Ten years ago last week a murder took place in my home. Someone broke in, raped and bludgeoned the baby-sitter, and left her bound and dead facedown in the water filling the bathtub. A fire the intruder then set in the basement filled the house with smoke, but a fireman who broke through a second-story window found our ten-month-old baby in her crib in time to save her life. Journalism did what it could, putting the fresh information before the public if not before the bar....

GERTRUDE STEIN AND A COMPANION So Alexandra Billings–slender, beautiful, and light, the star of such campy delights as Lobo a Go-Go and Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack–would seem a farfetched choice to cast as the mythic Stein. Yet she has the lead role in Borealis Productions’ Gertrude Stein and a Companion, now playing at Strawdog Theatre. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Toklas’s image is nearly as serious and indelible as Stein’s: dark, slight, and slightly slouched, Semitic and sloe-eyed....

Some new touches have been added to William Pullinsi’s staging of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods since it moved from Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theatre to Candlelight Dinner Playhouse–a magic bean stalk that sprouts up fatefully at the end of act one, a fiery disappearance for the Witch in act two, and a much more fluid dance finale by choreographer Danny Herman. But the core of the work isn’t different, only deepened by the actors’ growth in their roles over the passage of several months....

Abena Joan Brown used pluck and perseverance to create the ETA Creative Arts Foundation; but to build a theater, she needed money. That’s where Nick Rabkin came in. “Theater can work as a tool for economic development,” says Joan Harris, commissioner of the Cultural Affairs Department. “Theaters attract people to neighborhoods; once the people are there, maybe they’ll get hungry and look for a place to eat. The point is, you’re bringing new resources into the community....

LITTLE COMFORTS and Not that Dillman the playwright made things easy for Dillman the director. Little Comforts feels less like a finished work than a confused and contrived crazy quilt of styles, cliches, and half-explored ideas cadged from, among others, Luigi Pirandello, Edward Albee, and Eugene Ionesco. At the center of this digressive mess sits a cartoonish, intensely unlikable couple, Fran and Gus, who not unlike Mommy and Daddy in Albee’s The American Dream and George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...

MOMENTA The original project has been expanded to include balletic works as well as early modern-dance pieces created over the past 70 years or so. No longer simply a student effort, it has attracted a number of professional dancers eager to familiarize themselves with the styles and techniques of Humphrey, Eleanor King, an early member of Humphrey’s company, and Charles Weidman, Humphrey’s longtime artistic associate and partner. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In March two teenage boys being driven to juvenile court by police officers in Reading, Pennsylvania, escaped when the car stopped for a light. But the boys were handcuffed together and failed to communicate as they approached a flagpole. One went left, one went right, and they collided, stunning themselves momentarily. Two nearby fire fighters held them down until the police could catch up....

The 50-odd groups appearing in the eight-week “festival of Chicago’s international arts” include a dozen theater companies and performance artists; those performing November 21 through 24 are described below. These listings refer to theater and performance art offerings only; on nights when only one performance is listed here, be assured at least one other program of music, dance, or poetry is also planned, with discount prices available to viewers buying a ticket to all performances on a single night....

There is a six-letter word that television news cannot tolerate, even though it’s something that’s routinely used in the production of news programs. It forms a continuing thread in every news show on the air and is a fundamental part of the training of every onscreen journalist, and yet television reels in horror at the very mention of its name. Broadcasters would rather take a pay cut than admit their complicity in the growth of this dreadful contamination of the objective business of reporting....

Ramsey Lewis meets Joe Segal. Lewis, Chicago’s most famous resident jazzman, always prefers to stay home for the holidays; this year, he finds himself ensconced at Chicago’s most famous jazz club for the very first time. Perhaps it’s the atmosphere, or perhaps he’s on the verge of reassessing his career–but whatever the reason, Lewis is taking some risks at the Showcase. He’s extended some of the harmonies, and his improvisations are more venturesome; he’s filled his repertoire with standards and jazz tunes, material that occasionally allows him to push his light touch and unhurried phrasing to another level–from spacey to spacious....

I saw a staring virgin stand And bear that beating heart away; When it comes to tawdriness and cheapness, to beliefs that would shame even a gorilla, you simply cannot top the goyim. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This is an odd time to come out of the closet, I know. The recent scandals among the Pentecostal TV evangelists are giving God a bad name....

Nancy Simpson has no idea how long she has been a multiple personality.* After years of psychotherapy she has only a vague awareness of slipping into and out of about 16 different identities, which range from three-year-old Nancy to ten-year-old Tommie to several adults, among them Nance, Nancy, and Linda. She does know that for as long as she can remember life has been hell. Nancy’s mother’s role remains vague. Nancy isn’t sure what her mother knew, but she remembers her mother beating her with a broom after a sexual encounter with her father....

MILL FIRE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In spite of its movie title, Mill Fire has little to do with any conventional action or story line. It is about the spiritual journey toward mental health of a young woman named Marlene, after her adored husband Champ dies in a steel-mill fire. Although she is the primary focus of the story, she is surrounded by fellow sufferers of the same tragedy....

I want to start my own country. My question is, how do I go about this? I assume it is illegal to buy land in an existing country and proclaim sovereignty simply by virtue of ownership. Is there any way to avoid this difficulty and either (1) buy some territory in an existing country with the intent of seceding; (2) claim some previously unclaimed (or at least not very heavily guarded) land; (3) settle an area that had not existed earlier (e....

Ken Knudson sits in his Downers Grove office and draws thick, black circles on maps, lassoing metropolises. On a nearby wall covered with maps of the midwest and the nation, stick-on flags adorn the communities where Knudson plans to open branches of Sybaris, the couples-only resort business he founded 16 years ago with a small motel and a few water beds, mirrors on the ceilings, and adult movies on closed-circuit TV....

Last weekend the Chicago Actor’s Ensemble opened its new late-night performance series, The Zero Room, in a tiny black room on the fifth floor of the Preston Bradley Community Center. The “Zero Room” is a fictional performance cabaret, and every Saturday night CAE members intend to create, according to press material, “a total performance environment featuring performance, poetry, art, video and music in a continuously changing multi-media format.” The Zero Room’s opening night proved a disorganized, uninspired disaster: it started a half-hour late and showcased a series of momentumless skits performed in oppressive heat while an annoying waiter kept wandering around offering people mashed potatoes....

Friday 1 Patti Filardi was on her way to visit her grandfather last October when two men stepped out of the shadows, stabbed her, took $30, and left her for dead. When it was over, she was left paralyzed from the neck down. Although she’s regained some movement in her arms, neck, and wrists, Filardi is still dependent on others to get around. The Friends of Patti Filardi want to raise $25,000 to get her a handicapped van and an electric wheelchair....

Friday 7 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Funf is German for five; it’s also the name of a new classical music enemble that’s making its Chicago debut tonight at Puszh Studios. Funf’s members are Becky Elliott, Perry Guarigila, Andrew Stees, Freda Wyant, and Terv Yoshioka. On the agenda are 18th- and 20th-century works for mandolin and strings by Hoffman, Hasse, Giuliani, Bach, and Vivaldi....

Civic Center Bounces Bicoastal Ballet The Ritz-Carlton Hotel was the site of a seemingly festive reception to unveil Gault-Millau’s The Best of Chicago, a $15.95 travel guide that should be arriving shortly in bookstores. But behind the scenes some tempers were flaring. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The American versions of Gault-Millau (pronounced “Go Me-oh”) guides, which also include books for Los Angeles, New York, New England, and San Francisco, are based on a long-standing, acerbic, well-respected Paris restaurant guide produced by noted French food critics Henri Gault and Christian Millau....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Unfortunately, the inspired principals who first founded the Reader have lost the vision and consequently have been seduced by a very different kind of underground. The Reader has grown; more staff and more operating expenses so you have your basic budgetary priority condition dictating more advertising revenue. The level of advertising is particularly distressing & alarming because of the Reader’s gradual conversion to mainstream crass whoreish commercialism....