Stories by Marc Vitali

On Aug. 30, 2001, Steve Albini was 39 years old and already a legend. As a recording engineer, he had recorded Nirvana, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the Breeders, the Pixies and PJ Harvey. As a musician, he made his mark with the bands Big Black and Shellac.

Each week, WTTW News arts correspondent Marc Vitali highlights the city’s can’t-miss cultural events. May your holidays be joyful and artful!

The holidays are hectic, so why not go eclectic? Here’s a wide-ranging shortlist of good bets for seasonal art, culture and discovery.

After you’ve experienced Joffrey Ballet’s Chicago-style “The Nutcracker” and the Goodman Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol” multiple times… what to do? Here are five solid ideas — some reverent and timely, some not so much.

In “Art and Faith of the Crèche,” creed and creativity go together like Christmas and cookies, but you don’t have to be a believer to appreciate the beauty of the nativity sets on display at Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA).

This weekend brings an ensemble of enticing musical choices, and it’s not just holiday songs and show tunes. OK, much of it is, but the hardest part will be deciding what to see — and hear.

Brighten your Black Friday – and Saturday and Sunday – by taking part in a communal experience in the arts. Here are five picks. 

“Letters Beyond Form: Chicago Types” is a modestly scaled but ambitious exhibition currently occupying the Design Museum of Chicago on Randolph Street across from the Chicago Cultural Center.

“The idea was to provide this experience of being like a scuba diver — you come in and you’re at the bottom of the lake looking up,” artist David Franklin said. “Then you rise up through the fish into that Grand Hall, which is so fantastic. It had to hold up to that standard.”

Mariam Paré is part of a small community of people who paint with their mouths or feet. Paré was an aspiring art student when a 1996 shooting left her quadriplegic. “I wasn’t ready to change everything that I wanted to be,” Paré said.

If plays were read as commonly as books, “Rhinoceros” would have been banned long ago in those countries that ban books. Imagine such places! First staged in 1959, it was written by the Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco and has become a classic of the theater of the absurd.

“Chicago in Color,” is a modestly-scaled gem with many facets of lively color. There are views of familiar places seen through fresh eyes, but the book’s strength lies in the smallest of details: minimalist compositions of nature or infrastructure linked by a colorful photographic palette.

Ronnie Baker Brooks, son of blues legend Lonnie Brooks, is a soulful singer and guitarist. He just released “Blues In My DNA” on Chicago’s independent Alligator Records — his father’s home label for many years.

For 23 years and through more than 80 productions, Hell in a Handbag has brought slightly raunchy but good-humored fun to a variety of stages. They’ve dragged themselves from the tiny space in Mary’s Attic to the mainstage at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.

Joffrey Ballet’s U.S. premiere of “Atonement” tells the impassioned story of a lie that alters the course of love and history. Cathy Marston, the acclaimed British choreographer behind “Atonement,” is best known for narrative ballets.

Despite its breezy title, “Becky Nurse of Salem” is a full-blown tempest of irony and righteous anger. It ponders the witch as both a powerful being and an object of scorn. Here, witches can be genuine or kooky – sometimes all in the same witch.

Here’s a list of hair-raising reasons to climb out of your casket and explore the necropolis.

Visionary filmmaker George A. Romero started the zombie apocalypse genre in 1968 when “Night of the Living Dead” rewrote the rules for horror movies. Romero films featured social commentary, strong minority characters and a cargo of carnage.

Chicago has a pair of newly minted geniuses. Multimedia artist Ebony G. Patterson and fiction writer Ling Ma are among 22 scientists, artists and scholars who have been awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

American Blues Theater sets the bar high for Halloween season, delivering a tightly focused fever dream version of Stephen King’s novel “Misery.” The psychological thriller is made more unnerving by the humorous touches in this stage adaptation by William Goldman (“Marathon Man,” “The Princess Bride”).

Having missed the opening, I saw the glowing reviews for this Chicago-area premiere and trekked up to Writers Theatre in Glencoe. I went with a skeptic’s eye and my arms folded. “Critics think it’s good, huh? What do they know?” Well, they know enough to have the good sense to embrace this irresistible production.

Elijah Jones must have impressed Chicago Shakespeare Theater with the same charisma he projects onstage as the titular king in “Henry V,” a lively production of Shakespeare’s history play about war between France and England. WTTW News spoke with the Juilliard-trained actor about his past, present and future.

It’s a Chicago music story for the ages. In 1983, four friends aged 11 to 15 years old formed a punk band and played the Cubby Bear and a few other shows before amicably breaking up — basically the oldest kid wanted to tour, but the youngest was told that he had to finish 6th grade.

Every picture tells a story, and now there’s a chance for young photographers in Chicago (and elsewhere) to tell their own stories and amplify them to the nation.

The music is familiar and downright catchy — Verdi famously forbade his cast from singing the songs or even humming the score until after its 1851 premiere in Venice.  Acclaimed Verdi specialist Enrique Mazzola conducts.

Drury Lane Theatre launched its fall season with “The Audience,” a lively and entertaining drama that imagines private conversations between Queen Elizabeth II and the prime ministers who served during her reign. Here, Her Majesty acts as both therapist and sparring partner for the heads of Parliament.