- Steppenwolf is bringing Jeff Garlin's solo show Closer Than I Appear from December 4 through the 16th. His last performance there was in 2011, called No Sugar Tonight.
- Kinky Boots opens on Broadway in March, having just finished a run in Chicago.
- Victory Gardens Theater is replacing Chicago is Burning, the last production of their 2012-13 season, with a new play by Associate Artist Luis Alfaro, entitled Mojada.
- Could there ever be another article about Mike Daisey without mention of This American Life and Apple? At least for now, no. Daisey is currently in Chicago for his piece American Utopias, which opens at the MCA Thursday, co-presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival.
- Coming after the New Year: Carlos Mencia and Nick Kroll (of FX's The League) head to UP.
- The Den Theatre is remounting Brian Friel's Faith Healer starting in December. According to the Den, the play previously "played to sold-out houses" at both TurnAround Theatre and Steppenwolf in 1995.
Dana Norris, the founder and host of Story Club, reviewed Silent Hill 3D, Paranormal Activity and Sinister for Halloween. What did she learn? In 2012, America has been the most afraid of moving to a new house or town, carousels and our own children, among other things.
Read an excerpt below, or listen above:
I hate horror movies because I don’t need them. I know that other people get a delicious thrill from being scared but that's only because they’re not normally scared, but I start out scared. I wake up every morning and walk to the "L" thinking,“Is someone going to hit me in the back of the head with a brick?”
But I think that horror movies are important. Maybe they show us something about ourselves, what we all, as a culture, are most afraid of. I don't know for sure because I absolutely refuse to watch horror movies. But I wanted to investigate this theory further, so instead of watching the horror movies currently in theaters, I just watched the trailers with the sound off. This is what I found:
Silent Hill 3D
- A review of the University of Chicago's new arts building, the Logan Center, and their new cabaret series, in the Chicago Maroon, calls it "a venue for artists of all disciplines and persuasions to perform.
- John Malkovich will be performing in The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of a Serial Killer at the Chicago Symphony Center on February 1 and 2. Tickets are now on sale. The production "is staged for a Baroque orchestra with period instruments, two sopranos and one actor. It tells the true story of Austrian serial murderer and writer Jack Unterweger (Malkovich) through chapters of spoken dialogue, each concluded with arias by Gluck, Vivaldi, Beethoven and others."
- Chicago Opera Theater is holding a subscription raffle for National Opera Week, which runs from this Monday to next.
