Bylines labeled “Chicago Reader Staff” are used for features that contain nonwritten, nonreported information like listings, ...

Plus: Uptown People’s Law Center workers speak out after layoffs and city domestic violence services face budget cuts in 2026.

Seph Mozes's recent staging of Bad Behavior was the first local production of the avant-garde pioneer's work in 30 years.

Even after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, local officials and everyday people resisted the legalized abductions of men, women, and children who had escaped slavery ...

Life-affirming, love-affirming, and deeply, beautifully joyful—we need such antidotes to remind us of the magic that remains with us in small and large acts of generosity. The Reader is free.

Bump in the Night Theatre's The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide traces the tragicomic elements of adolescence.

Trap Door's adaptation of A Devil Comes to Town shows how ambition and overheated imaginations can eat up the meekest among us.

An innocuous comment at dinner sets off massive complications in Short Leap Theatre Co.'s black comedy Friends With Guns.

In her original bead works, Yuliya Klochan portrays queer love, nonbinary and Ukrainian American pride, and women’s issues.

Long-running Chicago shows provide opportunities for artists and audiences to imbibe—but there's an art to keeping it from going too far.

Rwake have always been a powerful live act, and the energy crackling from this heady album should be overwhelming when the ...

Music of the Mind” at the MCA, you’ll encounter the artist at the epicenter of the avant-garde again and again.