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The Comedy Exposition When Just for Laughs stopped staging its huge annual festival in Chicago last year, it seemed there would be nothing in its place to bring big national acts to the city. Lucky for us, a group of local comics came together to create something even better: the Comedy Exposition, a showcase with the friendly feel of a music fest. Last year’s inaugural event featured headliners Kathleen Madigan, Brooks Wheelan, and Andy Kindler along with an impressive roster of local stand-ups who held their own against the heavy hitters....

Jamila Woods Dawn Xiana Moon Finalists: Brendan Kelly, Tasha

Laugh Factory 3175 N. Broadway 773-327-3175 laughfactory.com Runner-Up: Up Comedy Club

But entering this next phase of young adulthood means first coming to terms with the fact that your last phase is ending. Jeremiah, who will graduate from high school in 2021, talks about having to “find new normals” after high school, detailing how senior traditions represent an end to the normalcy they’ve always known. Traditions such as graduations, luncheons, prom, and trunk parties are chances to celebrate accomplishments and prepare for a new journey....

Creative Control, opening this week at Music Box, tells the story of a New York advertising executive whose life begins to unravel after he agrees to test-drive a pair of “augmented reality” glasses his company is promoting. Also this week, we’ve got new reviews of: The Automatic Hate, a mystery set in motion when a man meets his long-lost (and gorgeous) cousin; The Bronze, a comedy starring Melissa Rauch (The Big Bang Theory) as a bitter ex-Olympian; The Cool World, Shirley Clarke’s gritty 1964 drama about young thugs in Harlem; The Divergent Series: Allegiant, the third and (hooray) last installment in the young-adult SF franchise; Eye in the Sky, a timely chamber drama about U....

On a recent Sunday afternoon, a crowd only slightly smaller than the one a few miles west at the Pitchfork Music Festival formed around the Bean in Millennium Park for a Pokémon Go meet-up that made the days of Pac-Man fever resemble a mild cough. More than 9,000 people RSVP’d to the event’s Facebook invite, but on-the-ground estimates ranged from 3,000 to 5,000 fans, from teens to the middle-aged, some clad in bright yellow Pikachu hats and furry Pokémon-themed costumes....

In one of the strongest, visceral productions of Shakespeare running in this city now, the Babes With Blades production of Othello feels devastatingly contemporary. Under the swift direction of Mignon McPherson Stewart, nothing is as it seems in this defiant take on a 17th century text. In classic Babes With Blades style, all members of the cast are women or nonbinary. Thus, Othello is played by the stellar Brianna Buckley, who gives an astounding performance, running the gamut from fierce flirt to terrifying embodiment of toxic masculinity....

I considered myself quite lucky when in 1996 I caught two legendary flash and funk showmen, James Brown and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, at the Petrillo Music Shell. Recently George Clinton, who possesses the best aspects of both of these wild bandleading performers and who’s slated to play the same venue as part of Taste of Chicago, admitted he isn’t quite in top form these days. In a statement to Billboard he wrote, “Anyone who has been to the shows over the past couple of years has noticed that I’ve been out front less and less....

Logan Square Runner-Up: Lincoln Square

On paper, Bill Walker and Dapper Bruce Lafitte, the subjects of separate, free, and ongoing art exhibits, don’t have much in common. Walker, who died in 2011, was based in Chicago and known primarily for his murals, in particular the Wall of Respect, which Reader contributor Jeff Huebner called “one of the most significant, if unsung, artistic events of the turbulent 60s.” Lafitte, 46, lives in New Orleans, where he makes elaborate drawings with markers and ink....

The meeting of minds between Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett might have been one of the greatest in performing-arts history if their minds had actually met. In July 1964, the silent-comedy legend arrived in New York City to spend three weeks shooting an avant-garde short from a script by the lionized Irish playwright. Beckett was strongly influenced by the great clowns—Vladimir and Estragon, the eternally patient protagonists of Waiting for Godot, are nothing but a pair of baggy-pants comedians—and while the play was first being staged in Paris, Beckett got to see Keaton perform at the Cirque Medrano....

Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media Jesus Garcia addresses supporters at the Alhambra Palace last night after learning he made it into a runoff with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “Today, a majority of the people of Chicago said with one loud voice, ‘We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired,’” Jesus “Chuy” Garcia told his jubilant supporters last night at the Alhambra Palace. • Who will African-Americans support? • Who will the 7....

On a Saturday in mid-March, nearly 800 people packed the cavernous near-west-side studio of painter Wesley Kimler for a party called Fantasty, billed as a celebration of Chicago’s DIY art and music scenes—and of the creative studio, VAM, that organized the event. Fantasty was a one-year anniversary party for VAM. It began as an online magazine and now promotes the underground scene more directly, mostly by shooting artist profiles and other video series and curating video content from local artists—though the studio also helps its partners realize their own work when it can....

Chicago activists urged undocumented immigrants not to open their doors following a weekend of raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Francisco, an Albany Park resident who identified himself by his first name only, described how his house was previously raided. “My home was entered by three U.S. marshals and one immigration agent,” he said. After running Francisco’s fingerprints, the agents saw he had prior deportation orders and detained him immediately....

Oscar Wilde wrote “most people are other people . . . their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Such it is for Alfie Byrne, the self-effacing lead in Terrence McNally’s A Man of No Importance (based on the 1994 film starring Albert Finney), who lives locked away with his books, quoting Wilde and producing amateur theater at his small Dublin church. Alfie literally and figuratively lives in a closet, his plays providing a sense of control, until he is forced to grow up and face the reality he has avoided so long....

Deanna Isaacs Tanya Saracho, Alex Kotlowitz, and Laura Schwartz The keynote discussion for Lake FX, the city’s free four-day summit and expo for “artists, creative professionals and entrepreneurs,” drew an audience that looked sparse in the Harris Theater’s 1,500-seat auditorium Thursday afternoon. The apparent answer: a branding effort for the collegial, supportive environment Chicago provides for artists of all stripes.

Again, as it has been for 41 summers, it’s “once more into the breach” for the Chicago Theatre Softball League and its unique Chicago brand of this goodly sport of the weighted orb. Who will emerge crowned with the leafed wreath of starry triumph? The Starving Comedians, wunderkinds of wit; the steeled spirits of Writers Theatre; the risk-taking Strawdogs company; the cloak-and-dagger suspects of Murder Mystery; the Factory’s stalwarts; the sturdy Blue Man Group; or the ever-inventive iO (once known as “ImprovOlympics)?...

Chicago has become a better home for Canada Geese than their natural habitat ever was. The world’s largest goose is twice as likely to survive in the city compared to the wild, according to a 2017 study. This is especially true during winter, hunting season in Illinois. As urban areas expand, animals such as Chicago’s tens of thousands of Canada Geese will continue to move to cities or die trying. v

Well, we had a busy summer, didn’t we? No sooner had everybody caught their breath after the Profiles Theatre harassment scandal, with its satisfyingly dramatic climax (storefront windows plastered over with copies of the Reader cover story, Profiles abruptly shuttered), than we were confronted with another controversy: Porchlight Music Theatre announced that the lead role of Usnavi in its new staging of In the Heights would be played by Jack DeCesare....