Friday 12
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What can bring together William Safire, quondam MTV VJ Mark Goodman, Bulls coach Phil Jackson, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Shulamit Ran, actress Marlo Thomas, and Senator Carol Moseley-Braun? It’s the fourth annual Chicago Humanities Festival. This year’s theme: “From Communication to Understanding.” Nine sites clustered in the Loop and Near North will house more than two dozen lectures and performances by the abovementioned celebrities and many others. The festival kicks off tonight at 6 at Saint James Cathedral, 65 E. Huron, where Bernie Sahlins will present Caroline Cracraft and Canon Janet Campbell reading from the work of Dorothy Sayers. Other highlights include Safire’s keynote speech Sunday at 10 AM at Orchestra Hall, 220 S. Michigan; members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing works by Ran and other modern composers at the same place at 1 PM; Mark Goodman talking about MTV at the Art Institute, Michigan and Adams, at 2:30 PM Sunday; and Moseley-Braun on a panel called “Laughing Matters: Humor in the PC Generation,” at 4 PM Sunday at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. Admission is $3 to each event except the Orchestra Hall concert, for which tickets are $3-$10. Call 939-5212 for more.
Saturday 13
What’s Bite Me!!!!!, the one-woman performance piece by actress Denise LaGrassa, about? According to the folks at Cafe Voltaire, where she performs it today at 4:30, it encompasses “reactions to power, lust, nonsense, incense, greed, and love,” has “gritty rhyme-ee beats and music to move through,” and “is based on a passion for peace.” LaGrassa repeats the show at 4:30 next Sunday, November 21, downstairs at the restaurant, 3231 N. Clark. She also performs it this Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 at Sheffield’s, 3258 N. Sheffield. It’s $7; call 477-6634.
Wednesday 17
Robert Blau became the Tribune’s crime reporter five years ago, vowing to distance himself from the old-boy network of cops and reporters. The Cop Shop (the title refers to police HQ at 11th and State) is the sometimes amused, sometimes sober story of that struggle and of the occasional horrors of the job, from a baby scalded to death in a bathtub to the mighty El Rukns. Blau will read from his book tonight at 6 in the south room of DePaul University’s Cortelyou Commons, 2324 N. Fremont. It’s free; call 362-5114.
