By late November, Actors Equity Association—the union of live theater stage managers and actors—usually has released statistics on how many weeks of work Equity members chalked up in the previous 12-month season (not a calendar year).

American soprano Renee Fleming, 51, has been named Creative Consultant for Lyric Opera of Chicago and Vice-President of the Lyric Board of Trustees. The five-year appointment, effective immediately, was made at 4PM Thursday (Dec.

Your theater history factoid of the week: Leonard Bernstein's "Candide," based on the Voltaire novella, opened on Broadway 56 years ago today, Dec. 1, 1956.

The chickens that flew the coop in 2008 are coming home to roost as 2010 winds down. We're talking about funding for non-profit theaters, of course.

Y'see, the problem is there just aren't enough theater critics. Sure, Chicago has several dozen credible men and women who write, blog or broadcast about theater on a daily or weekly basis, but it simply doesn't work when you have 14 shows opening in three days, as was the case last Friday-Sunday.

Chicago actor Ernest Perry, Jr. will spend the winter on the road in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," the August Wilson play set in a 1920s Chicago recording studio.