Courtesy of the Court Theatre

Court Theatre’s “An Iliad” opened this week- Thursday, precisely! Court states, “Directed by Artistic Director Charles Newell, An Iliad illuminates an ancient classic by taking a harrowing look at the human cost of war.” Of course, we all know the story of Homer’s Iliad, but have we ever heard it from the perspective of Homer? No! And have we ever seen any one person try to take on the retelling of the entire epic by himself? No! And have we ever witnessed the double-Jeff-Award-winning-talents of Charlie Newell wrassle with Homer’s classic poetry? Well, I haven’t. It’s been a while since Court put on a classical work- since “Thyestes” in ’07-’08. In my opinion, it will be a treat to see the classical retake Court’s stage.

Here’s an Interesting Video on the design behind “An Iliad”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzyhJ7tL3pw&feature=player_embedded

In related news, UChicago’s Classical Entertainment Society (who will soon be putting up Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus”) is sponsoring a Homerathon of the Iliad! This means that, for a full 24 hour period, the Iliad will be read aloud on Court’s stage, in celebration of the opening of the play. Various players, from Classics professors to University Theater students to walk-ins (yes, people who walk in can participate) will have the opportunity to read from the perennially entertaining work. Sounds cool, eh?

Equally cool are two plays closing this week, Jedlicka’s “Wait Until Dark” and Filament’s “From the Circle”. From here until December, the darkness will get longer and the number of productions will flux- so get out and see one.

-Eric

The Log:

Wait Until Dark @ Jedlicka Performing Arts Center: Oct28-Nov12

From the Circle @ Filament Theater: Sept 30-Nov 13

An Iliad @ Court Theatre: Nov10-Dec11

Broke-ology @ eta Creative Arts: Nov3-Dec18

The Homecoming @ UT: Nov 17-19

Last Thursday, I woke up earlier than usual to spend the morning browsing for books at the International House where the University of Chicago Press was hosting its Great Chicago Book Sale. I had tacked the flyer on my desk weeks ago. In colorful fonts, it promised two days of good deals and good literature with “over 10,000 new books, hardcovers and paperbacks, in many subjects” for only five dollars a piece.

Inside the Assembly Hall, tables with printed signs mounted on crisp construction paper formed aisles. Above and below these tables were cardboard boxes, each one containing a stack of untouched titles, some still individually wrapped. The address of the book sale had been stamped on the side of every box. “I’m not sure how the Press chose these books,” one of the employees commented, “but there are many titles in many disciplines.”

It was easy to make several laps around the room and find those intriguing titles. Fashionable Foods detailed “seven decades of food fads,” including a brief history and recipes. There were translations of philosophical and Greek texts. The book with the plainest cover was The City by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, which sat in the sociology section next to Paul Lewis’s Cracking Up: American Humor in the Time of Conflict whose cover featured a collage of hand-drawn laughing faces. There were books about rhesus macaques, new historicism, Norman McClean, urban education, and love poems. What I thought was a forest green calendar turned out to be the Atlas of Cat Anatomy. In the history section, a 4.5’’ by 6’’ pocket guide, titled Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II, contained a reprint of the exact text given to soldiers in 1943, complete with original illustrations. The book sale felt less like a marketplace and more like a private showing of someone’s eclectic library.

It was no surprise to see many people walking with stacks of books in their arms. In fact, it was almost impossible to find anyone who had not stopped to examine a cover or flip through a few pages. The Great Chicago Book Sale delivered exactly what it promised on its flyer, providing plenty of new additions to book collections around Hyde Park.

In last week’s issue I wrote about poet Charles Bernstein, who gave a reading on the University of Chicago’s campus on February 14.  Here is the interview that I did with Bernstein the previous day. Read the rest of this entry »

A former Chicago Weekly writer and Features Editor like Katie Buitrago! All of us at the Weekly want to congratulate Katie on her excellent feature in the most recent Chicago Reader, “What sort of woman reads Playboy?” It’s about Peggy Wilkins, a forty-something Hyde Park resident and University of Chicago Library server technician, who has worked her way to the top of Playboy Magazine fandom. She’s even had to rent an second apartment above the one she shares with her boyfriend to store her exhaustive collection of magazines and posters. So what drives Wilkins’s passion? Read the article to find out!

In this week’s issue, we had a piece on poet Rae Armantrout, who was in the area for a reading and talk last week. Here is the rest of the interview with Armantrout, as conducted by Weekly writer Daniel Benjamin over email; follow-up questions, conducted in person and lightly edited, are preceded by an asterisk.

You have written about this before, in interviews and in your memoir True, but I’m wondering if you could say something about how your upbringing, education, and poetic influences have figured into your poetry?

I was alone a lot when I was growing up. I was an only child and there was alcoholism in my family so I often wanted to stay out of the way. I think that has affected my work in a couple of ways. First, I tended to entertain myself by reading and writing. And then, of course, I was a lonely child. I think that original loneliness shows up in my poems. I often seem to be looking at things from a distance. I don’t know how confessional I want to get here. As I’ve said before, my mother was a fundamentalist. That means I was exposed to the Bible. When I was looking for reading material, it was always there in all its strangeness. On the other hand, my exposure to dogma made me ornery. Read the rest of this entry »

Our indicted former governor Rod Blagojevich will be speaking and signing his new memoir, “The Governor,” at the University of Chicago Bookstore (Barnes & Noble) this week.

The signing will take place Tuesday, December 8, at 2pm.

From the Times’s review:

His publicist has described the book, published by Phoenix Books, as a “six-figure deal.” But in his writing, Mr. Blagojevich seems to have a specific message for the public, and perhaps more precisely, for those who might sit on his jury in a federal trial next year: He did nothing corrupt, though others have. He then lays out what he portrays as Chicago’s gritty, crass political rules, established long before him, in which power is traded for favors.

…

Ms. Aimen suggested that Mr. Blagojevich might struggle to keep his own legal team because of his desire to talk openly about the charges. “I think he must be a hard guy to handle,” she said.

For those who don’t remember his term, this quote from a press conference about sums it up: “It’s like the little boy with a pile of horse manure, I kept digging cheerfully in that and found a pony in there — the pony is free public transportation for all seniors in the state of Illinois.”

From the People's Atlas of Chicago project; AREA Chicago

A panel discussion on arts and activism in the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit will be held simultaneously from all three cities, linked via the internet this Thursday. In Chicago, Little Black Pearl in Kenwood is hosting the event. The event is part of the “Arts and Activism in the Midwest” series, which is part of the Chicago Calling Arts Festival, which is itself part of Chicago Artists Month. In Chicago, the panel is Lindsay Obermeyer, Carol Ng-He, Jennifer Karmin, Dan Godston, and at least one other artist. That may seem like a big panel already, but keep in mind St. Louis and Detroit also have four to five panelists each. It should be interesting to see how a 15-panelist, three-location discussion can take place without collapsing into chaos, let alone be productive. Still, they must know what they’re doing.

October 1, 7-9pm
Little Black Pearl
1060 East 47th Street