The Mystery of the Shrinking Convention Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Hey there, chum, I’m the mayor now. It had better work!” said Richie. He’d been elected in 1989, and hadn’t lost since. He was 52, with brown hair, two years younger than Bill, who was almost bald. “After all,” said Bill, enthusiastic cochair of Chicago ’96, the city’s convention host committee, “we are expecting 15,000 media representatives....

THE DREAM PROJECT This moment from Moving Parts Theatre Company’s debut production, The Dream Project, perfectly realizes the piece’s expressed intent: to “make something as ephemeral as dreams . . . tangible enough for the audience to experience.” The curious logic of the scene and the simple, arresting beauty of the image create the unmistakable reality Of the dream state. At the same time the gesture is highly theatrical, and the falling scarves provide a vivid picture of food going down the digestive tract....

To the editors, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At first blush it’s difficult not to feel a twinge of admiration for anyone with the intestinal fortitude to go his own way, defying the hobgoblins of his time. To be a communist like Nelson Peery, in a country where four-fifths of the scoundrels have prospected for gold in the mines of anticommunism, must predispose one in his favor....

FINNISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though it’s only six years old, the Finnish Chamber Orchestra is already its country’s flagship ensemble. The performances of a pair of late Haydn symphonies (numbers 92 and 99) on its debut CD (Ondine), under the baton of veteran maestro Paavo Berglund, are precise and vigorous, showing the skilled, tight-knit 38-member orchestra at ease and reveling in spirited camaraderie....

Jordan River Productions and Act Now Productions, Chicago Fringe Festival, at the Organic Theater. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Readers have been probing for mysterious meanings and coded messages in “Jabberwocky” ever since Alice puzzled over its backward words in a looking-glass book. Now Lewis Carroll’s parody of Anglo-Saxon dragon-slaying epics has inspired Indiana University theater student Michael Mark Chemers to write this dense, overlong, but sometimes quite clever one-act about a young man’s coming-of-age....

JEFF NEWELL’S NEW TRAD OCTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If Lincoln Avenue, Cottage Grove, and New Orleans’s Bourbon Street were somehow to form an intersection, you’d find this band playing on the corner. Several years ago alto and soprano saxist Jeff Newell conceived this project, an eight-piece band that borrows heavily from the New Orleans brass-band tradition. Like the Crescent City’s famous Dirty Dozen Brass Band and its several proteges, Newell’s group applies the modified march beats of New Orleans street music to a lot of songs that came a good deal later, from Ellington’s “Caravan” to Charlie Parker’s “Bongo Beep....

Not too long ago, bold young conservatives were tramping from campus to campus denouncing the idea of “victimhood,” suggesting that all those who complained about, you know, oppression, were just crybabies out to blame the world for their problems. Dinesh D’Souza, leading the charge, called for a vigorous assault on the “victims’ revolution” threatening the nation’s universities; he denounced the champions of victimhood as “Visigoths in tweed.” Maybe–skin excluded–I’m just not sensitive enough....

By Scott Berinato It was late in the afternoon, and Kevin didn’t have the $35 a friend charged him for a night’s lodging. He had to find somewhere else to stay, and he agreed to show me his alternatives. “The trail is where we go. This is it. I mean, people in Evanston don’t even know–Hi, how are you doing?” The passerby gave him a wide berth. “See, they’re scared. They think I’m gonna attack them or I’m drunk or I’m a druggie....

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Hai Ninh’s 1974 Vietnamese propaganda feature, partly filmed during the U.S. bombing of Hanoi in 1972, is how strong and accomplished and beautiful it is, particularly given the almost impossible circumstances under which it was made. The simple but powerful story centers on a little girl wandering through the rubble of the city, looking for her parents until a soldier takes her under his wing....

To the editors: In regard to Maura Troester’s article on Free Street’s teen company, TeenStreet, I must say that the picture Ms. Troester painted of the conflict between African Americans and Latino teens at Pulaski Park was sensationalistic and inaccurate [May 14]. The very teens she quotes saying they can’t use the park, Momo Owens and Joshua Medley, use it all the time, for sports as well as for rehearsals....

TINY HARVEST Or maybe a good 12-step program would be more appropriate: Tiny Harvest’s family, the O’Reillys, are Irish. And we all know what that means–lots of liquor and talk (not to be confused with communication) and lots and lots of barely concealed hysteria about issues undealt with and feelings unexpressed. (I’m speaking here as a recovering Irish Catholic.) Playwright Greg Nagan has done a great job of laying the emotional foundation for his play....

Sergio Mayora blows into Weeds around nine o’clock. His hair’s in a ponytail, and he’s wearing OshKosh overalls, a white T-shirt, and dark sunglasses. He’s tall and wide and looks like he could lift a horse. “Hey Sergio, that a union gut you got?” asks one of his patrons. “No, really, how you doin’?” “Better to look like shit than smell like piss,” Sergio says. “Oh man, you smell.” “Whaddya want?...

This showcase of directorial aspiration features shoestring-budget stagings of classic and new works. Coordinated this year by Cecilie Keenan, the event offers the work of 48 directors (chosen from 60 applicants), most of whom you’ve never heard of before. In a brave effort to bring order to the affair, this year’s festival is organized along thematic lines: “World Premieres and New Voices” (April 4 through 7), “American Voices” (April 11 through 14), and “A Different Point of View” (April 18 through 21)....

Joel Ross Ross has completely covered the floor of the gallery with low plywood boxes of various sizes and shapes: only an area large enough for the front door to swing open remains bare. Each of the 180 boxes has a person’s name printed on it, because each has been tailor-made to contain the head, torso, arm, or leg of 30 of the artist’s friends and relatives. All of the boxes for the torsos are in the front of the space, then come the ones for the arms, the heads, and finally the legs at the rear....

Friday 6 It is often said that the U.S. Constitution is the oldest democratic document in the world. But what’s second? It’s the Polish Constitution, of course, the very piece of paper being feted today in one of Chicago’s biggest parades. The 1994 Polish Constitution Day Parade runs on Dearborn south from Wacker to Van Buren. From 11:45 AM on you can see marching bands, politicos, vets, and assorted floats. It’s free, but if you can’t make it you can watch it live on Channel 7....

By Cara Jepsen Anyone who’s been to a movie at the Fine Arts has passed under the entry arch that bears the message “All Passes–Art Alone Endures.” And it does: a national historic landmark, the building is home to 36 artists whose work will be exhibited through June 29 in a show called The Fine Arts Building: A Personal Reflection. The opening reception is tonight from 5 to 8 at the Fine Arts Building Gallery, 410 S....

Friday 11/1 – Thursday 11/7 2 SATURDAY Though Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim is perhaps best known for her Breakfast in Fur of 1936–in which she covered a teacup, saucer, and spoon in fur–she considered it one of her least important pieces. Closer to her heart were such works as The Couple, which consisted of a pair of women’s boots sewn together at the toe representing the restricted freedom of women in a patriarchal society....

DOGHAVEN OPENING WEEKEND FESTIVITIES Two cars faced each other on opposite sides of the road at a distance of 20 feet or so, their headlights creating an impromptu stage. As I got closer, I saw people milling about, silhouettes in the fog, and thought this might be some southwestern-Michigan-style rave in which teenagers gather on a country road to dance. Getting closer still, I saw smashed-steel-and-molded-plastic kettle drums on wheels, and knew that I had arrived at Doghaven: this could only be the equipment for Chicago’s percussion ensemble, Jellyeye....

This week’s history lesson concerns Cecil Payne, who shares a unique niche in the development of jazz. In the late 40s, along with the long-gone Serge Chaloff, Payne found himself in the first wave of bebop-playing baritone saxophonists and worked hard to translate the mercurial flights of bebop pioneer Charlie Parker–who played the considerably more graceful alto sax–to the big horn pitched an octave lower. Featured most notably with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, Payne showed the influence of Harry Carney (the best-known baritonist of the swing era) in his meaty and authoritative sound; meanwhile, his improvisations gradually moved beyond Parker’s influence to make him a respected soloist in his own right....

Chicago’s been home to many great saxophonists, the majority of them jazz musicians. Jeremy Ruthrauff plays classical sax–not the usual fare of Glazunov and Berlioz, but contemporary compositions that reach for the fringes of instrumental abilities and seek to explore any new materials found there. I’ve seen him many times with the Vision Saxophone Quartet, a group that has yet to really grab me, and as a member of Gene Coleman’s Ensemble Noamnesia....