News came out this week that Joshua Henry, who played the role of Aaron Burr so perfectly in the Chicago production of Hamilton, is moving on to play Burr when the musical opens in San Francisco this spring. I’m quite sure I’ve told everyone in the world that thanks to my extremely generous friend Colleen […]

One challenge I took on in 2016 was acting on stage at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater. Let me explain. I’d attended an accessible performance of Too Much Light put on by the Neo-Futurists early in 2016. Too Much Light cast members write and perform a perpetually rotating list of two-minute plays in 60 minutes, and […]

Anna Nessy Perlberg was born in Czechoslovakia. Her mother, Julia Nessy, was an opera singer, and her entire family was devoted to the arts. Her father was Jewish, and when Hitler seized Prague in 1939 she and her two older brothers and their parents left their beloved city for New York. Anna met her poet […]

Now, here’s a new one for you. A waiter in Mississippi was fired for refusing to wear his fake eye at work. Discrimination? I dunno. But this story strikes close to home. Eye surgeons did all they could to restore my vision when retinopathy set in thirty years ago. One of my eyes is still […]

1987. A hot, humid day in Champaign, Ill. Mike and I are perched on stools at the Esquire Lounge. My folded cane sits atop the bar, forming a rigid white line that separates my beer glass from Mike’s. The discussion? How can I get to the pool on my own to swim laps. The stranger […]