remember. “I just wanted to sing for the sole sake of expressing myself,” she writes in her book. “I’d hold the handle of a hair brush as a microphone, and then I’d close my eyes and sing with my records.”

one that I sang,” she writes. “I would have been too embarrassed to sing in front of people or to put someone in the uncomfortable position of feeling obligated to respond. Singing was a sacred space. It was holy to me.”

As a kid, Hall sang along to the likes of Judy Garland and Nina Simone as well as plenty of instrumental jazz—she favored Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Stan Getz, and the lush arrangements of Gil Evans. She often listened to Sid McCoy’s late-night jazz show on local station WCFL, and she especially loved the voice of Barbra Streisand. “Music was my friend,” she writes. “It charged me up or made me weep, I could always count on it to bring out my truest feelings.”

The mid-60s folk boom caught Hall’s ear too. She liked honey-voiced singers such as Bu y Sainte-Marie and Joan Baez, and she was drawn to Bob Dylan and “protest songs and real poetic anger.” She bought her first acoustic guitar for $5, and a friend taught her some chords and picking techniques. “Holding the guitar so close to my body helped to comfort me,” she recalls in Emotional Memoirs. Soon she began writing her own material. “Now the words were mine.”

Hall would ride the el to Rush Street or Old Town to be near the burgeoning folk scene, but she was too shy to perform. “I never told any-

That all changed after Hall’s childhood friend Leah stopped by unannounced one day and heard her singing through the closed bedroom door. Leah (Hall doesn’t give her last name) worked as a waitress at famed club Mother Blues, where legends such as Odetta, Howlin’ Wolf, Janis Joplin, Je erson Airplane, and Shel Silverstein performed. She was astonished by Hall’s high and beautiful voice, and she arranged to get her friend onstage for the first time.

Hall attended an open-mike “hootenanny night” at the club on a Monday. “[Leah] kept giving me drinks, all night, she was sliding drinks to me, and I was pretty looped,” she told Wax Poetics magazine in 2017. “All of a sudden, I hear my name being announced on the loudspeaker, and Leah got behind me and kinda picked me up o the chair and pushed me towards the stage. And I sang. It was the first time I was in front of an audience and had a microphone in front of me.”

Hall was miffed at Leah, but her performance paid off instantly. “I got off the stage and I was mad, because I felt like she had set me up,” she told Wax Poetics . “And as I approached her, a man walked in front of me

and said, ‘Excuse me, I just heard you singing, and I own a club down the street, and I would really like it if you could play the next two weekends and I’ll give you $75 a weekend.’ And I’m looking at this guy trying to compute what he’s saying to me, and Leah came around and looked at him and said, ‘She’ll do it.’”

Thus began Hall’s 1965 residency at Old Town coffeehouse the Centaur. One day the owner brought her back over to Mother Blues to see a new group called Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’65. Pianist Mendes was a star in Brazil, but he was just getting established in the States, with help from an initiative by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign A airs to promote Brazilian music on other shores. Their tour had started in Mexico in November 1964, and they cut two LPs in the USA during their stay. Brasil ’65 featured singers Rosinha de Valença and Wanda Sá, and Hall met the whole group. Unbeknownst to Hall, the band was coming apart, and Mendes was looking to put together a new one. During a subsequent Mother Blues show, Mendes and percussionist José Soares took a break between sets and went to see Hall at the Centaur. Mendes was dazzled and asked Hall to join the band on the spot. Hall was only 19 and still lived with her parents, so she asked Mendes to get her father’s blessing. That turned out to be no obstacle, though, and Hall became lead singer of the new Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66, leaving Chicago at age

STEVE KRAKOW FOR CHICAGO READER

Hall was only 19 and still lived with her parents, so she asked Mendes to get her father’s blessing. That turned out to be no obstacle, though, and Hall became lead singer of the new Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66.

20. She didn’t know at the time, but from that point forward, she’d only ever visit her hometown—she’d never live here again.

This new international group arranged an audition with A&M Records, founded by Alpert and Jerry Moss. They loved Brasil ’66’s mix of Latin jazz and pop and o ered them a record deal. The band’s first LP, Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 , was a huge smash, and they scored a hit with the Jorge Ben bossa nova tune “Mas Que Nada” (outside of Brazil, it’s better known than Ben’s original). Hall didn’t know Portuguese—she learned the songs phonetically.

Hall stayed with Brasil ’66 until 1970, when she was replaced by Mendes’s wife, Gracinha Leporace. (The bands usually had two singers,

and Brasil ’66 also included Bibi Vogel, Janis Hansen, and Karen Philipp at various points.) Hall appeared on several classic LPs, among them Equinox (’67), Fool on the Hill (’68), and two of my personal favorites from the group: the psychedelic Crystal Illusions (’69) and the stripped-down folk-rock concept album Stillness (’70). Mendes moved on to start Brasil ’77 and later had great success as a solo artist.

Hall released her solo debut, Sun Down Lady, in 1972. She and Alpert were already romantically involved, and he engineered and produced the album as well as contributed backup vocals. It opens with the folky, funky Lesley Duncan tune “Love Song,” with snappy drums from first-call session player Jim Gordon. Hall married Alpert at the end of 1974, becoming his second wife, and in 1975 they welcomed their daughter, Aria, now an actor. Hall would release nine more solo albums over the next decade, beginning with Hello It’s Me

in ’75 and continuing almost yearly until Es Fácil Amar in 1985. (Es Fácil Amar also earned Hall her first Grammy, for best Latin pop performance.)

In 1983, Hall recorded the theme song for the James Bond film Never Say Never Again and appeared in the accompanying music video. Throughout the 1980s, she recorded several successful Latin-pop albums, where she sang in Spanish despite not speaking that language either. She collaborated with José Feliciano from Puerto Rico, Roberto Carlos from Brazil, José José from Mexico, and Camilo Sesto from Spain. In 1986 she appeared with Mendes again on “No Place to Hide,” from his LP Brasil ’86. Epstein–Barr forced Hall to slow down her performing and recording, and she didn’t release new music again till the solo album Brasil Nativo in 1998. She followed that with another decade-long break in her discography, but then she released three albums with Alpert: 2009’s Anything Goes , 2011’s I Feel You , and 2013’s Steppin’ Out (which won a Grammy for best pop instrumental album). Her most recent solo album, 2022’s Seasons of Love , also features Alpert.

DON WAS & THE PAN DETROIT ENSEMBLE

All in all, Hall has appeared on almost two dozen albums, singing in three languages. Emotional Memoirs & Short Stories pairs autobiographical material with her fiction, which she started writing in ’82 while on tour in Mexico City. In her book, Hall takes the opportunity to remind us how much she loves the city where she was born and began her career. “Where is home?” she writes. “Mine is in my husband’s arms. But sometimes I miss Chicago so much that I think I can smell the spring cut grass and see the billowing clouds across the the bluest sky. It’s the only place where I really know what direction I’m facing at any given time.”

Last month at the Harris Theater, I knew what direction I was facing: toward one of my favorite voices of all time. I can only hope Hall will appear in Chicago again. v

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.

MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of September 18 b ALL

THURSDAY18

Die Spitz Viagra Boys headline. 6:30 PM, Salt Shed Fairgrounds (outdoors), 1357 N. Elston, advance tickets sold out.  b

Austin four-piece Die Spitz emerged in 2022 like the bats that make their nightly summer flight out from under their hometown’s Congress Avenue Bridge. Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston, and Kate Halter trade off instruments and lead vocals, and their sound mixes punky altrock with metal and hard rock. They’ve also nailed the combo of wink and snarl perfected early on by foremothers L7—Schrobilgen’s gritty singing on “Hair of Dog” (from their 2023 breakout EP, Teeth) even sounds like Donita Sparks. “Spitz” means “sharp” or “pointed” in German, and of course it’s also a type of dog—in keeping with that gag, Teeth is jam-packed with wild and sometimes bloody canine imagery. Die Spitz would just as soon gross you out as beat you into submission with their high-octane sound, and they’re gonna have fun doing both.

Wardruna use ancient Nordic roots to forge connections across cultures

WARDRUNA, CHELSEA WOLFE

Sat 9/20, 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells, $62.10–$86.15.  b

NORDIC FOLK MUSIC WITH ROOTS in black metal might sound ridiculously niche, but Wardruna are more than the sum of their parts—and to prove it, here they are at the Auditorium Theatre. Einar Selvik (aka Kvitrafn) and Kristian Eivind Espedal (aka Gaahl), both of Norwegian black-metal band Gorgoroth, formed the collective in 2003 with Norwegian vocalist and composer Lindy-Fay Hella. They developed expansive, visceral compositions that draw from Nordic history, the natural world, and their own musical instincts, threading the needle between past and present and insisting on a connection between humanity and the environment that runs much deeper than the trappings and noise of modern society. Wardruna have connected widely with listeners, even those without a vested interest in Nordic culture or metal, and they’ve influenced other artists traversing similar ground, including Heilung and Skáld. Wardruna’s second album, 2013’s Runaljod—Yggdrasil , caught the attention of the producers of Vikings, and the group contributed score music to the show beginning with its second season. (Selvik also appeared as an actor in season three.) The earthy, organic sounds struck a chord with viewers, and Wardruna’s next album, 2016’s Runaljod— Ragnarok, climbed quickly to the top of the Billboard “World Albums” chart. Espedal left the group amicably in 2015, and the remaining core duo perform live with around half a dozen musicians. Hella and Selvik both sing, and the latter plays bukkehorn (goat horn) and two types of lyre (the bowed tagelharpa and the plucked Kravik lyre);

the others add percussion, flute, vocals, and traditional instruments such as moraharpa (an ancestor of the nyckelharpa) and lur (a long funnel-shaped wooden trumpet).

Nordic iconography has been widely appropriated by present-day white supremacists and other far-right extremists, but Wardruna stand against hate. They reclaim and celebrate their ancient roots not to justify subjugation but to learn about themselves and find common ground with others—a message they’ve taken around the world. Their newest album, the beautiful, evocative Birna, ruminates on the life cycle of the bear (an animal important to many ancient and Indigenous cultures) as a metaphor for the rhythms of nature itself. Shortly after its release in January, Wardruna traveled to New Zealand for a collaborative performance with members of Maori healing group TūRongo Collective. In July, Wardruna headlined the Fire in the Mountains festival on Blackfeet Nation tribal lands in northern Montana, where they also participated in an opening ceremony with members of the Blackfeet Nation and sold a custom T-shirt by a Blackfeet student artist that raised more than $14,000 for the Firekeeper Alliance (a nonprofit that works to reduce suicide rates in Native communities). Since then, they’ve embarked on a European tour that included a date in the ancient amphitheater excavated from the ruins of Pompeii. Wardruna’s music feels ten times bigger onstage, and this promises to be one of the season’s most spellbinding and heartfelt concert experiences. —JAMIE LUDWIG

Die Spitz’s brand-new second album, Something to Consume (their first for Third Man), explores liberation and freedom while opening up their palette with slow-burning alt-rock and glammy grunge pop. But no matter how FM friendly they get, they can still turn right around and bite. Opener “Pop-Punk Anthem (Sorry for the Delay)” sounds like a purring kitten next to the chugging metallic fury of “Throw Yourself to the Sword” and the venomous “Red40.” Everyone in Die Spitz is in their early 20s, so they’re just getting started, and the darkly proggy “Sound to No One” suggests they’ll be stretching out into more complex songwriting. If you catch them now, opening for Viagra Boys, you’ll be able to brag that you “saw them when.”

—JAMIE LUDWIG

FRIDAY19

Che 8 PM, Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield, sold out (except resale tickets).  b

Few rappers capture the thrill of a massive mosh pit quite like Che. On his second album, July’s Rest in Bass , the Atlanta rapper hurls his blunt, serrated bars as though he’s swept up in a jostling crowd of thousands and exerting half his energy to ward off errant elbows and knees. His AutoTuned croaks and shrieks blur into the instrumental tracks, whose atom-bomb bass and spiked-ballon-a-chain synths bristle with speaker-destroying distortion no matter how quietly you listen. Che’s devotion to trunk-rattling rage raps comes through most vividly on “Never Too Young to Die,” which features an appearance from Chicago drill rapper Chuckyy. While Che’s verses almost melt into the noise, Chuckyy’s verses slice into it like a hot knife through butter. Che can sound overpowered by his own din, but the chaos doesn’t get the better of him; he comes out the other side like he always knew he’d end up there. I’m not so sure he’ll retain that control in concert, but that’s probably going to be half the thrill of this show—do we even want him to keep his hands on the wheel? —LEOR GALIL

MUSIC

Over the past decade, Sextile have evolved their aesthetic from brooding, texture-heavy EBM to a bouncy, polished sound that’s at the forefront of the current revival of goth-infused club music. Sextile formed in Los Angeles in 2014, during the early part of the city’s darkwave surge. Initially a quartet, the group played their first gig at LA’s Part Time Punks Festival that December. Their sizzling guitarforward set electrified the mosh pit so intensely that burgeoning postpunk label Felte immediately approached them with a record deal. The following August, Sextile dropped their full-length debut, A Thousand Hands , whose 11 tracks generously draw from the romantic mechanical pulses of Christian Death, Bauhaus, and Coil. As Sextile slowly climbed the bills of goth parties and festivals, the band began incorporating more electronic elements, and today they’re ahead of the curve with a rave-friendly sound developed during an intense period of self-exploration and reflection. In 2019, guitarist and keyboardist Eddie Wuebben (who gave Sextile their name) died from an overdose, and remaining members Cameron Michel, Melissa Scaduto, and Brady Keehn shelved the band and focused on solo pursuits. But Sextile reemerged in 2022, and the next year they made the jump to eclectic boutique goth label Sacred Bones for their third album, Push . Sextile borrowed heavily from party genres (especially trance and drum ’n’ bass) to give Push a more energetic, optimistic sound than their previous records. In interviews following the album’s release, Scaduto and Keehn described their own past struggles with drug addiction and how the loss of Wuebben impacted their artistic approach. “The first two records leant

towards us being very political about our frustrations with the world and observations of what we were going through,” they told Ableton’s blog in 2023. “Now . . . we’re pushing more towards how we deal with life and conveying what we‘ve learnt in the sense that we’re not as fearful when it comes to our artistic endeavors.”

Now a duo of Keehn and Scaduto, Sextile released their latest album, Yes, Please. , this past May. It runs full speed through electroclash, Detroit techno, progressive house, and the most buoyant parts of the Wax Trax! catalog to boldly proclaim a boundless appetite for life. The pair’s biggest influences now? The bright-eyed plasticity of Underworld and the club-friendly brattiness of Charli XCX. In the face of darkness, Sextile choose to dance toward the light. —MICCO CAPORALE

Sextile Automatic open. 7 PM, Outset, 1675 N. Elston, $39.35.  b

Die Spitz POONEH GHANA

MUSIC

continued from p. 23

SATURDAY20

Menace4Hire Defcee headlines; Dai and Menace4Hire open. 8:30 PM, Ramova Lo , 3520 S. Halsted, $20, $15 in advance ($19.56 with fees). 18+

In a 2021 These Days interview with Real Ones cofounder Ben Moskow, rising Chicago rapper Kaicrewsade claimed that when he first collaborated with Menace4hire (on Kai’s 2021 EP, Steve’s Demo ), Menace had never recorded a verse before. In November of that year, when Menace4Hire dropped his debut EP, Soufside Weirdo, it included a contribution from Kai. Where Kai leans heavily on jazz in his instrumentals, Menace creates loose collages of tough percussion and dusty samples that feel like he’s tossed them together off-the-cuff. On his latest album, With All That I Know Now (self-released in March), Menace drops his voice into soulful, hiccuping instrumentals at unexpected intervals, with a casual flow that belies his precision and speed. He’s so nimble and surefooted that his voice, rather than the beat, sometimes anchors a song—for instance by popping up amid the rhythmic clatter of “Joy U Bring.” With All That I Know Now proves Menace4Hire to be one of the most exciting voices in underground Chicago hip-hop. Tonight he’ll open for another great Chicago MC, Defcee, who in June released Other Blues, a collaborative album with New Jersey production duo Parallel Thought. —LEOR GALIL

Wardruna See Pick of the Week on page 22. Chelsea Wolfe opens. 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida B. Wells, $62.10–$86.15.  b

SUNDAY21

Haru Nemuri 7 PM, Chop Shop, 2033 W. North, $31.31, $88.76 VIP with preshow artist meet and greet.  b

Japanese singer-songwriter Haruna Kimishima, who makes music as Haru Nemuri, grew up in Yokohama and learned to play synth as a teen in a band with a friend. She launched her solo career about a decade ago, at age 21, and today she creates big, heady electronic pop songs that often twist together styles that aren’t easy bedfellows, among them posthardcore, noise pop, and rap. Nemuri’s latest album, last month’s Ekkolaptómenos , skews in an experimental direction, and it feels like she’s diving down a rabbit hole to pursue a new interest. Her punk ethos comes through as clearly as ever in the album’s themes of defying power—“Panopticon” questions the surveillance state, and “Symposium” calls for people to come together and dance in the face of government repression.

The songs are consistently ambitious, so that even the misses are interesting. “Panopticon” builds soaring atmospheres while Nemuri sings and raps amid reverent backing vocals, frenetic beats, and proggy guitars. “Supernova” is epic already, but it’d sound even bigger with synth guitars heavy enough to match the drums. The best tracks lean on Nemuri’s love for hip-hop and electronic music: She punctuates her hard raps on “Symposium” with English-language commentary (“This country sucks”) before blasting off into full-throttle club-shaking beats. —JAMIE LUDWIG

TUESDAY23

Silkworm See also Wed 9/24. Out open. 8 PM, Chop Shop, 2033 W. North, $32.51.  b

Silkworm formed in Missoula, Montana, in 1987 and relocated to Seattle in 1990. Soon a er, the indierock trio forged a bond with Chicago-based recording engineer Steve Albini, a fellow Montanan, who quickly became a trusted collaborator—he ultimately worked on eight of the band’s nine studio albums.

After a run of releases on Matador, Silkworm found a home on Touch and Go in 1998, where they fit in perfectly alongside the label’s adventurous noise-rock aesthetic. Though the band’s music drew on the style’s driving, dissonant, rhythmic clang, they offered a warmer and more melodic approach that lent an undeniably heartfelt human element missing from so much 90s noise rock. Following the release of 2000’s Lifestyle, the members moved to Chicago, where audiences accepted their combination of wistful melodies and metallic guitar scrape with open arms.

The band released two more albums before tragedy struck: In July 2005, drummer Michael Dahlquist (along with two other Chicago musicians, John Glick and Douglas Meis) was killed in a horrific car crash. His death broke up Silkworm, but the surviving members, Andy Cohen and Tim Midyett, kept their signature sound alive in several other projects, among them Mint Mile, Bottomless Pit, and Deep Tunnel Project. Midyett has also collaborated with longtime friends Sunn O))) on bass.

WEDNESDAY24

Silkworm See Tue 9/23. The Gotobeds open. Silkworm play another show on Thu 9/25 at the same venue and time, with Dianogah opening; it’s also sold out. 9 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, sold out. 21+ v

For many years, a Silkworm reunion seemed unfathomable, but just as one painful loss ended the band, another brought them back together. At a memorial for Albini following his sudden passing last year, Cohen, Midyett, and drummer Jeff Panall (Songs: Ohia) played Silkworm material in honor of their longtime friend. That same lineup will appear at Chop Shop on Tuesday evening and at Sleeping Village on Wednesday and Thursday. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Menace4hire COURTESY THE ARTIST

Silkworm MR. KING

Haru Nemuri AIRI HAYASHI

Sextile MALLEN

SAVAGE LOVE

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Making the upgrade

Is it okay to rebound?

By DAN SAVAGE

Q : I’m a married heterosexual cis woman kinkster writing from the northeast. My husband and I have been monogamous and only played with each other for a decade and a half, but we have agreed to try platonic play at some kink events we’re going to this fall. But how do I hang my shingle in regard to finding play partners? Playing with others is something I have been wanting to try but have never done besides the occasional demo bottoming. I am ready for more but now that the reality is coming closer, I don’t quite know how to function. How do I place a good “personal ad” for platonic play? Is it better if I respond to existing posts? I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for besides some new experiences. For context, I am a switch-y dominantleaning masochist. I am nervous and excited and looking for some guidance.

M ARRIED AND SLIGHTLY OPEN

a : U se your words: “Seeking BDSM play, not seeking sex.” That’s what you need to put on your shingle. You can use those exact words on your kinky personal ad, in replies to other people’s ads, or when you strike up conversations at kink events with people you might wanna play with. Y ou’re gonna get the obvious follow-up question—what exactly counts as sex for you and your husband? And you need to be ready with a clear, specific, and detailed answer.

No penetration, obviously. Is kissing allowed? Do you guys count oral as sex? BDSM play arouses you, MASO, otherwise you wouldn’t be engaging in it. Are your play partners allowed to do small, incidental things that might enhance your arousal? Is manual stimulation during play allowed? Can they grind against you? Can they wedge a vibrator between the ropes and your pussy? And if that vibrator makes you come, is that a violation of your rules, or is that an act of God?

T he more precise you are, the easier it’ll be for people to know whether they’re the right play partners for you. And if you tell someone you’re only interested in platonic play—bondage and spanking and whatever else is allowed—and they don’t immediately ask you to clarify your precise sexual boundaries, that’s a yellow flag. Either they don’t care enough to make sure they’re respecting your limits, MASO, or they’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission.

Q : I’m currently separating from my husband who I’ve been with for a decade. Our sexual relationship was always kind of dysfunctional except for the first year or so, but we had a don’task-don’t-tell arrangement that worked well and neutralized the issue for the most part. It’s not why we are separating. For

the last year I’ve been periodically sleeping with a man who had been a close friend of mine for many years. As it has become clear that my marriage is ending, I’ve allowed myself to acknowledge romantic feelings for him, and they’re reciprocated. He wants us to give dating a shot once my divorce is finalized. I think I want that, but there’s plenty of opinions on the Internet about how foolish it is to try and parlay an affair into a real-world relationship. We are incredibly sexually compatible and really close friends, and I don’t want to set expectations at a place where the dynamic changes too much to retain the friendship and occasional fucking, but maybe we’ve already crossed that Rubicon? Am I being incredibly stupid? Is this something I could make work? —D IVORCING AND REBOUNDING

a : Y ou won’t be able to make it work with an attitude like that!

L ook, this might turn into something lasting, DAR, or this might be a successful short-term relationship that gave you some joy during a hard time in your life. But if you let bitter strangers on the Internet make the choice for you, DAR, you’ll never know what this might’ve been. And there are lots of women out there in stable, loving, and lasting relationships with men they met (and fucked) while they were married to other people—hell, the queen of the United Fucking Kingdom parlayed an affair right into Buckingham Palace. Give your prince a chance! v

Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.

GOSSIP WOLF

IF YOU’VE EVER WATCHED CBS News on channel 2 and heard fantastic local music during a broadcast, it’s likely been the doing of director Mauricio Reyes—he has one of the best ears of any media worker in the city, and this wolf isn’t just saying that because he’s a friend. Earlier this summer, he also helped break the story that Travis Scott had sampled Pixel Grip’s “Pursuit” without permission.

Reyes is an avid runner as well as a voracious listener, and he’s always looking for excuses to share his passions. Around two years ago, he launched Album Runs , a noncompetitive run club for folks eager to move to music and talk about it with other people. Reyes selects an album for participants to listen to on headphones, and everyone runs or walks the selected course (usually the 606 ) at their own pace. Reyes often invites the musicians who’ve made the albums to get involved: In July 2024, for example, noise-rap duo Angry Blackmen joined Album Runs to talk about their album The Legend of ABM the day before their set at the final Pitchfork Music Festival. Real Ones sponsored the run and held a ticket giveaway to ABM’s Cobra Lounge a ershow that was open to everyone who came out.

Reyes has something special planned for the 25th Album Runs meetup on Thursday, September 25. The crew will run to Platonic Romance , the forthcoming album by Chicago dance duo Drama , and vocalist-lyricist Via Rosa and producer Na’el Shehade will be on hand to discuss it. That’s not all, either! Reyes has worked his connections to provide postrun food from Small Cheval and beverages from hibiscus tea maker Ruby , both for no charge—and everybody also gets a free Album Runs T-shirt. The complimentary goodies aren’t unlimited, of course, but you can secure a spot with an RSVP at the Album Runs Eventbrite (linked on the group’s Instagram page at @albumruns). Participants will gather at 6 PM by the 606 entrance at Milwaukee and Leavitt.

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

on the northwest side: Judson & Moore and Color Club. Late last month, Davis took on a more official role at Color Club, becoming the space’s head talent buyer.

“I’m excited to be working for a communitydriven venue I’ve been developing alongside for a while,” Davis says. “I’m excited to dive back into comedy programming, take advantage of the possibility of all-ages shows, and build some new series like Green—a monthly all-ages new-artist showcase curated by different Chicagoans of note.” This wolf looks forward to whatever else Davis has cooking!

ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 , the International Museum of Surgical Science

avant-garde music and art. Tickets are $15, and the panel runs from 1 PM till 3 PM. The series will return to the IMSS on Thursday, October 2, and Thursday, October 16. Students and IMSS members get a $5 discount on tickets, and for members the panel is free.

ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 , heavy Chicago multi-instrumentalist Mae Shults will release her 17th album (not a typo!) under the name Everson Poe , Enough Is a Myth For this release, Shults drew inspiration from the 2022 straight-to-Hulu reboot of Hellraiser , which cast trans woman Jamie Clayton as Pinhead; this wolf hopes the music will be equally dark and otherworldly. Vocalist Thia

CLASSIFIEDS

JOBS

HAVI Global Solutions is seeking a Senior Demand Planner in Chicago, IL. Manage all forecast inputs and planning parameters for restaurant and DC replenishment to meet established quality thresholds to provide acceptable outputs to all stakeholders. Must live within normal commuting distance of worksite. Up to 80% remote work allowed. Please go to https://jobs.havi.com/ to apply and get info on role incl. salary & benefits.

Lead Mobile Engineers: At Prolaio’s Chicago office lead & mge team of mble engnrs. Dsn, dvp, test and documt sftwr w/ consistent FDA compliant managmt system. Work towrds advcnig mobile apps in an agile/scrum envrnmt. May wrk frm a hm offc in Chicago metro ara upto 3 dys/ wk. Slry: $182k - $194k. Stndrd cmpny bnfts. Snd cv w/ Job ID KP-2025 to N.Skaluba. @ nicole. skaluba@prolaio.com

BOOKER, MUSICIAN, AND all-around swell dude Sullivan “Sully” Davis launched promotion company Local Universe in early 2021. It presents comedy shows, concerts, and ambitious events around town—including the rootsy Cosmic Country variety show and the queer country fest Lavender Prairie. The Local Universe umbrella also includes regular bookings at two newer events spaces

hosts the second installment of Refining the Third Ear , a monthslong series of experimental music designed to transform the ear into an active instrument. Composer Itsï Ramirez (who’s released music through Philadelphia experimental label No Rent) and self-described “electronic poet” Bret Schneider founded the series around the psychoacoustic phenomenon of the “third ear” as defined by composer Maryanne Amacher Loosely speaking, this involves using carefully engineered tones to cause the inner ear itself to emit sound—the listener perceives sounds as issuing from within the head and sometimes dancing closely around the body.

Both Ramirez and Schneider will perform Thursday, along with local sound artist and composer Lula Asplund . Tickets cost $15 in advance or $20 at the door, and the performance starts at 7 PM. Asplund, Ramirez, and Schneider will reconvene at the IMSS on Saturday, September 20, for a panel on the development of third-ear music and the history of

Mathes , a new collaborator on the Everson Poe project, sings on Enough Is a Myth , and her clean vibrato lends operatic gravitas to lead single “Lore.”

TWO BANDS WHO APPEARED in the Reader ’s “best overlooked Chicago records of 2024” list just put out new full-lengths. On September 8, rambunctious alt-rock duo Nüde dropped a compilation called Bloody Gulch (which is also their Instagram handle). It includes every song the band have ever released, plus a few previously unavailable tracks; cassette copies are available through microlabel LittleHeadButt. On September 12, Prathloons released Breadbox , which gets their rootsy midwest emo simmering delightfully. On Friday, September 26, they’ll open for Preston Woolsey at Color Club ; tickets cost $18.03, and Prathloons hit the stage at 8 PM.

—LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Email your Chicago music news to gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

Loyola University Chicago is seeking an Assistant Professor in Chicago, IL to teach undergraduate & graduate courses on literature & critical theory. Up to 15% domestic & int’l trvl reqd. Up to 30% remote work allowed. Full time. $62,000.00 - $85,000.00/ yr. Competitive compensation (please see https://www.luc. edu/hr/benefits/). Please send res to sbost@luc.edu & ref job #063089.

National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Inc. seeks a Psychometrician II, Measurement & Testing. Will be responsible for Planning, coordinating, and performing statistical analysis for operational research and major projects (e.g., practice analysis and standard setting). Must have PhD, or foreign equiv, in Educational Measurement & Testing, Psychometrics, or related field. Must have 3 years exp in job offered, Statistician, working with adaptive testing or related role. Must have education or experience, with: (1) Item Response

Album Runs with Cabeza de Chivo in July 2025 MANUEL VELASCO

Theory for item calibration, equating, and standard setting; (2) Computer Adaptive Test Analysis; (3) Differential Item Functioning; (4) Statistical and psychometric programming languages; R, Python, SAS, and Winsteps; (5) Academic writing. Role located in Chicago, Illinois, must live within commutable distance of role location. Role is hybrid; on-site two days per week. Salary: $107,598 to $126,565/ yr. Apply online at http:// www.ncsbn.com/careers/.

Network Administrator, Grasshopper Trans Inc, Chicago, IL.

Maintain & administer network infrastructure to support operations including logistics, fleet management systems & communication tools. Evaluate & recommend new technologies. Plan & execute upgrades to accommodate growth & evolving needs. Req: Bach/info tech, electrical eng, related field, or foreign equivalent +2 yrs exp in same or related occupation. Exp must include use of cellular networking (4G/5G, Cradlepoint, Sierra) & integration w/GPS & fleet tracking systems (Omnitracs, Samsara, Geotab). Cisco CCNP certification required. Email resume to marketing@ grasshoppertrans .com.

Clinical Data Strategy & Operations Program Lead II (Clinical Data Science & Operations in Immunology R&D), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. 100% Telecommuting permitted. Lead the DSS Study Team & represent DS as the single point of contact & accountable operational lead to meet operational objectives, deliverables, timelines & quality. Utilize operational analytics & project management tools to optimize execution of programs & studies, to manage internal & external resources, to track project progress, & to prepare project status reports. Ensure adherence to various regulations, industrial standards, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), & to functional quality standards. Participate as the DS study owner in regulatory inspections & internal quality audits. Responsible for coaching & mentoring team members. Lead DSS innovation & process improvement initiatives & participate/ lead in cross-functional initiatives. Must have a Bachelor’s degree in Life Science, Nursing, Pharmacy, Computer Science, or foreign

educational equivalent & 5 years of clinical data management experience in a pharmaceutical, CRO or biotech company. Of the experience required, must have 5 years: (i) conducting phase 2 to 3 of biologics or chemical compound studies; (ii) using the following tools daily: EDC, eCOA, IRT, CDR, SDTM, data visualization tools, risk based management & TMF; & (iii) applying clinical trial processes, including FDA & EMA regulatory requirements, pertaining to clinical research & industry standards & practices. Of the experience required, must have 3 years (i) performing as project lead in clinical data management; & (ii) leading implementation of data standardization in the pharmaceutical industry. Work experience may be gained concurrently.

Salary Range: $165,067.99 - $202,500.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF44196G.

Old World Industries, LLC in Northbrook, IL seeks a Manager - SAP Operations (Project) with core functional responsibility encompassing demand/ supply planning, procurement, external manufacturing, intercompany transactions, and inbound logistics, so as to sustain and enhance Supply Chain global template. Must have Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv in Infor Tech, Computer Science, Eng, Technology or a field with related coursework plus five (5) yrs of exp in job offered, SAP Analyst, Solutions Analyst, or related role. Must have exp with 1) SAP PTP/PTM, proficiency in software development life cycle management, project management techniques, and methodologies. 2) Deep functional knowledge in SAP Materials Management (MM) and Production Planning (PP). 3) Direct line management skills and experience. 4) SAP Warehouse Management System, Transportation Management, Manufacturing execution system, Data Migration tools. 5) Ability to prioritize and execute tasks effectively in high-pressure situations. Telecommuting/ remote working allowed. Salary range $124,072.00 to $160,000.00/yr. Apply https://www.owi.com/ careers/search-jobs

Old World Industries, LLC in Northbrook, IL seeks SAP IT Lead Analyst - Order to Cash to act as the primary point of contact for SAP OTC matters, working independently to resolve complex issues and deliver solutions. Must have a Bachelor’s or foreign equiv in Information

Tech, Computer Science, Eng or related + 3 yrs of exp in job offered, SAP Consultant or a related role. Must have exp w/ the following: (1) Creating business process diagrams including business process procedures. (2) SAP Order to Cash environment. (3) System management processes, business requirements gathering, solution design and configuration, and user acceptance testing. (4) SAP OTC process flow and its integration with other SAP modules.

(5) Ability to manage master data impacts and configuration within the SAP OTC framework. (6) SAP SD. Telecommuting/ remote working allowed.

Salary Range $139,901 to $148,000/yr Apply https://www.owi.com/ careers/search-jobs

Principal Data Engineer - Information Security Strategy & Analytics, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. 100% Telecommuting permitted. Lead efforts to maintain & mature ISRM’s metrics platform from data ingestion through visualization to ensure consistent & timely data availability to customers. Collaborate with data managers, process owners, & reporting customers to ingest, validate, process, summarize, & visualize quantitative & qualitative data. Lead agile data engineering processes to ensure consistent & timely execution against priorities. Must have a Bachelor’s degree & 5 years’ experience as a senior data engineer focused on business intelligence. Of experience required, must have 5 years: (i) performing data engineering using Python to analyze & process large enterprise data sets; (ii) managing cloud-hosted ExtractLoad-Transform (ELT) data pipelines using AWS Glue, Spark, & Athena for storage, processing, & analysis; (iii) leading endto-end data engineering activities including

design, implementation, testing, deployment, & support; (iv) evaluating data to determine fields & records of value to evaluate data quality & fitness for purpose & to maximize effective use of source data; (v) designing, maintaining, & querying relational databases via advanced SQL queries; (vi) integrating complex data pipelines with REST APIs; & (vii) designing & implementing reporting & data visualizations using Power BI. Of experience required, must have 3 years: (viii) designing, implementing, & maintaining continuous automated code integration, deployment, & testing processes (CI/CD/CT) for cloudhosted data pipelines; & (ix) performing data engineering activities using agile methodologies in Jira & Confluence. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $187,279.75$230,000.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF44104R.

Senior Technical Engineer (Drug Discovery Research), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Hybrid (onsite 3 days a week/ 2 days WFH/remote). Provide comprehensive consultation at highest technical level on all phases of application programming & process implementation for diverse development platforms & computing environments (e.g. onprem, cloud). Perform Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) activities. Coordinate w/ business teams, client SMEs, & other IT staff to propose latest software features for client application. Coordinate & facilitate application design sessions w/ development staff. Create computer programs to facilitate configuration & deployment. Review all technical aspects of software implementation effort, including monitoring of technical deliverables

for consistency & quality. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Development or a related technology field of study. Must have 5 years of programming solutions in 1 of the following programming languages: C#, Java, or Python. Of experience required, must have 3 years of each of the following: (i) building applications that integrate w/ back-end databases; (ii) creating automation scripts in Window Batch, PERL, & Shell Script; (iii) working w/ business users & providing status updates & interacting w/ vendors to resolve product issues; (iv) coordinating w/ business teams & client SMEs & proposing latest software features for client applications. Of experience required, must have 2 years: participating in each step of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process, including business requirement gathering, FRS, Design Document, unit & deployment. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $148,949 - $157,500 per year. Apply online at https://careers.abbvie. com/en or send resume to Job.opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF44106B

Payment Plan, INC seeks F/T Data Scientist in Chicago, IL to support its business operations by using advanced data analysis techniques, including AI, statistical modeling, and quantitative analysis, to perform market research and improve the company’s products and decision-making processes. Remote work option for 2 days/week. Master’s deg. req. in Business Administration or Economics, related or equivalent, with at least one university-level course each in A.I. and Data Analytics. 24 mo. exp. as a Data Analyst and 24 mo. exp. with SQL, Qlik, and either Python or R is required. $110,000120,000/yr, med., dent.,

vision, life, disab., transp. and ret. benf’ts. Send CV and references to Service Payment Plan, INC at 303 E. Wacker Dr., Ste. 2000, Chicago, IL 60601.

Sinai Health System d/b/a/ Sinai Chicago seeks Program Manager - SUHI Clinical Interventions (Chicago, IL): Oversee integration of Community Health Workers (CHW) into health care delivery. Develop, manage & scale overall efforts to integrate CHWs within Sinai Chicago & specific CHW clinical interventions. Degree & Commensurate exp. req’d. Some telecommuting perm (approx. 2-days/wk). For job requirements, pay, benefits & apply search Req# 25931 at https:// jobs.sinaichicago.org.

The Patterson Law Firm, LLC seeks a Legal Project Manager in Chicago, IL. Reqs BS in Bus Admin, Prjct Mgmt, or clsly rltd fld + 24 mnths exp in clsly rltd ocptn. Reqs 24 months exp in the fllwng: Prjct and Client Mgmt software; Bus anlytcs, prjct and case mgmt; Mcrsft Office; Rsrce allction, quality assrnce, & fncnial trckng. Reqs 6 mnths exp in the fllwng: Preprtn of pleadngs, dscvry docs, motions, rspnses, & rsrch memrnda in law firm sttng. 5% trvl to confrncs & U.S. client sites upn rqst. Bnfts: Mdcl, life insrnce, dntl, PTO, 401K, vision. Slry $68,203/yr. Mail resumes to Kristi Browne at 200 W Monroe Street, Suite 2025, Chicago, IL 60606.

Sr. Risk Engineer, HDI Global Insurance Co., Chicago, IL (remote): Provide our Underwriting team w/an understanding of a client’s ops & counsel clients on best practices related to their existing ops & programs (property loss prevention, natural hazards, facility maintenance, business continuation). Assess all industrial activities, w/ high complexity in terms of property insured risks. Conduct full project reviews for most industrial activities. Complete site surveys independently

& full reporting utilizing proprietary corporate tools. Complete full admin of all activities. Must have Bachelor of Science (or foreign equivalent) in Engineering & 5 yrs exp. performing risk engineering surveys. Of exp. required, must have 5 yrs exp.: (i) Working w/MS Office apps; (ii) Counselling clients on best practices related to their existing ops & programs, incl. property loss prevention, natural hazards, facility maintenance, & business continuity; (iii) Assessing industrial activities w/highly complex property insurance risks; (iv) Conducting industrial project reviews & completing site surveys; & (v) Synthesizing risk engineering surveys, preparing & presenting reports orally & in writing to internal & external stakeholders. Exp. may be gained concurrently. Telecommuting is permitted from any location in US. Travel required 30-40% of the time (w/90% of travel domestic & 10% international). Pay range: $143,208-$153,000/ yr. View benefits offered & apply at: hdi. global/en-us/about-us/ job-career-overview/.

Thai Imports Limited d/b/a The Golden Triangle seeks an Buyer/Asian Unit Business Manager in Chicago, IL to negotiate purchases with Thai suppliers on behalf of the Golden Triangle. Req. BS+ 3 mos. exp. in the job offered, Network Specialist Intern, or related occupation. Req. fluent Thai/English Language translation. To apply: submit resume via email to ctuntisak@goldentriangle. biz Must ref. job title.

SERVICES

CHESTNUT

than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning. com www. ChestnutCleaning.com

HOUSING

One Bedroom Garden Apartment for Rent in the heart of Logan Square. Close to all means of transportation. Ideal for one person. Shown by appointment only. The rent is $1000/m utilities included. For showing call or text at 773-405-1825 some restrictions apply. Francisco 773-405-1825

ADULT SERVICES

For a safe place for adults 18+ to meet friends and dates who share similar health experiences. Visit: www.3171443702.net/epd

ANNOUNCEMENTS

ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse”

WHERE IS GOD? No need for a Schindler, MLK in Heaven. No need for a Soldier in Heaven. No need for a Hero in Heaven. No need for an Einstein in Heaven. No need for those who fight hate, discrimination, poverty in Heaven. No need for a Plato, Socrates in Heaven. No need for a Doctor, Nurse in Heaven. No need for those who want to help those in need in Heaven. ALL are needed here, and God is with them. GOD IS WITH THE LIVING, NOT THE DEAD! For more visit: HeavenVs Reincarnation.com

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UPCOMING SHOWS

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SEPT 21 MOVE AT THE SHED

SEPT 27 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

SEPT 30 KUBLAI KHAN TX

THE SHED WITH DRAIN, GIDEON AND GUILT TRIP

OCT 1 DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS . THE SHED

OCT 2 2HOLLIS

FAIRGROUNDS WITH NATE SIB AND ROMMULAS

OCT 3 AFI

.THE SHED WITH TR/ST

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