Courtesy of Goodman Theatre’s Education and Community Engagement Programs Students rehearse for last year’s final GTS production. The Goodman Theatre’s General Theater Studies program is an anomaly for both high school and the acting profession: it builds confidence and self-esteem instead of tearing them to shreds. Over the course of six weeks, the 80 student participants tell stories and improvise scenes based around a single theme which the adult “teaching artists” craft into a 90-minute performance piece....

Doug Tuttle Local label Trouble in Mind, run by Bill and Lisa Roe, has been releasing records at an incredible rate since its inception in 2009. Starting out mostly focusing on garage rock, the label has gone on to lean more toward pop with an experimental flare, with superpsychy and Krautrock LPs becoming its hallmark. One of these releases is the debut solo effort from former Mmoss member Doug Tuttle, which came out in January, and on Sunday, May 11 he brings his first tour under his own name to the Burlington....

Michael Jarecki/Sun-Times Media Luol Deng is heading to Cleveland. In return, the Bulls will eventually wind up with . . . someone. Pro basketball is a complicated sport, and I’m not talking about the three-second violation or the two kinds of flagrant fouls. Cap Room should eventually allow the Bulls to sign another star they actually intend to keep. With Cap Room and the three draft picks, the Bulls should be going places in about 2016, when Derrick Rose begins his fifth comeback....

BRIAN LEONARD Spellcaster Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

At Berkeley Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

There’s something about getting seated in Siberia for no logical reason that really allows you to let down your guard. That’s what happened one evening at Remington’s, the new Michigan Avenue “American grill” from the 4 Star Restaurant Group (Dunlays, Frasca, Smoke Daddy, etc) and the Chicago homecoming of the immensely talented chef Todd Stein, who spent the last year and a half working in Atlanta. With barely a quarter of the restaurant’s 250 seats occupied, my pal and I were escorted to a booth hidden behind a private dining room, just above the stairs leading to the restrooms....

Serengeti’s “Dennehy” is a thing of wonder, not only because it’s a love letter to Chicago but also because it’s where Serengeti (born David Cohn) becomes the character Kenny Dennis, a middle-aged, mustachioed everyman who raps about playing softball with the boys, running errands on Western Avenue, and his favorite local teams—which serves as a brilliantly simple hook, “Bears, Hawks, Sox, Bulls”). “Dennehy” has achieved a rare cult crossover success—the song isn’t in constant rotation at, say, Bears games, but ask Chicago sports fans watching the game at your neighborhood bar if they’ve heard of Serengeti and chances are at least one person will respond with the “Dennehy” hook....

LEANN MUELLER Rise Against If you want more nostalgia-packed fun once Riot Fest packs it in each night, you’re in luck: the festival has announced 15 excellent aftershows. Several are already sold out, but tickets can still be had for the rest—those concerts are listed below. Tonight also features two screenings of Descendents documentary Filmage at the Vic, accompanied by Q&As with the filmmakers. And tomorrow through Sun 9/14, both locations of Emporium Arcade Bar (1366 N....

Bill Meyer: One of Pitchfork’s pleasures comes early each day, when local up-and-comers get a crack at a big stage. Since two-thirds of the Bitchin Bajas—an instrumental trio that has drawn the right lessons in trance induction from Terry Riley, Alice Coltrane, and Cluster—perform seated before analog synthesizers, visual spectacle was not on the agenda. But they made glorious use of the Green Stage’s sound system, bathing listeners in richly layered tones and textures to transport them from a muddy field to a state of sound-induced serenity....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, April 11, 2017. How the feds built their unprecedented case against Dennis Hastert Former U.S. House speaker Dennis Hastert is one of the highest-ranking elected officials in American history ever to spend time in prison. The former wrestling coach and teacher at Yorkville High School was sentenced in April 2016 for allegedly paying hush money to cover up accusations that he sexually abused teenage boys on his wrestling team....

In the span of a single week the New York Times posted not one but two articles from irate folksingers bitching about the authenticity—or lack thereof—in Inside Llewyn Davis. They are companion pieces to a blog post that ran on the Village Voice‘s website last month. Lavin: “Am outraged that the Coens took such a colorful character and interpreted him as a doofus.” I didn’t know Dave Van Ronk. Before this movie came out, the only thing I knew about him was that he was the guy from whom Bob Dylan stole most of his early musical arrangements, but that he was very generous and gracious about the whole thing....

Mike Sula Jerk tacos, chicken and steak I’m the sort of person who could be accused of committing serial refrigerator abuse. I hoard condiments. I pack it with so much stuff that I sometimes break the shelving. And then I forget about things and leave them in there so long that the women in my life periodically demand that I purge it. Leftovers are a big problem for me because I’ll do everything I can to avoid throwing food away....

Chaka Khan came into the world on March 23, 1953, as Yvette Marie Stevens—her jazz-loving parents named her after the Stan Getz song “Yvette.” Though she’d go on to become an icon of powerhouse funk, that name pays homage to white mainstream jazz—an apparent mismatch that makes more sense when you consider all the ways Chicago’s diverse musical culture helped mold her. Given all the impressive younger women in this year’s Pitchfork lineup, it’s tempting to bring up Khan’s anthemic 1978 smash “I’m Every Woman” as a way to talk about her influence on decades of future divas....

Lost Highway On Thursday, February 6, at 9 PM, as part of an ongoing series dedicated to actor Nicolas Cage, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films hosts a screening of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990), in which Cage plays an amalgamation of Elvis Presley and every character in The Wizard of Oz not named Dorothy. It’s precisely the sort of barbed, eccentric role Cage has come to perfect, though the film itself, particularly when framed against the rest of Lynch’s filmography, has a far less serrated edge....

With the exception of Groucho Marx deciding which club to join, people don’t like people who don’t want them around. That includes us journalists. When we knock on doors we want them to open. Holliday and Macias didn’t get into the First Amendment question, which might mean that on the streets of Chicago, unlike in Mizzou’s Carnahan Quad, it didn’t come up. The First Amendment is actually a fairly useless weapon for reporters to go into battle with....

Carlos Ramirez-Rosa is hurriedly scarfing down a bag of mixed nuts and a salad at a Pret A Manger across the street from City Hall on Thursday afternoon—his first meal of the day. It’s been an interesting six days, he tells me. Ramirez-Rosa denies the claim that he flip-flopped. He told the Reader he has opposed BDS at the state and local level because city and state governments shouldn’t engage in foreign policy—but he supports it at the federal level....

Ausar Bradley started his University of Illinois college career in fall 2014, and he’s devoted his creative energy to rapping for even less time. But on his second mixtape, The 6 Page Letter, he shows the wisdom and humility of someone who’s been at it long enough to know both what it’s like to play a packed house and what it’s like to play only to the other acts on the bill....