Friday 10/20 – thursday 10/26
Playwright John Susman spent several years researching the on-again, off-again romance of Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren. His new play, Nelson and Simone, draws on their correspondence and other writings, as well as interviews with people who knew them. Preview performances start tonight at 8; the play opens on Monday and runs through December 17 at the Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark. Tickets are $15 Thursdays and Sundays, $20 Fridays and Saturdays. Call 773-871-1212.
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21 SATURDAY Thirty-nine years ago, Margaret Burroughs founded the DuSable Museum of History and Art on the first floor of her South Michigan Avenue graystone, with the pantry serving as its library. The museum was relocated to Washington Park in 1973 and renamed the Du-Sable Museum of African American History in 1976. Today it will honor the octogenarian printmaker, sculptor, painter, and poet with her first retrospective. Margaret Burroughs: A Lifetime in Art opens today and runs through March 31 at the museum, at 740 E. 56th Place (773-947-0600). The museum is open from 10 to 5; admission is $3 for adults, $2 for students and seniors, and $1 for children.
23 MONDAY Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh was denied a lease by the CHA when he was researching his dissertation on the Robert Taylor Homes–so he stayed off and on for 18 months with families who lived there. Venkatesh, who was born in Madras, India, and grew up in the U.S., saw his share of gang violence and drug activity, but downplays the risks his research entailed, saying, “The fact that I wasn’t white, or a middle- or upper-class African-American, helped to defer a lot of that political antagonism.” He earned his PhD from the U. of C. in 1997 and last year landed a job at Columbia University, but despite his secure position in the ivory tower says he hopes to follow the example of his mentor, Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, in reaching outside academe to actively engage in public debates. Venkatesh, the subject of a 1997 Reader cover story, will discuss his new book, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto, tonight at 7 at 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th. It’s free; call 773-684-1300.
