Arts & Entertainment
From an Exhibit Celebrating a World’s Fair to Jazz Fest, Here Are 7 Arts Picks for This Week
A Jazz Festival event takes place at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. (Courtesy of DCASE)
From the semi-obvious to the semi-obscure, a roundup of arts recommendations awaits — but business before pleasure.
If you’re an artist or know one, this Saturday is the Healing Arts Chicago Summit. Art plays a powerful role in supporting wellness. This summit brings together artists and health workers, and people with arts training can even become certified community healthcare apprentices. It’s presented by DCASE, the Department of Public Health and host Malcolm X College. Chicago.gov/HealingArts
Be well. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Chicago Jazz Festival – various downtown locations
In the waning days of summer, Jazz Fest brings wall-to-wall music to drown out the cicadas. Big names jam all kinds of jazz in venues outdoors and in — see a show at Preston Bradley Hall in the Cultural Center if you can. Always terrific is the Next Generation program on the Harris Theater Rooftop Terrace. Talented youth from Kenwood Academy, Whitney Young and Jones College Prep (among others) play with purpose. Aug 28-31
“Buñuel: Master of Dreams” – International Museum of Surgical Science
The exhibition itself sounds surreal — a celebration of a great surrealist artist inside North America’s only museum devoted to surgery. Visionary Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel goes under the knife, so to speak, in honor of the 100th birthday of surrealism (roughly, birth records of arts movements aren’t very exact). With screenings, ephemera and no anesthesia. Opens Aug. 29
“World of Tomorrow: A Century of Progress” – Elmhurst History Museum
Speaking of 100th anniversaries, the Century of Progress International Exposition saluted the growth of Chicago from frontier town to metropolis. The 1933-34 world’s fair spread out over 400 acres of lakeshore on the near South Side. This exhibition includes artifacts, toys, souvenirs and a ticket seller’s uniform. It’s free, and the museum is inside a historic Elmhurst mansion. Opens Aug. 29
“The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace” – bookstores
Speaking of 100th anniversaries (wait, didn’t we just do that?) this new book celebrates a century of Chicago’s grandest surviving movie palace, the Uptown. The lavish theater, which opened in August 1925, has been endangered for decades. Authors Robert Loerzel and James Pierce document the Uptown’s glorious past and chart its precarious future with vintage photos and renderings, and they make a strong case for its preservation. From Chicago’s CityFiles Press
“Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar” – Writers Theatre, Glencoe
The music and story of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff are brought to life by Hershey Felder, who has the virtuosic talent to pull it off. Felder is known for his uncanny ability to portray composers on stage (Gershwin, Chopin, Beethoven). In this play with music, Rachmaninoff reflects on his escape from Russia in 1917, and he’s haunted by the mystical presence of Tsar Nicholas II. Through Sept. 21
“Clue a Drag Parody” – Steppenwolf Garage
No, this isn’t the season opener for the Tony Award-winning Steppenwolf ensemble, but it is part of their Lookout series. The murder-mystery farce stars some of “Chicago’s best and brightest queens,” and I won’t argue with fab folks with stage names like Neutral Gena and Squeaky Banks. It’s a whodunit in drag with Colonel Mustard, Mrs. Peacock and murder. We like to save one pick for silly, weird and fun events, and this checks off all the boxes. Aug. 28-30
“Catch Me If You Can” at the Marriott Theatre. (Joe Mazza)
“Catch Me If You Can” – Marriott Theatre, Lincolnshire
Expect a jet-set 1960s vibe in this musical version of the con-man caper. It’s based on the sort-of-maybe true story — and later movie — about a fraudulent fellow who impersonated pilots, doctors and lawyers while evading capture. The word is that the show is stylish and fun, and it certainly has a strong pedigree with a book by Terrence McNally (“Ragtime”) and a swinging score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”). Through Oct. 19
Note: This story has been updated to correct the closing date of “Catch Me If You Can.”
Marc Vitali is the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent.
