WBEZ | Chicago Fire

TV and movie crews spending more time filming in Chicago

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:26:00 -0500

The number of days movies and TV shows spent filming in Chicago is up 45 percent compared to 2011, according to the Chicago Film Office.

The office’s director, Rich Moskal, said the city saw a record increase in the number of production days: 1,808 days in 2012 compared to 1,235 the year before.

Although the number of productions themselves held largely steady, Moskal said the production day figure gives a fuller picture of the amount of activity here. TV series could spend as many as 150 days filming, compared to the production of a commercial, which only has a presence for 2 to 3 days.

“Each day a production is filming translates into days of employment for local crew, additional days of business with local vendors, hotel nights, etc,” he said. “The more days a production is here, the more they spend locally.”

In 2012, Film Office data shows, local film and TV industry spending hit a high of $170 million. That’s up from $160 million in 2010 and $154 million in 2011.

Last year’s increase is mainly due to four TV shows: Chicago Fire (NBC), Boss (Starz), Underemployed (MTV) and Mob Doctor (Fox), Moskal said, adding that 17 independent movies also were filmed in the city. So were several reality shows including Mob Wives Chicago, Chicagolicious and Hardcore Pawn: Chicago.

“Chicago looks great on film, it’s a great place to tell a story creatively, but it also has great depth of talent and resources to outfit the productions when they are here,” Moskal said.

He said a 30 percent tax credit also helped bring in the film business: “The tax incentive has done a tremendous job in terms of attracting production and keeping (it) here in Chicago, not just for Hollywood productions, but locally produced productions as well.”

Although two of last year’s TV shows were cancelled, and the fate of a third looks uncertain, Moskal said that’s just part of the gamble.

“You never know if it’s going to last or not,” he said, adding that this year, the city will have four other pilots filming and three Hollywood films including Transformers Four.

Bruce Sheridan, who chairs the Film and Video Department at Columbia College Chicago, said he’s already seeing an increase in the film industry this year.

“We have six features that we are putting out students interns onto this coming summer, which is much higher than last year or the year before,” Sheridan said. “So, we think the trend is continuing.”

How many vacant buildings are there in Chicago?

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:09:00 -0600

Earlier this week, there was as a massive fire at an abandoned warehouse at 3757 S. Ashland Ave. in Bridgeport.

It was five-alarm (the worst in seven years), the building's now being demolished, even though it's still smoldering, and still looks like an ice palace.

But it begs an even bigger question: how many abandoned industrial buildings are out there?

The short answer: no one knows. But it's not as simple as that.

The City of Chicago requires owners of buildings that are vacant more than 30 days to register with the city. It's supposed to be updated every six months, and there are fines for not complying.

In the case of the Bridgeport warehouse, reports have now surfaced its owner is actually in jail for attempting to bribe an alderman. There were also numerous violations, including a previous fire, at that location.

The city says it doesn't have a list or know precisely how many vacant commercial properties are out there, but there is at least one clue that we can get from parsing 311 complaints about vacant properties.

Between 2010 and this morning, there were more than 35,000 calls from people who specifically filed complaints about vacant properties.

Here's a great map that parses that data by neighborhood. Those calls translated to about 24,000 properties.

You can file your own complaint about vacant properties here. You can look up individual properties, and see if they're registered and have had other complaints, here.

Shawn Allee contributed to this report.

Building Violations at the site of the fire (3757 S. Ashland)

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Big fire hits Chicago

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 05:00:00 -0600

CHICAGO'S LOSS. The city's cleaning up after its biggest fire "in many years," in the historic Central Manufacturing District, Chicago's first office park. [Correcting earlier post, which conflated two separate fires, one from 2006. Thanks, Bernie Tafoya.]

[UPDATE] PEARL JAM @ WRIGLEY FIELD. After a day of teasing on Twitter, Pearl Jam confirms a July 19 show in Chicago.

TWEETS FROM A SHOOTING SPREE. As a gunfight unfolded on a Texas college campus, one student communicated with friends, family and reporters using Twitter.
* Human rights organization developing app to confirm authenticity of photos, audio and video shared from mobile phones.

SO: SHOULD TEXAS COLLEGE STUDENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO CARRY CONCEALED WEAPONS ON CAMPUS? A state senator pushing the idea says he stands by his proposal to give them just that.
* NRA chief blasts Obama plan for gun control, alluding again to armed protection for Obama's kids.
* Jon Stewart on display of weapons during Inaugural festivities: "Jesus, that's a lot of guns."

AN OVERTIMELY REPORT. City of Chicago numbers show a police communications operator in the Office of Emergency Management made $91,116 in overtime over 10 months last year, for total earnings of $169,000 -- about $1,000 more than the annual salary of her boss.
* White House announces "National Day of Civic Hacking," when cities -- including Chicago -- and federal agencies encourage computer programmers to gather in quest of ways to liberate government data and create useful apps. NASA's making its space stats available, too.
* The Onion: "NASA Continues Search For Planet Capable Of Supporting NASA."

IF YOU'RE MY FRIEND AND YOU'VE LIKED 'FREAKS AND GEEKS' ON FACEBOOK, YOU ARE SO BUSTED. Facebook's rollout of its new "Graph Search" function now intersects the universe of WBEZ bloggers.
* Why is it called "Graph Search"? Because of the social graph.
* Still, "the name 'Graph Search' is horrendous."

AN ICE START. After a win in their home opener, the Blackhawks are on pace to a perfect season.
* Their "first 3-0 start in forever."

AS FORETOLD HERE. A new study has found the first evidence of football-related brain damage in living NFL veterans with cognitive and emotional problems.
* (What's left of) The week ahead.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* Soundtrack for preparation of this issue: Songs from "Freaks and Geeks."
* The countdown to this week's news quiz is ON:

Chicago television blues

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 09:00:00 -0600

Chicago may be called The Second City, but in terms of television success, a number farther down the list would be more accurate.

As 2012 drew to a close, two Chicago-based TV shows were cancelled by their respective networks. The Mob Doctor, FOX’s low-rated (and hilariously awful) drama about a surgeon working for the mafia, was whacked after just 13 episodes. Boss, another low-rated (but surprisingly riveting) drama starring Kelsey Grammer as a corrupt Daley-esque Chicago mayor, got the axe after struggling to connect with viewers on Starz for two seasons.

Grammer claims that audiences shunned Boss in response to his own right-leaning political beliefs (a Fox News-style conspiracy theory that I don't buy for a second) and one could argue that abysmal writing was solely to blame for The Mob Doctor’s demise. Still, the truth is that most TV shows filmed in Chicago don’t last long, regardless of script quality or star power.

The Chicago Code, an intense crime drama on FOX starring Jennifer Beals, was cancelled after just one season in May 2011. That same year, NBC’s The Playboy Club, which, granted, was much less promising than The Chicago Code, was also shut down after only three episodes on the air.

Currently, MTV’s Underemployed and NBC’s Chicago Fire are holding on to their local film crews, despite mixed reviews from critics and worryingly low ratings. But if these shows don’t step up their game and attract more viewers soon, they too will descend into the same cancelled TV purgatory.

On paper, Chicago seems like the perfect place to film a hit TV show: highly cinematic atmosphere, hardworking crews and a plethora of talented local actors to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. So why are shows like CBS’s The Good Wife set in Chicago, but filmed elsewhere?

Unfortunately, logistical factors make filming in the Windy City more of a hassle than an advantage. Most film crews would rather shoot in locations like Los Angeles, New Orleans or Vancouver, where the taxes are lower and the weather much more reliable.

Even colder and more expensive cities like New York are preferable, with a multitude of soundtages available despite high production costs. Chicago has one big film studio, the beautiful Cinespace on the Near West Side, but more widespread studio space could also allow more productions to be filmed indoors during the freezing winter months.

Thankfully, Chicago seems to have better luck with films. Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon was a literal disaster movie shot downtown during the summer of 2010 that created thousands of jobs for local film crews. And who could forget director Christopher Nolan taking over Chicago in the summer of 2007 with The Dark Knight, catapulting Batman off rooftops, sending the Joker careening through the streets and modeling Gotham’s skyline after ours?

While television shows have floundered in comparison to the great films that have been made here, Chicagoans shouldn’t lose hope. The ShowTime drama Shameless, which has been filming exterior locations in Chicago since 2010, still reigns on cable as a critical darling. And who knows? Maybe a Dark Knight television series is just around the corner…

Follow Leah on Twitter @leahkpickett

'Chicago Fire' simmers, doesn't explode, with feeling for the city

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:00:00 -0500

NBC's Chicago Fire starts off with some firefighters going to a fire in Chicago. So in case you thought that the title was referring to the soccer team, or was a period piece about the original Chicago fire, or was a metaphor or something, rest assured: you will see plenty of firemen fighting fires. All those worries that this show had picked a name far too obvious for its topic were certainly validated.

What's difficult is that, despite the credentials of creator Dick Wolf (Law & Order), firefighting has been done thoroughly and well on television, in FOX's Rescue Me, a show that ended in 2011 for seven seasons. Though that show ebbed and flowed in believability, it took strong character tropes and turned them on their head. The pilot episode of Chicago Fire doesn't demonstate that this show plans to do the same, or heaven forbid, some even more interesting than that.

"So that’s it, yeah? 14 years at this station and it all fits in a box," says the wife of a fallen firefighter to his coworker. It seems that one fire (there are several biggies in the pilot alone) changed the course of history for this firehouse, as one of their own died. Two of the hunky male leads -- Jesse Spencer and Taylor Kinney playing Matthew Casey and Kelly Severide, respectively -- are now at odds over their role in their buddy losing his life; dedspite not being romantic, their relationship has the most heat in this show.

Rescue Me started off with a death too, and used some of the same character types: the hot blonde lesbian, the rookie who's so green, the older worker gone to seed with a secret, the dueling brother-types, the wise black chief in charge. And it also worked hard to represent a working class New York. This Chicago aspect of this show is well-represented; Mayor Emanuel is coming by Saturday, it's often mentioned, and he makes his less-than-a-minute cameo (set to music, no words spoken), with some facial expressions that will appear familiar to Chicagoans:

The show doesn't worry about showing him too much respect though; "I heard he stops to take a piss at every house in the city, as a sign of respect," says one fireman, when he's told to get excited the Mayor is coming for a visit.

Wolf seems intent upon convincing you of his show's Chicagoness by shoving shot after shot of the Sears Tower in the frame; he's even chosen the location of the firehouse clearly for it's view of it. But it's the plotlines that will hopefully take us further around the different neighborhoods that do this better justice. The quickly cancelled The Mob Doctor tried to create a Chicago feel by revealing the secret world of mob life in the city, but the pilot of Chicago Fire does a better job showing the real gang violence in Chicago; a scene at a drug-related shooting in a South Side apartment complex rang very true. More beautiful, if less convincing, was the car accident on the Columbus Bridge, the river glittering in the background.

If anything, it's well cast with faces you've seen before in smaller but impressive roles. David Eisenberg, memorable as Steve on Sex and the City, is now struggling with a house in foreclosure, and Monica Raymund, who impressed in a recurring role on The Good Wife, deals with not being a "real" doctor, just an paramedic. Her partner sums up their dilemma best: "You really are new, aren’t you?" she says to the rookie. "Listen, we get them to the doctor best we can and then we move on. That’s the only way to make it here."

Despite all these smaller plotlines, the overall tension in the house seems to be some sort of class warefare within the firehouse: we learn that "There are two types of firefighters: those who are on squad, and those who wish they were on squad." The difference here seems to be between whether the firefighter actually gets in the building and saves people or merely assists -- at least, that's what the distinction appeared to be. Whether this is an accurate tension that exists in houses or just a plot device remains to be seen, but it's interesting to see the larger societal class issues effect this group, as the create their own internal distinctions.

On that note, the episode ends with a Bruce Springsteen song, the perfect working class man's hero. Which seems topical except, don't forget: he's from New Jersey.

NBC's Chicago Fire premieres Wednesday night at 9 pm central. Oh, and here's a gratuitous shot of a girl bringing over Chicago Bagel Authority for breakfast. Good idea.

Watching NBC's new 'Chicago Fire' with real firefighters

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 05:00:00 -0500

Tim O’Brien is a third generation firefighter.

He offered to gather some coworkers to watch the pilot episode of “Chicago Fire” and give an insider perspective on how closely the show resembles the real thing.

The new NBC drama centers around the Chicago Fire Department. It premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m., but the first episode was available On Demand and online ahead of the air date.

So earlier this week O’Brien served up some homemade beef vegetable soup. He relegated his two dogs - Shadow and Irish - into the backyard. He threw a log into the fireplace and everyone settled into his living room for the show.

Pat Duddleston, a 22-year Fire Department veteran, lives just down the street from O’Brien. He’s with Truck 17 on the South Side.

Rebecca Bolluyt is a paramedic from Uptown.

The real firefighters watched their fictional counterparts respond to car crashes, house fires and gunshot wounds.

O'Brien said the biggest difference between real fires and the fires on television is the amount of smoke on a scene.

“A lot more smoke (in real fires)," he said. "But...you can’t watch the show if all you can see is smoke.”

No matter how intense the action got on the screen, they always seemed to be able to top the scripted stories with real life experiences.

"You ever have one who was shot in the head talking to you?" O'Brien asked the others. "I had one once. Real small caliber bullet from far away. It broke the skin but didn’t penetrate his skull. It was the weirdest thing in the world."

Some moments got big laughs - like when when the wide-eyed rookie character gets stuck with some grunt work.

“That’s true,” O’Brien said. “That’s exactly how it goes. That would happen.”

Duddleston said the show does a good job of showing how the fire department is like a family.

“A lot of people don’t understand it cause everybody goes to a nine to five job and they’re done," he said. "Here we spend one third of our lives with these guys and girls. It’s brothers and sisters.”

Bolluyt said she likes that the show focuses on how the job bleeds into firefighters’ personal lives too.

“I know other people have stressful jobs," she said "But we’re with each other in some of the most extreme, most stressful situations that you could ever be with someone in and it makes you become closer to other people.”

The very unscientific focus group gave the show passing marks for its portrayal of life in the firehouse.

The NBC show, from creator Dick Wolf, has used real Chicago locations for much of its filming. Mayor Rahm Emanuel makes a cameo in the pilot too.

O'Brien said even the set decorations were authentic - real calendars, posters and old photos hang on walls in the background.

But the real firefighters couldn’t help laughing at some of the Hollywood touches - like when the first chiseled actor sauntered on screen without a shirt.

"That’s the way I looked when I came on the job," O'Brien said. "And I used to walk around with my shirt off. But now that I look like this, I leave it on."

'In Old Chicago'-- the Hollywood version of the Great Fire

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 05:00:00 -0500

October 8th is the anniversary of the Chicago Fire of 1871. Today our topic is the 1937 feature film about our great conflagration—In Old Chicago.

The movie is a blockbuster. Twentieth Century Fox spent $1.8 million making In Old Chicago, a hefty price tag for the 1930s. Much of the budget went into the climactic fire scenes. Of course, the whole thing was filmed on a Hollywood sound stage or with miniatures, so the effects look primitive to modern eyes.

The studio did do its historical research. Many of the sets are based on old pictures from the actual fire. However, the screenplay itself is almost all fiction. About the only true facts are that a fire starts in the O’Leary barn, and Chicago burns down.

The movie opens in the 1850s, with the Irish O’Leary family on their way to the up-and-coming city of Chicago. Dad O’Leary is killed in an accident, so his widow Molly (Alice Brady) has to raise her three sons alone. She starts a laundry.

The city grows. The O’Leary boys grow. Handsome, charming Dion (Tyrone Power) becomes a gambler. Boring-but-honest Jack (Don Ameche) sets himself up as a lawyer. The third brother hangs around the other two.

Alice Faye plays the female lead, a saloon singer who is courted by Dion. Brian Donlevy is the villain, Andy Devine provides comic relief, and Rondo Hatton lurks about looking sinister.

At length, Jack is elected Mayor of Chicago. He’s a reformer and has vowed to clean up the city’s gambling dens. This brings him into conflict with brother Dion. But before they can have a showdown, the cow kicks over a lantern in the family barn and things start burning.

The movie climaxes with 20 minutes of the Great Fire. All the tangled plot points are settled. And incidentally, Chicago is destroyed.

In 1937 Hollywood was going through a disaster-movie phase. San Francisco had been a major hit for M-G-M. So when 20th Century Fox decided to make their own disaster epic, they kept most of the plot from the M-G-M story, and simply replaced the earthquake with a fire.

Some of the parallels are unintentionally hilarous. In the earthquake scenes of San Francisco, Clark Gable wanders around with a blood stain down his right cheek. In the climax of our film, Tyrone Power wanders around with a similar blood stain--but on his left cheek.

And the shameless copying succeeded! In Old Chicago was praised by the critics and became one of the top-grossing films of 1937. It won two Oscars, including a Best Supporting Actress award for Alice Brady.

(At the Academy ceremonies, a man accepted the award for the absent Brady. It turned out Brady had not sent him. That particular Oscar statue was never seen again.)

As I’ve said, the movie is full of historical inaccuracy. I’ll mention only one–the real-life Mrs. O’Leary was named Catherine, not Molly. But if you don’t mind watching old black-and-white films, In Old Chicago is 95 minutes of good, hokey entertainment.

Is Chicago Hollywood on the lake? Or the Great White Way? Or...something?

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:00:00 -0500

Listen to this conversation

When it comes to having a burgeoning television industry, sometimes it feels like Chicago's on a bit of a rollercoaster. As quickly as The Rosie Show said goodbye to us and the future of OWN seemed precarious, Steve Harvey said he'd be coming to save the day.

And that’s just the talk shows. In the coming weeks, several new shows and second seasons will start filming, because it's our version of pilot season! Boss is back, after it was renewed almost immediately by Starz. Chicago Fire, a new show from Law and Order creator Dick Wolf, will film its pilot in the next few weeks. There's also the "Untitled Sony Pictures Television Pilot," a medical show starring Jordana Spiro (she was last seen in another Chicago-wannabe sitcom, My Boys). And last is MTV's Underemployed, (which has had its own set of controversies) from Craig Wright, who has been a part of shows like Dirty Sexy Money, Six Feet Under and Lost, and is an ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theater.

But all of that excitement is dampened by the memory of highly-touted (or at least highly publicized) shows like NBC's The Playboy Club essentially crashing and burning last year. "Is it a moral killer? Yeah," said the Chicago Tribune's Nina Metz when we talked to her before the show. But the city still made money off of it, about the financial equivalent of a film shooting here.

Betsy Steinberg, managing director of the Illinois Film Office, says that it's a highly volatile business, whether you're in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. She cited FOX's The Chicago Code, whose cancellation disappointed many (just look at the comments on this article), and came as a surprise to industry insiders, given the track record of creator Shawn Ryan on shows like The Shield. But Steinberg will admit that because of that smaller market, “You feel it more [when a show doesn’t get picked up in Chicago] than either L.A. and New York.”

Producers like Ruth Ratny, who runs the industry website Reel Chicago, believe the city should be doing more to get the revenue in and build the industry here. On some level, Chicago is facing an uphill battle: Shows like Showtime's Shameless film part-time here, but as Ratny points out, they do mostly exterior shots because "actors don't want to uproot their families. And you can't blame them."

And then there's all the sitcoms that frustrate local fans because they get all the details wrong; Happy Endings, Whitney, Mike & Molly all seem to have picked Chicago because the creators were looking for an alternative to L.A. and New York, and we're a good alternative. Sitcoms will always shoot in L.A., because it's a more "efficient factory system," Metz explained. Unless, of course, there is "a star with enough leverage to force it" to be filmed elsewhere.

But no matter whether a show does well or not, the same production companies do continue to come back to Chicago. "FOX isn’t not interested in putting shows here because one of their shows did badly," said Metz about a show like Chicago Code. Metz, Ratny and Steinberg will join Steve Edwards on Afternoon Shift to discuss this season in television and how Chicago is doing as far as getting television in as a dependable revenue stream.

Of course, the future of the industry might be where we don't even recognize it. Some of the more established documentary houses are here, like Kartemquin and Towers Productions. (In fact, Kartemquin specifically asked us not to forget docs in this discussion. Noted.) But documentaries and less-popular reality shows aren't exactly bringing big money to any one, whether they're in Chicago or not. And time will tell if projects like the pilot being developed by HBO for online streaming will take off as a way for everyone to spend a little money and make a lot. Who knows, though: Television might make Chicago the new Great White Way...or something.

Critics theater picks for the weekend; 'Don Quixote', 'Mary Poppins' and 'Dancing Henry 5'

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:23:00 -0500

Kelly Kleiman

The most moving moments in Lookingglass Theatre's The Great Fire belong to Mr. and Mrs. O'Leary, the Irish immigrants falsely accused of causing the blaze. Watching them cringe in front of some sort of government investigative panel you get a sense of how marginalized and terrified even these English-speaking immigrants were. If the rest of the show had that level of emotional engagement or social commentary, it would be a knock-out; instead, it's a pleasant tour through familiar territory, an in-joke for Chicagoans. Its acrobatics never reach to any impressive height, nor does its story-telling. But Cheryl Lynn Bruce's turn as Alderman Hildreth, who thought to stop the fire by using gunpowder to blow up some of the buildings still standing, is equal parts hilarious and true and should be required viewing for anyone who thinks the Chicago City Council is fit to govern. Through November 20 at the Waterworks; tickets $42-$60.

Meanwhile, The Artistic Home's A Touch of the Poet shows an Irish family from half a century earlier, struggling against being marginalized by accepting the claims of its paterfamilias to being a great gentleman and a brave soldier, though to all outward appearances he's just a tavern-keeper with a slavey wife and a pretty daughter. I saw this show some years ago with Brian Dennehy directed by Robert Falls and hated it with a passion surpassing all things because the central character, Con Melody, was so over-the-top in his delusions and hatefulness. Kathy Scambiaterra's production demonstrates that it's not the character at all: under her direction Frank Nall makes one hairpin turn after another in portraying Con's quest to escape himself. His splendid performance is complemented by that of Sally Eames, if anything stronger and subtler as the wife who knows Con for what he is and loves him nonetheless. Their performances carry the entire play, and remind us that Eugene O'Neill did, on occasion, provide a happy ending. Through November 6 at Stage 773 on Belmont; tickets $28-$32 with student and senior discounts available.

And for something completely different, head to the Dance Center of Columbia College tonight, tomorrow or Saturday for Dancing Henry Five, a dance version of Shakespeare's play choreographed by David Gordon.

Laura Molzahn

A couple of big-ticket shows this weekend, both featuring world-premiere commissions, may be worth shelling out for. The Joffrey performs its first evening-length commission in 60 years, a remix of Don Quixote by former Bolshoi dancer Yuri Possokhov, who both riffs on the Petipa version and brings his own contemporary sensibility to the dancing. True to Cervantes’ 400-year-old story, Possokhov focuses on Don Q himself—and comic relief Sancho Panza. Animated projections help bring this 19^th-century ballet into the 21^st century.

Twyla Tharp hasn’t created a new piece for Hubbard Street in 15 years—but she makes up for lost time in the formally and musically intricate Scarlatti, a piece for 12. Those familiar with her work in the 1978 film Hair or the 2010 Sinatra jukebox musical Come Fly Awaywon’t be surprised by her gift for communicating character too.

It’s Alive…! at Defibrillator Gallery’s three-week series, the ALive Installation Project. A wall has been built down the middle of the space, and a dancer on one side and performance artist on the other perform simultaneously for three hours. (No worries: you can drop in.) The opening show features Michelle Kranicke of Zephyr Dance and Korean artist Gim Gwang Cheol, performing a project similar to one in Montreal that included “creating crossfire with red string” and reading a dictionary.

Jonathan Abarbanel

I'm mainly beholden to the Brits for my choices this week, which could not represent greater artistic and intellectual extremes.

Mary Poppins is back in town, and if that's not reason for rejoicing I don't know what is. Beloved by some and sentimental hogwash to others, this dazzling Broadway version of the popular Disney film adaptation of the old P. L. Travers children's book is perfect for children of all ages, as advertisements like to proclaim. The familiar songs all are there and the spectacular dance numbers are even more spectacular when performed live, onstage with a few eye-popping surprises. This is a great first Broadway show for kids. Mary Poppins is at the Cadillac Palace Theatre through Nov. 6.

On the other hand, you'd best keep the kiddies away from Cloud 9 at the Gift Theatre in Jefferson Park, unless they are extremely advanced. This 1979 play by Brit author Caryl Churchill uses cross-dressing and other meta-theatrical devices to target racism, sexism and gender identity in 19th Century British Colonial Africa and London today. Nothing sacred in this highly theatrical work of magic realism, which is quite a different sort of play for the Gift Theatre. FYI: the extremely intimated Gift storefront playhouse will put the action, some of it sexual, very much in your face. Cloud 9 runs through Dec. 4.

Also: a fine organization, Chicago Cabaret Professionals, holds its annual fundraiser concert at Park West this Sunday (Oct. 16) at 7PM. You and the Night and the Music will feature a dazzling line-up of Chicago's top cabaret musical talents, with special honors bestowed upon Ann Hampton Calloway, Jimmy Damon and former Chicago Cultural Commish Lois Weisberg. Tickets begin at $27.

Chicago Fire coach Frank Klopas keeps playoff hopes alive

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:32:00 -0500

Last week the Chicago Fire came up short in the finals of the US Open Cup. It was a tough loss for the team, and for their interim head coach, Frank Klopas. Klopas was a Fire player when they won “the double”--the MLS title and the US Open Cup--in 1998.

But Klopas and Chicago soccer go back even farther: He played for the Sting at the age of 18 and played his high school ball at Mather High School, where the team won the city championship his senior year.

Eight Forty-Eight's Jason Marck recently caught up with Klopas to talk about the team’s chances of making the playoffs. But Klopas began by comparing today’s local soccer scene with what it was like when he was growing up.