Arts & Entertainment
‘Antigone’ and the Symphony: 4 Arts Picks for Your Holiday Weekend
Jared Dennis and Heather Dennis in “Antigone” (Steven Townsend / Distant Era)
Every Thursday, WTTW News newsletter producer Josh Terry highlights his picks for the week’s must-see cultural events.
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Friday kicks off another holiday weekend. Juneteenth has been celebrated for at least 160 years, but it only became a federal holiday in 2021. Whether you have work off or you have to clock in, there’s still a beautiful forecast on the horizon for Chicago. Spend the time outside trekking to enrich your artistic life and curiosity at these cultural events across the area.
Theater: “Antigone” — The Den Theatre
French playwright Jean Anouilh wrote “Antigone,” his adaptation of Sophocles’ classical tragedy, while his native France was occupied by Nazi Germany, under censorship. It premiered in 1944 at Paris’ Théâtre de l’Atelier and has endured for its searing tension, lucid historical parallels and its timeless, resonant story. It’s at the Den Theatre for a production put on by Promethean Theatre Ensemble and it runs there until June 27. Buy tickets here.
Performance: “Lincoln Portrait & Ellington Harlem” — Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Chicago native and Tony Award-nominee Harry Lennix narrates and conductor Joshua Weilerstein leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a decade-spanning production titled “Lincoln Portrait & Ellington Harlem.” Performances run from Thursday until Sunday with featured pieces that include Duke Ellington’s “Harlem,” Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” Charles Ives’ “Three Places in New England” and more. Buy tickets here.
Art: “Cutting and Pasting a World: The Paper Craft of Henry Darger” — Intuit Art Museum
The latest exhibit at West Town’s Intuit Art Museum “explores the connection between Henry Darger’s art and traditional American paper crafts.” It highlights “both finished artworks and original source materials” and “demonstrates how Darger adapted these humble pastimes into sophisticated methods for constructing large-scale, mixed-media narratives.” It opens Thursday and will run through January 2027. For more information, click here.
Film: Little Fort Environmental Film Festival — Waukegan, Illinois
Head up to Waukegan, Illinois, this weekend for the Little Fort Environmental Festival, which is happening at various locations Saturday and Sunday. The films featured represent six countries and include two of local importance. There’s “Sharing Our Shore and the Return of the Piping Plover to Waukegan Shores,” which is about the “two captive-reared Great Lakes Piping Plovers, Blaze and Pepper,” and there’s “The River Raisin: A Comeback Story” about “the cleanup work, habitat restoration, remediation and recreational enhancements along a Michigan river.” For screenings, tickets and more information, click here.
WTTW News arts coverage is supported by the JCS Arts, Health & Education Fund of the DuPage Foundation.
