Strange things happen every time Schadenfreude takes the stage at its usual venue, the Heartland Studio Theater–there’s a reason this troupe adopts as its name the German word for malicious joy at others’ misfortunes. But nothing the troupe has done since its inception in late 1998 is likely to equal the headlining gig it has planned for the Chicago Improv Festival, a performance that ever excitable troupe member Justin Kaufmann promises will be “a complete kick in the face....

Romance By Jonathan Rosenbaum Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I still think Romance is a progressive movie in America, even though it was (sensibly) released without an MPAA rating. But many of my colleagues disagree. Judging from their jaundiced disparagements, most of them are bent on shrugging this movie off as a piece of silliness; some of them even admit to preferring entertainments like Dogma, which have the trendy advantage of being both American and conceived by and for people with the mentality of an 11-year-old boy....

There’s much to marvel at in this anthology of 16 shorts culled by Resfest organizers from hundreds of submissions. The latest digital technology seems to have liberated the filmmakers from realism and the expense of printing optical effects on film, allowing them to display a broad visual lexicon that’s partly derived from the mixed-media avant-garde. Even the most mundane story in the bunch–Snack and Drink, about an autistic teenager’s fascination with certain cartoon characters–is inventive when it comes to morphing real actors into animated figures....

Spin By Monica Kendrick Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Year of the Woman drivel has come especially fast and furious in the last decade or so: the year Tracy Chapman hit it big, the year Queen Latifah and Monie Love and Yo Yo bum rushed the boys’ club of hip-hop, the year the mainstream press got wind of Liz Phair and Hole and L7–those were the Year of the Woman too....

The Accidental Expatriate Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » By the time they’d scraped together enough to return, six months later, he and many others had decided to remain in Chicago. The contract for Kouyate’s weekly radio program, which was his main source of income in Senegal, had been canceled because he’d been away so long. Returning to Senegal would mean starting over, he figured, so he might as well do it here....

THE TREATMENT, A Red Orchid Theatre. Martin Crimp’s play may have an impressive pedigree–productions at the Royal Court Theatre and the New York Shakespeare Festival–but it fails the fundamental plausibility test of Playwriting 101. Anne, a skittish, inarticulate survivor of domestic abuse, wants to sell her life story to moviemakers Jennifer and Andrew. The problem is, she has no story to tell; all she manages to say between distracted musings is that her husband taped her mouth and talked about a parking lot....

A LOSS OF ROSES, Fourth Wall Productions, at Wilbur Wright College. Revived 40 years after it flopped on Broadway, this little-known late offering by William Inge includes postproduction revisions. Fourth Wall’s staging gives the play a fair shot at a second chance. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Compared to Inge’s more sentimental efforts (Bus Stop, Picnic, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Come Back, Little Sheba), this play deals harshly with its characters....

BUZZCOCKS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I could probably fill an entire page with bands inspired by this British punk-pop quartet–but for starters, how about Naked Raygun, Sugar, All, Green Day, Elastica, the Foo Fighters, the Offspring, the Smoking Popes, and Nirvana, who invited the ‘Cocks to open for them on their last European tour? During the band’s original run, from 1976 to 1981, it released an endless stream of three-minute singles whose jubilant melodies, razor-sharp guitar sound, and frenetic drum work combined the Beatles’ pop smarts with the Sex Pistols’ aggression....

DAVE MOORE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Playing a mix of country balladry, rockabilly, blues, and even Mexican conjunto, singer-songwriter Dave Moore has managed to impress the hard-core folkies even as he’s gained a broader audience. Doubtless the genre-bending has helped distinguish him from the pack, but his real gift is the ability to evoke powerful emotions with graceful understatement–and it’s as evident as ever on his recent Breaking Down to 3 (Red House), even though he’s mothballed the button accordion and sticks to relatively straightforward guitar and harmonica....

In 1934 Roger Tory Peterson was turned down by nine publishers before Houghton Mifflin accepted his tiny field guide to the birds of eastern North America. A Field Guide to the Birds was oriented exclusively toward an audience interested in field identification, and nobody knew if that audience was large enough to support even one book. In 1983 the National Geographic Society brought out a 464-page guide to all the birds in North America....

Room on the Rack Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “We’re really a cross between a gallery and a shop,” she explains. Fifteen local designers sell their fashions through the co-op, paying Arsenault a 10 percent commission and working behind the counter for a day and a half each month. Arsenault estimates that as many as 40 designers currently sell their fashions in Chicago; she hopes to increase the shop’s roster to 20 eventually, and she’s prominently displayed her designers’ names over individual sections....

Saturday Night By Albert Williams Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Happily, Saturday Night has much more going for it. Slickly yet appealingly performed by a youthful cast under Gary Griffin’s pitch-perfect direction, it’s a fresh, buoyant work in which Sondheim’s trademark wit is reined in by boyish innocence–some of it genuine, some manufactured to fit the immature characters. Ever analytical, Sondheim has on occasion been sharply critical of his own lyrics (he said the hit “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story was better suited to a Noel Coward character than to his teenage Puerto Rican heroine)....

BONEY JAMES 8/20, SKYLINE STAGE Saxist James’s latest, Body Language (Warner Brothers), has the dubious distinction of being the only contemporary-jazz record I’ve heard that does violence to a Janet Jackson tune. I’m sure music like this–so smooth it leaves a trail like a slug–is getting somebody laid as I write, but it’s not anybody I know. NO KNIFE 8/20, FIRESIDE BOWL The kind of music this San Diego band plays on its third album since 1994, Fire in the City of Automatons (Time Bomb), has survived a lot of name changes over the past decade and a half, but in its boyish ambivalence and harmonious charm, it sounds like college rock to me....

Letters to the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thank you, Michael Miner, for setting the record straight in “Weak Coffey” (8/20/99) regarding Raymond Coffey’s recent Sun-Times series about the problems in Uptown and their relationship to the current 46th Ward alderman, Helen Shiller. For example, the first quote listed in your article from Helen Shiller is very accurate– “I do not recall anytime having met him or anytime having talked to him on the phone....

Recently on your America Online site you posted your old column about Rock’n Rollen Stewart, the guy who used to hold up those “John 3:16” signs at sports events. You may be interested to know that Stewart is now serving a life sentence in jail. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Stewart’s problems started during his childhood in Spokane, Washington. His parents were alcoholics. His father died when Rollen was seven....

Why are people bothering with getting colds anymore? The site www.coldcure.com has been around for a couple years now and the product for stopping common cold symptoms is available in many places (Wal-Mart for one). Could you check out that site and apply your skills to either (1) debunk it or (2) confirm it? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Let’s look at this objectively, William....

Face/Off With John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon, Allessandro Nivola, Dominique Swain, CCH Pounder, Harve Presnell, and Nick Cassavetes. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Woo’s Hollywood debut, Hard Target, found him hamstrung by meddlesome studio execs and a contractual obligation to deliver an R rating; Woo could neither overcome the profoundly impassive Jean-Claude Van Damme nor unleash the full power of his aesthetic....

Inspiration powers this 80-minute labor of love. A “performance concert” by Eric Rosen, who adapted and directed, Whitman is a rich showcase for the good gay poet’s all-embracing writings and life. Beautifully designed and executed, Rosen’s collage hews to a single vision: Whitman is re-created through his sprawling verse and intimate prose, which in turn are rooted in his life. Individually the show’s 12 actors, all Northwestern University students, may not be equal to the urgency of the works they recite, but they excel at group pieces, in anthems, movement, and unison chants....

When the Greeks were gathering forces for their expedition against Troy, Achilles, their greatest warrior, failed to answer the call, so Odysseus was sent off to Thessaly to fetch him. When he arrived, Achilles was nowhere to be found: his mother, afraid for her son’s life, had disguised him as a girl and hid him away among the royal women. She was a goddess, so this trick was no sweat, but Odysseus knew a few tricks of his own....

Dramatic Rescue Torres’s own family was in trouble. When his mom and dad weren’t fighting, they weren’t around at all. His dad put in long hours as an auto mechanic while his mom worked on an assembly line putting together hearing aids; the plant on Austin was an hour-long commute from their home near 91st and Stony Island. When Torres was in junior high his parents sent him to live with his aunt in Humboldt Park, but he got homesick after a year and a half and moved back in with his folks....