The temperature was 90+ degrees in Chicago Wednesday. Our time at a rap concert outside at Grant Park that night was hot — in more ways than one. I wrote a post earlier this week about my quest to understand what young people are listening to these days. If the musicians we heard in the […]

In my playwriting post last week I promised a second post with more details on my failed attempt to memorize and perform a monologue without being able to see the script – or the audience. I wrote my two-minute dog monolog on my talking computer, then listened to it line by line and repeated the […]

I’m trying something new this summer, taking this weekly playwriting class at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Over the course of 10 weekly 3-hour sessions that start on June 4, 2016, students will explore the process of creating a 2-minute play in the Too Much Light style, writing and crafting pieces based on true life […]

A group of handsome guys with British accents met me for coffee Sunday morning. The rendezvous came after Neale Minch, a longtime friend from my days working at the University of Illinois Study Abroad Office, emailed me the night before. “I am in apartment in Chicago (55 East Washington) with Mike Selbie and Julian Hamilton-Peach. […]

Guess who spent a Saturday afternoon last year playing the very same piano architect Frank Lloyd Wright practiced on 100+ years ago? Me. The Frank Lloyd Wright Trust was one of 31 cultural organizations that partnered with Chicago’s ADA 25 for 25 Cultural Access Project last year. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans […]