Stories by Marc Vitali

Chicago Sun-Times Theater Critic Hedy Weiss joins us to review the latest musicals and dramas on Chicago area stages.

CIMMfest, the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival, has quickly evolved into a spring destination. We'll speak with the new program director, who came from the Sundance Festival.

Lyric Opera presents its annual musical, Carousel. Singers will discuss and perform two songs from the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein show.

In advance of airing Power to the People tonight, we speak with Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, about supplying energy to developing nations.

Chicago-based painter Louis Grell was nearly forgotten until family members alerted Elmhurst's Theatre Historical Society about the over 300 commissions he did in movie palaces and hotels in the 1920s and 1930s. We revisit the story.

An exhibition at The Field Museum looks at City Windows, the papercut artwork of Chinese artist Qiao Xiaoguang now on display at two locations in Chicago. We get a preview.

Erin McKean founded the world's biggest online dictionary, Wordnik. A graduate of The University of Chicago, she has also written books on weird words and given TED Talks about the subject. She joins us to talk about the latest word trends and linguistic gymnastics. Take a quiz on weird words.

Best-known for the movies Ray and An Officer and a Gentleman, director Taylor Hackford is in Chicago directing a musical stage show about the legendary Vegas husband and wife team, Louis Prima and Keely Smith. We get a preview.

An exhibition at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston looks at the "haute couture" that has long existed in Native American communities. We get a preview.

Meet the self-taught Chicago artist who could make dazzling art out of anything he found. Known as Mr. Imagination, he turned bottlecaps, mirrors, and scraps of wood into delightfully original works of art.

Chicago Sun-Times Theater Critic Hedy Weiss reviews the latest from the Goodman Theatre and much more.

The Swedish National Museum brings Vikings -- an exhibition that challenges stereotypes of the Norsemen who lived, traded, and raided a millennium ago -- to The Field Museum. Take our quiz to test your Vikings knowledge!

Painter Archibald Motley created a revealing body of work that captured Chicago people and nightlife during the Jazz Age. We visit the new Motley exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center.

From jazz clubs to barbecues to poker games, a Chicago artist painted the town. The son of a Pullman porter, his colorful canvases and provocative portraits are rooted in an eloquent pursuit of identity.

An artist revered in her home country of Colombia has made a strong impression on the international art world. We visit the MCA Chicago for the opening of Doris Salcedo's first-ever retrospective. 

The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) celebrates 50 years with Free at First, a new exhibition at the DuSable Museum.

The Driehaus Museum opens a new show, Maker & Muse, an extensive look at art jewelry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A provocative Swedish choreographer visits Chicago to reveal another side of Joffrey dancers. We get a preview of the choreographer's work in Unique Voices.

We visit the Chicago Cultural Center and the MCA to discover the steel sculptures of Chicago's internationally acclaimed sculptor Richard Hunt.

Champion of Art and Culture Shared His Enthusiasm and His Smarts

Chicago Shakespeare stages an abridged version of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy and gets right to the point of one of his darkest plays.

A new exhibit at Roosevelt University looks at crime photography in Chicago in the 1920s and '30s -- and in the last few years.

Chicago-based painter Louis Grell was nearly forgotten until family members alerted Elmhurst's Theatre Historical Society about the over 300 commissions he did in movie palaces and hotels in the 1920s and 1930s.

Chicago Sun-Times Theater Critic Hedy Weiss reviews four new shows on Chicago stages.

The Second City is accepting applications for its Bob Curry Fellowship, which is named after the first African-American Second City performer. We revisit our story about the fellowship’s inaugural class.

Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival Founder and Artistic Director Blair Thomas tells us about the first Chicago festival to celebrate puppetry in its many forms.