Column: Bring on the fall arts! It’s time to focus on who and what is happening
The pandemic provided much grist for the arts essay mill: For three consecutive Septembers in the Tribune’s fall arts guide, we have begun the new season in mostly melancholy mode with our metaphor-laden talk of painful absence, systemic disruption and a slower-than-expected recovery of our cherished cultural institutions. While the causes may be disputed, anyone paying attention knows that our city’s arts institutions are, to say the least, still challenged.
But a pox on all that. Look on these pages, dear reader, and see what Chicago has going on for you!
Enough with the thoughts and analysis. Enough with comparisons to that meaningless term, “normal.”
This year, we’re handing over this space to the artists and their shows.
Some you’ll find explored in more detail in our fall critic’s picks. Some we’re only mentioning here in what we hope is a great rush of artistic possibility.
Ready? Here we go.
A Pearl Cleage Festival at the Goodman Theatre from Sept. 14 to Oct. 15 (and welcome back). A Joffrey Ballet-led celebration of late choreographer Gerald Arpino’s celestial 100th birthday at the Auditorium Theatre. The Chicago premiere of Noah Haidle’s deeply moving “Birthday Candles” at Northlight Theatre. “Hamilton,” again, all fall long. “The Lehman Trilogy,” a masterful exploration of American commerce, for the first time in Chicago. “A Wonderful World,” which is the first of a big slate of pre-Broadway musical tryouts in town, all fired up again and rolling out, one by one.
Magician Dennis Watkins is set to reignite the basement of Petterino’s restaurant, where Mel Brooks once danced with Anne Bancroft on the tables. A “Camille Claudel” exhibit at the Art Institute. “Picasso: Drawing from Life,” too. Michael Tilson Thomas, finally in better health, is back conducting at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Choreographer Akram Khan’s re-imagining Rudyard Kipling’s complex “Jungle Book” at the Harris Theater. Jazz celebrations in Englewood and Hyde Park. The Joseph Jefferson Awards for local theater on Oct. 2. Destinos from Sept. 28 to Nov. 12. Printers Row Lit Fest this weekend. Cleveland graphic designer Dan Friedman at the Art Institute (”Stay Radical”). This weekend’s Taste of Chicago. Faith Ringgold at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Art on the Mart, all the way through December. “Boop!” (look it up, boop-oop-a-doop).
The arrival of new artistic director Edward Hall at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The first full seasons of new artistic director Susan Booth at the Goodman Theatre and new artistic director Braden Abraham at Writers Theatre in Glencoe. The 25th anniversary of the Congo Square Theatre Company. The Chicago Architecture Biennial. The ongoing reemergence of the Studebaker Theatre as a cherished arts venue in an area of the Loop that needs foot traffic and energy (thanks to the Robert Berger family, with an assist from “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me”). The rehabilitation of The Bean. A new e.t.c. Stage revue at Second City. “The Flying Dutchman” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The ongoing explosion of stand-up performers at the Den Theatre in Wicker Park, a venue where comics of all stripes love to play.
So many laughs coming elsewhere, too: Eddie Izzard, satirist, actor and politician, back at the Chicago Theatre, a venue where you also will find British comic Jimmy Carr, longtime late-night host Trevor Noah and Chelsea Handler. The indestructible Jay Leno at the Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana. Dave Chappelle will be making news at the United Center, no doubt. Keegan-Michael Key and Elle Key are hitting the Chicago Humanities Festival in October. So are Rachel Maddow and Maria Bamford. And the all-new 312 Comedy Festival, following in the footsteps of the late, lamented Just for Laughs festival, has one heck of a lot of comics on board. Court Theatre has “The Lion in Winter,” always a grand opus. Steppenwolf Theatre has “Sanctuary City,” a play that has a lot to say about other aspects of the Chicago fall. Chicago Shakespeare Theater has “Twelfth Night,” just as the nights shorten and we move indoors.
Let’s get aspirational.
Bring on the reopening of the historic Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park!
Bring back full houses!
Bring back Chicago artists taking care of Chicago audiences and Chicago audiences taking care of Chicago artists!
Bring on new works, classics, epics, opuses, farces, symphonies, premiers, concertos, operas, monologues, two-handers, three-handers, solo shows, stand-ups, tragedies, operas, exhibits, batons, reconsiderations, deconstructions, celebrations, nostalgia, melodies, dissonances, amusements, ensembles, collectives, entrepreneurs, capitalists, anti-capitalists, challengers, radicals, freethinkers, conservatives, aesthetes, dissidents, agnostics and, perhaps above all, true believers.
Bring on them all in this fall arts season in our beloved city, so they might wrench us from our debilitating little screens and teach us a little bit more about ourselves.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
