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Composer Terry Riley, who came to fame nearly 25 years ago with a repetitious, droning, yet subtly changing piece called simply In C, has come to accept his place, for better or worse, as the founder of the minimalist movement, which later spawned composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Riley’s more recent music, however, such as his 36-minute Crow’s Rosary, which he premiered here in a rare appearance with the Kronos Quartet last spring, has been strongly influenced by his intense study of Indian vocal music....

THE DRESSER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Herr Hitler is making it very difficult for Shakespearean companies!” rages Sir, an aging thespian who’s attempting to mount King Lear during a World War II air raid. (Isn’t that just like an actor, to take the narrow view?) Set in Great Britain in 1942, Ronald Harwood’s 1980 The Dresser uses the war as a backdrop for the struggle and slow collapse of one member of a breed now virtually extinct: the independent actor/manager, the grand performer/patriarch who cares for and despotically rules over his traveling company....

THE FILM SOCIETY So I killed him. No, I didn’t. Not really. That’s just a joke. Why should I kill him? He had a right to snigger. All what-if discussions must inevitably end in a snigger–it’s impossible that they wouldn’t–simply because they’re what-if discussions, and therefore abstract. You can be as sincere and high-minded as you like in the abstract. The real test comes when something actually happens. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA No one understands this better than Erich Leinsdorf. Now 77 years old, with a career that is as distinguished as any conductor could hope for, he refuses to rest on his laurels. There are conductors many years his junior who have become mere imitations of what they once were, repeating their gestures and repertoire, catering to a rapidly aging symphonic public by trying to stop the clock....

What does the S in the dollar sign represent? I read once that it is supposed to be a serpent. Also, what does the C in the cent sign represent? –M.J.R., U.S.A. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Among the deficient hypotheses: (1) The dollar sign was originally the letters U and S superimposed. The idea here is that the original dollar sign had two vertical lines, not one....

WHERE THE PEOPLE HAVE NO EYES A member of the Jeff Committee was troubled about Where the People Have No Eyes. “Do we nourish the beast?” she asked. “Or punish the rest?” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Turner claims to trace American society through the archetypal characters of Mother, Father, Son and Daughter. The Festival of Light he tells, us,is about “the battle between disillusionment in the present social order versus inherent knowledge, hidden meanings, and the ever present call that somehow there can be life in grace....

Why the Aerobic Phantom Didn’t Work Out A voice of our times has been silenced. The Aerobic Phantom is gone from the pages of Windy City Sports. Back came a letter from Linda Anderson, executive director of New City’s activity center, that would run in WCS’s October issue (from which the Phantom had vanished). Anderson defended her floor as “appropriate to aerobic activity. I ask that you disprove that or print a retraction,” she declared....

ALICE & DAVID Resistance at the Chicago Dramatists Workshop Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The show’s title suggests a relationship play. But Bates devotes surprisingly little time to developing either Alice or David, much less what makes them worthy of our attention. We are told, for example, that David considers himself an artist but never learn what kind of artist or catch him in the act of creation, nor do we ever find out how he’s able to keep Alice in the style to which she is clearly accustomed....

Rai music is to Algeria what reggae is to Jamaica. It’s an unholy mishmash of bubbling synthesizer bass lines, Arabic modal chanting, and dirty lyrics (about alcohol, fast cars, sexual frustration, etc), with an occasional pinch of Cuban conga drum or Chicago blues guitar thrown in for spice. Spokespeople for the straitlaced Algerian mainstream culture have denounced rai as jungle music for juvenile delinquents, and indeed it seems to be an explosive (and extremely danceable) Dionysian reaction against modern Islamic fundamentalism in North Africa....

It isn’t easy to transform a bulldog into a leopard, but Joy Holt was trying. She was trying in broad daylight, in the middle of the sidewalk, with a small circle of people raptly watching. “He’s not afraid. Cosmo’s not shy at all about getting dressed in public,” Holt said as she struggled to give the dog a new identity. She carefully pulled the thin, spotted costume material over the stoic dog’s back legs, then slowly around the rest of his body I until the change was complete....

Falls’s Future: When Is a Sabbatical Not a Sabbatical? What is Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls doing next season? Here is a time line of one columnist’s attempt to answer that question: The theater’s $750,000 production of John Logan’s Riverview: A Melodrama With Music, directed by Falls, opened on June 22. Reporters at the opening believed an official announcement regarding Falls’s plans for next year was imminent. The next day, sharply worded pans of Riverview appeared in both the Tribune and Sun-Times....

FEMALE PARTS You’ve come a long way, baby. Or so the Virginia Slims ads tell us. But Clarence Thomas is preparing his ascent to the Supreme Court even though he hasn’t revealed his position on women’s reproductive rights. N.W.A., Ice Cube, and Andrew Dice Clay are raking in millions with their misogynist diatribes. Rush Limbaugh, ranting and raving daily about “feminazis,” is one of our country’s most popular radio talk-show hosts....

I finally saw my first wild parrot. This has to be a Great Moment in the life of any temperate-zone birder. I have seen parrots all my life–locked in cages, shut up in houses. I have known budgerigars that were taught to drink martinis and tended to run into the wall whenever they tried to fly. I have heard cockatoos cuss like marines and seen macaws roll over and play dead....

The sport of bird-watching in America has been shaped largely by the guidebooks birders use to identify what they see. And the guidebooks have, to a considerable extent, been shaped by the kinds of optical equipment available for use in the field. His rendering of a male canvasback duck is a prime example of his style. He shows the bird as you would see it sitting on the water, and he captures it beautifully with nothing more than five solid shapes in black, gray, and white: a dark gray bill, a medium gray head, a black chest, a white body, and a black rump....

In Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, the paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, played by Tom Cruise, agonizingly comes to terms with the physical and psychic wounds inflicted by the war. His transformation from all-American boy to political activist is depicted as a personal triumph over a serious physical disability, a sentimental journey to self-fulfillment. “It’s a one-dimensional portrayal,” says Loretta Smith matter-of-factly. “A lot of crucial details of Ron’s life are missing....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Despite the overwhelming preponderance in modern medical literature of valid and reliable studies to the contrary, John Friedberg [“Is Psychiatry Going Insane?” May 1] claims to believe no scientific evidence exists to suggest a genetic factor in the etiology of mental illnesses. Similarly, he also claims to believe sufferers of these brain diseases do not improve dramatically and at times almost miraculously when given medical treatments (including electroconvulsive therapy)....

Followers of musical-theater oddities and 18th-century British comedy will be especially attracted to this amusing but little-known adaptation of Henry Melding’s 1732 Rape Upon Rape, or The Justice Caught in His Own Trap. But cultish and historical appeals aside, Melding’s sardonic satire of sex, law, politics, and the media is timely: it’s the story of Mr. Squeezum, a lying and lecherous jurist, and proper Hilaret Politic, who tries to expose Squeezum as a sexual harasser only to find herself smeared and manipulated by chaotic public hearings and a rumor-mongering press....

In his current engagement at the Goodman Studio Theatre (which is not entirely sold-out despite reports), Mandy Patinkin redefines the musical-theater concert from the moment he walks onstage. Dressed in black slacks, a loose-fitting coral-colored T-shirt, and gym shoes, he pops out from the wings carrying two pots of flowers with which to decorate a stage that is bare except for a couple of ladders, a standing lamp with a naked light bulb, and a man sitting at the piano....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I commend the Reader for its policy re letters to the editor. I have been reading your paper for many years now and although I don’t always agree with some of the articles, the letters column is unique in that it prints letters without signatures (something the Sun-Times and Trib don’t do) as well as epithets and four-letter words (unnecessary in my view and revealing the writer’s youth)....

PEACEKEEPER Reddin’s story involves a young, married lieutenant, Dean Swift, who has just been transferred to a Nebraska missile silo. Reddin places Swift and his wife between two very different couples. On one side is his new commanding officer, Major Jack Gurney, who tries to humanize his unit’s situation with attempts at friendship and warmth. For his trouble, Gurney is secretly ridiculed by the men and emasculated by his wife. On the other side are Swift’s partner, Lieutenant Henry Fielding, and the officer he’s dating, Lieutenant Kim Newman: their idea of love consists of hot sex, major quantities of drugs, and unlimited use of the VCR....