Weekend Events Around Town: 2/17 – 2/19

Need some ideas for what to do this weekend? Chicago Tonight knows what’s going on!

Restaurant Week

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It’s that time of year again: for 10 days, some of the city’s best restaurants will offer heavily discounted, fixed-price menus for lunch and dinner, including Blackbird and Café Spiaggia. Prices vary, but lunches start at $22; dinners at $33. For a full list of the 200-plus participating restaurants, click here.

Harlan County U.S.A.

In the latest installment of the Music Box’s “The Film That Changed My Life Series,” Hoop Dreams’ Steve James will host a screening of Harlan County U.S.A., a 1976 documentary on a Kentucky coal mining strike and the “strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs” the miners struggle with. James will also screen his recent documentary, The Interrupters, which tells the stories of three “violence interrupters,” who have credibility on the streets because of their own personal histories, as they intervene in conflicts before they explode into violence. The film series is based on a book by Robert K. Elder of the same name, featuring interviews with famous filmmakers on the works that inspire them, including James. Elder and James will appear for a discussion after the film. Tickets are $20.

Music Box Theatre
3733 N. Southport Ave.
Chicago, IL 60613

Opening the Vault

Catch our segment on mummies at the Field Museum and want to see more? Opening the Vault: Mummies, the museum’s latest exhibit, gives visitors the chance to see mummies that have not been viewed by the public for over 100 years. Using state-of-the-art CT scans, anthropologists from The Field Museum had the opportunity to examine Egyptian mummies for the first time without causing any damage—and the exhibit displays the rare X-ray views of the mummies next to their sarcophagi. The exhibit runs through April 22. Tickets are $22, which includes basic admission.

The Field Museum
1400 S. Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60605

Show Boat

One of America’s first modern musicals, Show Boat combined vaudeville theater, opera, gospel and more. Now showing at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, director Francesca Zambello says the show “began an American art form, musicals, that’s still evolving.”  Show Boat, which was one of the first pieces of musical theater to confront racism—and have an integrated chorus—was “revolutionary on all counts” when it debuted, Zambello says, and remains a powerful work. The show runs through March 17. Tickets are $54-$219.

Lyric Opera of Chicago
20 N. Wacker Dr.
Chicago, IL 60606

Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance

On the heels of a prestigious collaboration with the Royal Ballet of London in Winter Fire, a new documentary on the Joffrey Ballet, and its founders Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, is being screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Saturday. The film will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Chicago Sun-Times theater and dance critic Hedy Weiss, with the film’s director Bob Hercules, Joffrey photographer Herbert Migdoll, former Joffrey managing director Harriet Ross, and former Joffrey dancer and ballet mistress Charthel Arthur. Tickets are $11.

Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State St.
Chicago, IL 60601

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