Friday 15
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The U. of C.’s Court Theatre is marking the opening of Frida: The Last Portrait with a fund-raiser tonight called Fiesta Mexicana, a Mexican-themed dinner and dance at the Hotel Nikko, 320 N. Dearborn. There’ll be strolling musicians, balladeers, dancers, and a pinata filled with prizes (including five trips to Mexico). Fox 32’s Lilia Chacon serves as mistress of ceremonies. Tickets range from $175 to $250. Things get under way at 6:30. Call 702-7005. The play, meanwhile, opens Thursday, April 21, at 7:30 at the theater, 5535 S. Ellis; tickets are $20-$26. Call 753-4472 for details.
Saturday 16
A nationally known advocate for battered women and an actress who portrayed a battered woman in an acclaimed TV movie are the special guests at a brunch to raise money for Friends of Battered Women and Their Children, a local social service group. The advocate is Chicago’s own Susan Murphy Milano, whose father’s abuse of his family culminated in her mother’s murder and his suicide. The actress is Joanna Kerns, star of TV’s Growing Pains as well as the film Shameful Secrets. The $30 ticket includes brunch, talks by Kerns and Milano, a screening of Shameful Secrets, and a postmovie discussion. It runs from 10:30 AM to about 3 PM in the Louis Room of Northwestern University’s Norris Center, 1999 South Campus Drive in Evanston. Call 274-5232 for more.
Mary Ann Doane’s three-part address on film theory, feminism, and semiotics continues today with “Dead Time, or the Concept of the Event” and concludes Thursday with “Temporality, Storage, Legibility: Freud, Marat, and the Cinema.” Doane’s a professor of modern culture and media at Brown University and the author of The Desire to Desire: The Women’s Film of the 1940’s and Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. Both talks start at 4 PM at the Max Palevsky Cinema in the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St. The talks are free. Call 702-6421.
Suspenders made from metal washers and a wood collar with matching earrings were just two of the submissions to Columbia College’s fashion-related art showcase Fashion Columbia. A group of fashion-design students at the school picked the best of the more than 200 items contributed, which include clothing, painting, sculpture, computer graphics, and photography. They’re on display in the school’s Hokin Gallery, 623 S. Wabash, from 10 to 5 tomorrow and Saturday; admission’s free. Tonight’s opening reception and awards ceremony features au courant designer Tommy Hilfiger as guest presenter and starts at 5:30 in the gallery; the $25 ticket goes to the college’s fashion scholarship fund. Call 663-1600, ext. 651, for details.
