Category: events

The Notebook Musical

There was a book, and there was a movie, and there was a musical. They met. They fell in love. Life circumstances separated them. They found each other ten years later to stay together forever. Then she developed dementia. And he moved to the nursing home to be close to her, although she couldn’t recognize him anymore and didn’t know who he was. He reads to her “a book” – a notebook with the story of their lives, in hopes that she will remember and return to him.

Most of the Broadway productions are great, and this one was no exception. Also, in addition to great music, a live orchestra, and beautiful voices, the acting was… one of those moments when everything is so real and so recognizable that it’s heartbreaking. Of course, the story touches on the topics that are constantly on my mind, but it’s not like I couldn’t watch it because of some similarities to real life. It just went along with my thinking…

Three pairs of actors play the main characters in three different stages of their lives.

Shakespear In The Park: As You Like It

I only heard about Shakespeare in the Park before, but I never attended their performances. Last weekend, they were right here, and Touhy Park, and also I had a friend visiting, so there was no excuse not to go (except for it was raining until alomost the preformance time!) Fortunately, it stopped raining, and the performance was not cancelled, and there was not a single drop of rain during the whole show.

I loved it!!! It was so authentic, brilliant in each and single detail: no amplification, of course, following the original script to the letter, accentinuating as I imaginge they did in the Globe, so that no one would have any doubt about heroes and villans, the costumes with just enough details, the music, and I can keep going!

After the play was over, I had one very distinct feeling: from now on, I will never be able to watch Shakespear plays any other way! My friend was overjoyed to see so many Black actors, and one lady from the audience told us, that she was an English major, and saw “As You Like It” at least fifteen times, but never-ever…

I know that at most ten persent of my readers click the links I share, but please-please-please, read their mission statement.

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Grant Park Music Festival: A Space Odyssey

Yesterday’s concert was another of my favorites: Grant Park Orchestra accompanied Troupe Vertigo. As I have already said multiple times, I shamelessly love circus, even the aspects which are usually considered vulgar, but Vertigo performances are always beautiful, elegant, and breathtaking! This season’s concert theme was Space:

Now that you have an idea about the music, I will just post the photos of the artists. I didn’t take a lot of photos because I didn’t want to take my gaze off the stage, but I think you can still get an impression of how amazing it was!

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Grant Park Music Festival: Broadway Sings America

I have been to two Grant Park concerts in a row, and I absolutely loved both of them! The first one was yesterday:

Since this whole season is dedicated to the USA 250th birthday, that concert featured the numbers from various musicals about different periods of American history (in a loosely chronological order).

I heard most of these songs many times, but all of them presented in one concert made them especially powerful. At the end of the program, the orchestra and chorus performed one more song, which was not in the program: “Keep Marching” from Suffs, which we just recently heard on Broadway in Chicago. And the conductor concluded the concert with a reminder how important is it in the times like this, to “keep marching.”

As I already mentioned, the GPMF series is the only way I feel I can celebrate the America’s 250th…

What a beautiful city we live in!

The Suffs

I saw this show on Wednesday, and it was absolutely perfect! Everything: the play, the music, the lyrics, the characters, the singers, political relevance… They said from the stage that all characters were realy people, and we caoul look them up.

And that’s what I am going to do – there are too many good stories that I want to know about!

The Wild Party

I came back to Chicago on Saturday evening and had tons of plans for Sunday, which were only partially realized. One of the things I’ve done is watch the Wild Party movie at the Siskel Center. It was the first movie of the 20th Century Queer series, filmed in 1929. It was definitely an interesting one, especially in how openly it presented bisexual characters, and their balancing between lesbian and heterosexual relationships. You almost think that you are imagining things … except that you are not! Dorothy Arzner, the film director, was an open lesbian, and somehow, in the 1920s, it was still OK to make films like this (or nobody figured out yet that the homoerotic topic should be tabooed).

Now I am curious whether there were other movies like that!

An Organ Concert At The Kallion Church

It was a super-fun concert, and if you look at the program and wonder how some of these pieces could possibly be performed on an organ, you are in your right to wonder! It was quite unexpected, and sometimes funny :).

The dress was bought for the occasion 😀

Pride Celebration

We had a Pride Month celebration in all of my company’s offices last week, and I was disappointed with what we had in the Chicago office. Here are the pictures that all other offices shared:

The Montreal office had a cookie decoration activity:

I assumed that our cookie decorating class would also be Pride-themed, as advertised, but it was not! They didn’t even have the right colors 😦

These are the cookies that I decorated. I could make the rainbow and the heart pride-themed, but they didn’t supply us with the proper color icing!

I feel left out! (Although I learned some decorating techniques, which I will use for my Christmas cookies)

And I missed the Chicago Pride Parade and the whole weekend of North Pride celebration in Rogers Park, and the next year will be even more challenging schedule-wise.

Water For Elephants

Yesterday, I saw the musical Water for Elephants, and I could hardly wait to tell everyone about it! I liked it so much!!! I love circus. I know these days circus is a controvesial subject, especially when animals are involved. However, I have to admit, that I love circus the same way I loved it as a child, the same romantic love i still there. By the way, my mom never liked circus, and she avoided going to the circus with me, but aunt Kima loved it as enthusiastically as I, and we would often go together.

This was good old previous-turn-of-the-century circus, and the quality of the performance was not compromised for being “just a background for the story.” And the show has a drive (something I, surprisingly, didn’t see that much of a drive at Kinky Boots).

And now I want to read the book!

Other Cultural Events Of Last Week

On Wednesday, even though I had all this X-ray thing, I was on time for Kinki Boots in the James Nederlander Theater.

This was “as expected.” Very well staged, great music and voices. My neighbor said that that’s what she needed at that moment, amid all the nrgativities. I think I would enjoy it more if I weren’t constantly checking my phone for the X-ray reading results (which I actually received in the middle of the evening), and if I weren’t trying to figure out when I could pick up my prescription.

On Thursday, I went to the Members’ Third Thursday at the Art Institute. This is a new thing that started recently: the Members’ Bar is closed to everyone except those who purchased tickets. There is live music, a drink ticket, and light bites available for purchase. I thought it would be a nice, relaxing thing to do, but somehow it didn’t click with me. I checked it, and I probably would never do it again. The only positive thing was that I now know the Bar is inaccessible on the third Thursday of the month.

And finally, I went to the Haymarket Opera to David et Jonathas. I liked the first time I saw a performance by the Haymarket Opera, and was looking for another opportunity. I like this one significantly less than the previous one, and I do not think it was because of the concert version. Can’t really put a finger on it. I liked the music, the conductor, and the voices. I liked how the performance was positioned as “very timely for both Pride Month and Father’s Day.” Maybe it was just a rainy day 🙂