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LIFE IS A DREAM Anyway, it seems appropriate that Zak would take this particular moment to direct Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream. The title alone suggests the sort of lethean escape he might find attractive just now. But more to the point, the plot revolves around a man who finds his outward reality so disorienting, so capricious, inscrutable, malevolent, and just plain weird that he rejects it as a dream, and bases his actions on innate truths–on an internal reality–instead....

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes of our universe, but we make our best approach through small curiosities that rivet our attention–all those pretty pebbles on the shoreline of knowledge … What are they? To geologists and paleontologists these fascinating beads are as common as dirt....

DOUG VARONE AND DANCERS Doug Varone and Dancers, a company based in New York, was in Chicago for two weeks before last weekend’s concerts for a residency sponsored by the NEA, the Illinois Arts Council, and the National Performance Network. It featured classes, workshops, a lecture-demonstration, parties, a press conference, an open rehearsal, and a premiere, Force Majeure, jointly sponsored by the Dance Center, MoMing, and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville....

“Shut up. Be happy. Everything you demanded is now commanded.” Jello Biafra is stalking the stage at Northwestern University, goose-stepping from one end to the other. He wears a black leather trench coat, black boots. His face is obscured by dark glasses and the script trembling in his hand. Neither Jeff nor Mike looks particularly punky, however. Neither one is wearing black or any of the usual metallic accessories associated with the old Sex Pistols look....

Into the Dragon Room: Nederlander Takes on Jam in China Club Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With Nederlander clout behind it, Campana says the China Club will book between 50 and 60 national acts and around 100 regional acts a year. Nederlander expects to bring in a wide range of talent, from jazz and folk to country, salsa, and hard rock. Ticket prices will range from around $6 for local bands to $18 for the bigger national acts....

The wildest and liveliest effort to date of Chinese American filmmaker Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing, Dim Sum, Slamdance) might have been called Two or Three Things I Know About Hong Kong. Like Godard’s films in the late 60s, this beautifully shot essayistic poem–putatively a thriller and full of scatological gags as well as macabre violence and humor–evokes a contemporary city in all its contradictions and paradoxes. (The film’s full title perfectly captures its jaundiced socioeconomic view and its stylistic irreverence....

Based on a play by John Galsworthy, this 1933 British feature about anti-Semitism stars Basil Rathbone as a wealthy Jewish businessman sued for slander after he accuses an army officer (Miles Mander) of stealing 100 pounds from his wallet during a weekend house party for aristocrats. It might be argued that the film itself isn’t entirely free of anti-Semitism; as Frank S. Nugent wrote in the New York Times at the time, Rathbone’s “Shylock in modern dress ....

Maggie’s Dream: A Children’s Museum at the Cultural Center? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Several weeks ago Maggie convened a meeting of representatives from various city museums and other arts organizations. At that meeting, she revealed she was interested in transforming the Cultural Center into a children’s museum. The revelation did not go unnoted by Weisberg, who was present at the meeting, or by Dianne Sautter, executive director of Express-ways Children’s Museum, the organization that sources say may be invited to occupy the Cultural Center should Weisberg decide it’s time to make Maggie’s dream a reality....

Lead Story In Tokyo last June Hamamatsu City Zoo officials began showing nonstop videos of mating gorillas to a female gorilla, Daiko, to stimulate her interest in her mate, Sho. After two weeks officials reported that the two were copulating occasionally but that Daiko was not yet pregnant. (A zoo in Kyoto once claimed success in using a video to get a mother gorilla to nurse her young.) Best of Chicago voting is live now....

A delightful “small” picture in an era when such things are no longer supposed to exist, this quirky comedy follows the adventures of a trio of bank robbers (Bill Murray, Geena Davis, and Randy Quaid) who pull off an ingenious and successful job but then find it difficult to get out of New York City; Jason Robards plays the police chief who is alternately hot and not so hot on their trail....

It’s only a single xeroxed page containing a few poems, a photo, and a biographical sketch. Before he hands it to me, he signs it: “To Florence Levinsohn, with love, Alfonso Segovia.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Segovia’s poems, about 2,000 of them, which he’s collected in a spiral-bound book he calls “Rainbow for Life,” and also his short stories were all written in Spanish and are mostly unpublished, although he says that a couple of poems appeared in a 1989 anthology and that he was named poet of merit in 1989 at a San Francisco public reading....

On June 13 Chicagoan Ed Slowikowski stepped to the starting line at the Metro West Twilight track meet, on the outskirts of Boston, with one chance left to qualify for the 1992 Olympic Trials. For ten weeks he had been trying to shave a tenth of a second off his best time in the 1,500-meter run. This was the last day to do it. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

ANNA CHRISTIE Now the Next Theatre is doing Anna Christie, one of the weakest plays Eugene O’Neill ever wrote. Even he hated it. “I couldn’t sit through it without getting the heebie-jeebies and wondering why the hell I wrote it,” the playwright wrote to a friend after seeing a revival in 1941, 20 years after it premiered. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But once again a Next Theatre production has been saved–by two outstanding performances....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The legal system recognizes that a child is not developmentally capable of giving informed consent to participate in sexual activities with an adult. In addition, there is an inherent power imbalance in any relationship between a child and an adult, with the adult holding the power. Children, particularly little girls, are conditioned in our society to obey and “respect” adults, and to please them....

Ballet Chicago: Splash or Crash? Ballet Chicago was hoping to make a big splash at the Chicago Theatre, where it had scheduled six performances between October 25 and November 3. But early this week sources at the Chicago Theatre said the ballet company was having trouble coming up with its theater-rental payments, and just as we went to press the company’s executive director, Oleg Lubanov, told us the engagement was being scaled back to four performances because of slow ticket sales....

JULY Saturday 27 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A list of noted cat lovers might include Sylvia, Bertie Wooster, and of course Samuel Johnson (“And then in a sort of kindly reverie, he bethought himself of his own favorite cat, and said, ‘But, Hodge shan’t be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot’”). Various obstacles (including death and fictional status) prevent those three from attending, but the Brookfield Zoo is nevertheless going forward with Hats Off to Cats, a celebration of the fabulous feline today and tomorrow....

If there were a position for “clown prince of jazz,” it might well go to Clark Terry’s alter ego, the aptly named Mumbles. When Terry launches into his unique combination of scat singing and Sid Caesar-esque double-talk, you laugh enough–no matter how often you’ve heard it–to overlook the fact that he’s actually making plenty of musical (as opposed to syntactical) sense. Terry’s wit extends to his trumpet and flugelhorn playing, too; but when he’s playing Mumbles, his prowess is too overpowering to miss....

The violin remains a relatively odd bird in jazz, despite the fact that its popularity as a soloing instrument predates such standbys as the alto saxophone and the vibraphone. But Chicago can count itself blessed in the matter of jazz fiddlers. Not only do we have the opportunity to hear a bona fide master of the jazz violin in the person of Johnny Frigo, who performs each Monday at Toulouse and who really is among the the world’s best; we also get the occasional glimpse of Diane Delin, who seems securely on her way to one day inheriting Frigo’s mantle....

In June 1970, when about 100 men and women marched in downtown Chicago to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the closest they got to City Hall was across the street. There, in the Civic Center plaza, they shouted gay pride slogans, defiantly hugged and kissed (same-sex displays of affection were routinely cause for arrest), and joined hands for a joyous dance around the Picasso statue. They were, for the most part, homosexuals, protesting police harassment of gay bars under Mayor Richard J....

HOTEL UNIVERSE Cheery bunch. But this bleak vision of life belongs to Philip Barry, best known for such lighthearted comedies as The Philadelphia Story and Holiday. Although nearly forgotten today, Barry was one of America’s leading playwrights in the first half of this century, largely because of the success of his comedies. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That is the gimmick, the deus ex machina, that allows the psychodramas to occur....