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Kevin McCoy was a fixture in off-Loop theater for at least a decade. He appeared in dozens of shows at Stage Left, Bailiwick, and Center Theater, and he was a member of the Lifeline ensemble. Then three and a half years ago, he dropped out of the scene. He says the change was triggered by, of all things, success. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1992 McCoy teamed up with jazz musician Robert Mazurek for the show Frank’s Corner, a series of urban tales accompanied by music, which premiered at the Nights of the Blue Rider Festival....

By Michael Miner Ryan was addressing the awards dinner of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, describing his personal road to Damascus, the epiphany that led him to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. The moratorium of course had been big news. “As a member of the Illinois General Assembly, I vividly remember voting for the death penalty. And I can also remember the debate vividly on the death penalty....

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuted orchestral pieces by Florence Price and William Grant Still in the 30s and 40s, but it’s rarely played a major work by an African-American since. In fact, the premiere this weekend of Olly Wilson’s third symphony, Hold On, is the CSO’s first such performance in decades–and the piece is the only one the orchestra has commissioned from a black composer in its 108-year history....

DC BELLAMY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Blues guitarist DC Bellamy moved to Kansas City years ago, but he learned to play in his native Chicago–his half brother Curtis Mayfield used to rehearse with the Impressions in the family’s living room. At Bellamy’s ninth Christmas, in 1957, he was given his first guitar, and by his late teens he was working blues and R & B pickup gigs around town....

DONNA SUMMER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Donna Summer may have only been the queen of disco, but she’s remarkable in the pop realm too, as a singer who’s managed to maintain a high-profile career for close to 25 years without settling completely into the MOR slop. Her early records with producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte are both the building blocks of Eurodisco and the blueprint for much modern pop, and after her heyday ended, she followed the postdisco groove where it logically led: to hard-edged synth pop like “She Works Hard for the Money” and Stock/Aitken/Waterman productions like “This Time I Know It’s for Real....

Confirmed sightings of bobcats have come from 90 of the 102 counties of Illinois in recent years. Double-crested cormorants were rare migrants through this region just a few years ago. Now they are regular nesters with growing breeding colonies. As a result, the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board is proposing to remove both of these animals from the state’s list of threatened species. Here in Cook County we have had tantalizing reports of possible bobcat sightings....

Fully Aware Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Latterman, now 30, founded Aware almost exactly five years ago, when he was still working as a CPA for Coopers & Lybrand in Boston. Sick of the grind, he’d been mulling a number of ideas for a company of his own, among them an all-natural clothing store, but in the end his knack for turning friends on to unknown bands seemed the most natural of his interests to parlay into a career....

Independent Days “Oh God!” says Wyers from her hospital bed. “Can you believe it? I’m not independent anymore. I’ve gotta just simply be at their mercy. There comes to be a situation where you have to give up regardless. So how can you give up? You just have to give up! That’s all. That’s it.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The talent agent Shirley Hamilton invited Wyers to a New Year’s Eve party to meet other actors and models....

MARACA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At the ripe old age of 33, Orlando “Maraca” Valle is a seasoned veteran of Cuban music. In 1988, after serving a short stint with great Cuban pianist Emiliano Salvador, the flute prodigy joined Irakere, the legendary Latin-jazz band led by pianist Chucho Valdes, and at 28 he decided he was ready for his close-up. As heard on Havana Calling (Qbadisc), his U....

Q, Bailiwick Repertory, and PATIENCE AND SARAH, Bailiwick Repertory. Of the two new shows in the Bailiwick Pride Series, the one with the least on its mind is the most rewarding while the one with sky-high aspirations is dreary and affected. Despite some missteps that bring it dangerously close to parody, the musical revue Q–a compendium of 16 ballads and ditties by gifted songwriters and life partners Dan Martin and Michael Biello–demonstrates the way to make gay musical theater celebratory without being cheeky, preachy, or crude....

Hey, Faggot: Every day my mail contains at least three questions about “gerbiling.” In the eight years I’ve been writing this column, I have never addressed the gerbil issue, but now, this week and this week only, I am breaking my silence. Clip and save this column, for I will never discuss gerbils again. Ahem. To begin, I would like to make a controversial statement: Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Hey, Faggot: I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of cockfighting contests, and I hope never to hear of them again. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Anyway, about Las Vegas: my research assistant Kevin and I just returned from Nevada, where we spent two glam days and one fab night with Janet Klein, winner of the Savage Love trivia contest....

Tamas and Juli Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi created this hour-long film for “2000 Seen By,” a French television series that commissioned ten international filmmakers to address the coming millennium. But her story of young love in a remote mining town is less concerned with millennial change than with the predicaments of the moment, as two sweethearts try to arrange a meeting on the night of December 31, 1999....

This road movie by Iranian director Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi charts the blossoming friendship between a conscript soldier (Mehdi Lofti) and the 14-year-old delinquent he’s ordered to take back to Tehran (sour-faced Rouhollah Hosseini) while painting an affectionate portrait of ordinary Iranians in the hinterland. The teen, detained at an army outpost after escaping a juvenile prison in Tehran, was arrested for stealing a necklace, though he claims he bought it for his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in over two years....

doleski.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Just read the Jim DeRogatis review of the Fred Goodman book (The Mansion on the Hill) in the March 14 Reader, and I have a little free advice for Jim: lighten up. If I may quote, “…in a postmodern era when critics have long since accepted that nothing is really unique or original…the greatest artists have simply been the most talented synthesists....

Sir or madam, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In his review of Thirteenth Tribe’s and Joanna Settle’s brightly colored and wonderfully multilayered production of my play How to Be Sawed in Half [September 1], Jack Helbig is good enough to refer to me as a “master of intimate moments.” He cites my Repeat w/ Madeline and Sleepwalker in this regard. Given my respect for Jack Helbig’s opinion, I’m always happy for my work to receive his commendation; but the use of this survey as evidence that my greatest success has come in smaller-scale works is somewhat undermined by his not taking into account my play WarHawks & Lindberghs, an epic which stretches over thousands of years, has over 65 speaking parts, and for which I received a Joseph Jefferson Citation for Outstanding New Work in connection with Shattered Globe Theatre’s formidable 1998 production....

Winner of the 1998 Palme d’Or at Cannes, this rambling but beautiful feature by Theo Angelopoulos may seem like an anthology of 60s and 70s European art cinema: family nostalgia from Bergman and seaside frolics from Fellini; long, mesmerizing choreographed takes and camera movements from Jancso and Tarkovsky; haunting expressionist moods and visions from Antonioni. Yet it’s so stirring and flavorsome–far richer emotionally and poetically than Woody Allen’s derivations–that I was moved and captivated throughout its 132 minutes....

The Bathroom Trap Door Theatre and Ensemble 1500 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Few books deserve a paper shredder more than The Bathroom, Toussaint’s 1985 debut novel. Heralded as “hysterically funny,” “highly entertaining,” and even “a masterpiece,” in reality it’s a pretentious, structureless bore masquerading as a piece of existential absurdism. The dust jacket aims to convince the browser that the book is about a young graduate student named Rene who lives in his bathroom–when in fact he spends only the first five pages there....

To the editors of the Chicago Reader: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I was underwhelmed by Frank Melcori’s rambling non-tribute to Allen Ginsberg [Our Town, April 18]. Maybe some conservatives would consider such a self-indulgent rap about his car repairman and his unwillingness to move in with his girlfriend an appropriate farewell to the free-spirited, anti-authoritarian, protest-leading, drug-loving, cock-sucking, butt-fucking, meditating, chanting peacenik, poet, and mystic, but I saw it as small-minded and shabby....

The Lake Calumet Region: The Juxtaposition Between the Natural and Built Environment at the Graham Foundation, through November 20 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The exhibit was cosponsored by the Southeast Chicago Development Commission, a community organization. Kathy Dickhut, who helped organize the show, told me that its purpose is “pretty simple–just to show Chicagoans the assets and the beauty of the southeast side....