Author: Tom Williams

Mosque Alert is significant for its insistence that discussion of Islam’s place in America be reasoned, honest, well-informed, and treat humans as unique individuals instead of abstractions or targets of collective blame. Given how rarely any issue is treated that way, it’s an ambitious goal, but Silk Road is at the forefront of making it happen.

In a new production by The Hypocrites under the direction of Geoff Button, Adding Machine: A Musical still presents a nightmarish, lonely world, but it has also been stripped down to the minimum necessary staging, design, and music. The result brings Mr. Zero’s emotional tumult to the forefront in a fittingly understated manner.

For the Chicago premiere of The Edge of Our Bodies, Tuta Theatre Chicago artistic director Jacqueline Stone has created a site-specific performance in a Ravenswood Manor garage near where the Brown line crosses Manor Avenue. The muffled, but ceaseless clang of the crossing signal is the perfect accompaniment to a play that heavily emphasizes decay and distance.