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Zeitgeist happens: we didn’t exactly plan it this way, but nearly all the profiles and features in this special Fall Theater and Dance Issue reflect on boundaries, identity, and marginalization—issues that feel ever more relevant as the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict and roll back the very concept of citizenship seemingly grow every day. Chicago may still be the city of Second City in the minds of many, but it’s also the hub of “live lit”—that blend of literary essay, personal memoir, and performance made semifamous (at least locally) through shows such as Write Club, Essay Fiesta, and the Stoop....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news briefing for Tuesday, December 12, 2017. Emanuel: Six potential rivals in 2019 mayoral race have said no Mayor Rahm Emanuel is getting ready for a heated mayoral race in 2019, and he’s still confident about his reelection chances despite a rocky and controversial second term in office. “We know six people said ‘No,’ ” Emanuel told the Tribune. “Everything else is conjecture and thumb-sucking....

In The Blood is an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterwork, The Scarlet Letter, in which Hester Prynne is required by the leaders of Puritan Boston to wear a letter A to identify her as an adulteress after she gives birth to a child while her husband is away. Suzan-Lori Parks, a 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner, updates the story to include five bastard children who have different fathers. Hester Prynne (played by a phenomenal Nyajai Ellison) is now Hester La’Negrita, an illiterate African-American woman who is unable even to write the letter A but is determined to provide for her children....

Q: I’m a gay man in a relationship and we’re both really happy since we met a year ago. We’re “open” in the sense that he wants the option to be intimate with someone else if a connection happens and in turn he said he would be supportive of me being involved in my kinks. But I haven’t done anything yet out of fear. I’m not afraid of my kinks. I’m worried that if I ask to go do something kinky it will ruin our relationship....

Thick smoke billows above a Palos Hills strip mall, and it’s only the aroma of sizzling lamb and chicken that silences the reflexive alarms. Friend of the Food Chain Titus Ruscitti recently effused over Al-Sufara Grills, a newcomer to the teeming southwest-suburban Middle Eastern food mecca, an endorsement that put the restaurant right at the top of my priorities. This restaurant/butcher shop is the third in the family of owner Yazan Rashed, which also owns a pair in Amman, Jordan....

James Cagney was pegged as a wisecracking gangster early in his career, but his range as a performer extended far beyond those limiting roles. The streaming channel FilmStruck currently features Cagney as its star of the week, collecting some of his best gangster films (The Public Enemy, White Heat) but also some, noted below, that showcase his skill as a dancer and comic actor. Footlight Parade One of the best of the Warner Brothers showbiz musicals (1933), with James Cagney turning in a dynamite performance as an enterprising producer, and Busby Berkeley contributing some of his most engaging and bizarre production numbers (including his first water ballet, “By a Waterfall”)....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 6, 2017. Chicago Police Department discredit rumors of increased terrorism risk The Chicago Police Department discredited social media rumors of a heightened terror threat against Chicago over the weekend. “Earlier this evening we became aware of messages being shared on social media and by text speculating about a rumored terrorist threat,” the director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, Alicia Tate-Nadeau, said in a statement Friday night....

RYAN LOWRY Mick Jenkins I gravitate toward songs that convey the feeling that time is being altered somehow, as if the world around you is slowing down, speeding up, or freezing momentarily. King Louie accomplishes this on back-to-back tracks from his new mixtape, Drilluminati 3. On “Where I Come From” Louie raps about neighbors dying in the street; he delivers his lines with a solemn grit that hints at the sense of helplessness that comes with the territory....

On paper, Josh Wilder’s Leftovers sounds like a radical magical realism romp. Directed by Sydney Chatman, the show focuses on a Black family whose streak of bad luck and empty promises is interrupted by an enormous dandelion that breaks through the nearby concrete. Siblings Jalil and Kwamaine reach up to catch the weed’s falling spores; they make wishes on the breezy little seeds. Jalil, the younger brother, asks for a “Cosby Show-happy” family, opening the story’s exploration of Bill Cosby’s career and his impact on Black domesticity....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. “Do sports diminish the prejudices of fans as well as players?” Bogira wondered.

ARTIST: Simon Paul SHOW: Legendary Pink Dots at the Beat Kitchen on Fri 10/4 MORE INFO: luapnomis.com

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news brief. Canadian prime minister Trudeau wouldn’t let Axelrod push him into talking Trump Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau visited Chicago for the first time as prime minister Wednesday and made several stops. During a speech on free trade at the University of Chicago, Trudeau emphasized the importance of the North American Free Trade Agreement but was careful not to criticize NAFTA foe President Donald Trump despite David Axelrod’s aggressive pushing....

Michael Gebert Homaro Cantu at Moto Tragic news from the food world: one of the city’s most endlessly intriguing and visionary chefs, Homaro Cantu of Moto, Berrista, and other restaurants, is suspected to have committed suicide yesterday at the site of one of his planned future businesses, a brewery called Crooked Fork, at 4419 W. Montrose. He leaves behind a wife, Katie, and two young daughters. I left to play for a while and came back to the pan that was now black and blue with heat....

Lyricism doesn’t immediately come to mind as Rich Homie Quan’s standout quality. The Atlanta rapper’s breakout hits, including 2015’s “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)” and 2013’s “Type of Way,” were heavy on swagger and catchy beats, but with lines like“15,000 dollars on your bitch wanna fuck me / Got her screamin’ like ooohh,” they lacked creative writing. But the 28-year-old made a total about-face with his full-length debut, March’s Rich as in Spirit—his lyrics are the strongest part of the album....

When a studio declines to screen a film for critics before its opening day, you can bet that the film stinks and the studio knows it. Such is the case with Independence Day: Resurgence—Roland Emmerich’s long-awaited sequel to his 1996 summer blockbuster Independence Day—which 20th Century Fox ushered into theaters last Friday before word of its ineptitude could leak to the paying masses. Resurgence is a poorly written, sloppily edited, and altogether boring regurgitation of the original, devoid of any real tension, surprises, or compelling characters....

Since 2004 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.

It was my good luck twice to benefit from Nicole Hollander’s bad luck—in 1990 when the Sun-Times dropped her comic strip, Sylvia, and in 2010 when the Tribune, having immediately picked it up 20 years earlier, dropped it as well. Sylvia’s audience was small, if passionate, and numbers prevailed over feelings. Even so, the story of her youth is a story of her origins. Wonder Bread is a short book, lavishly illustrated, and the stories it tells are ones that—as they say—bent the twig....

A Letter from Butterfly All was bliss until B.F. shipped out a few months later, promising to return when “the robins nest” and unaware that I was pregnant. For three long years I waited, positive that he would be true to his word. Imagine my shock when he did return, with an American wife in tow, demanding that I hand over my beloved child to be raised in America as their son....

East-coast native Chris Forsyth has been making waves the past few years as a nouveau guitar god. His approach to his craft positions him somewhere between classicists (Jerry Garcia, Richard Thompson) and improvising avant-garde rule breakers (Loren Connors, Robert Quine). This makes it less surprising to find out that Forsyth was tutored by Television’s Richard Lloyd—whose own aesthetic encompasses all those virtuosic guitar styles—while living in New York in the late 90s and early 00s....

German reeds player Peter Brötzmann turned 79 in March, so it would be developmentally appropriate for him to take a look back. But memories are a mixed blessing for a devoted practitioner of improvised music. While they can build up a shared understanding between partners, making it easier for them to come up with something that works in a pinch, they can also dilute or foreclose on the in-the-moment magic between players that makes the music so thrilling....