WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Strawdog's The Petrified Forest is an old-fashioned show in the best sense of the term, developing its conflicts and characters leisurely so that by the time things come to a head, the audience is deeply invested.

Listen to the Dueling Critics on Eight Forty-Eight We've recently seen a spate of shows running between 75 and 90 minutes, no intermission.

WBEZ Dueling Critics Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman tell Eight Forty-Eight about the building boom underway in Chicago's theater district.

We call it a bricks-and-mortar story when a theater company buys its own building and takes on a mortgage to have its own, permanent home.

The Noyes Art Center, a converted grammar school, houses Evanston's Next and Zarko Theatres. Lookingglass makes its home in the pumping station across from the Water Tower. Latino Chicago Theater (of blessed memory) worked out of a converted firehouse in Pilsen.