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By manipulating the form, Trees’s sculptures look at abstraction and draw from the form of the human body. The bulbous, frothing pieces appear veiny and alive. The lumps hang on the walls of the gallery, bursting with life as the sculptures contract, bubble, and grow like organisms under a microscope. These orifices are detailed, yet I’m unsure of what they remind me of. I describe them as human forms, something removed from a body, but are they?...

By turns homage and send-up, faithful adaptation and freewheeling deconstruction, Life Sucks, Aaron Posner’s witty, iconoclastic update of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, is much smarter and more entertaining than its blunt title might lead you to believe. Posner—whose Stupid Fucking Bird was similarly modeled on The Seagull—takes the story and characters from Chekhov’s classic play about love, loss, and ennui among the economically besieged late 19th-century Russian upper crust and infuses it with contemporary American sensibilities and obsessions....

Portillo’s Runner-Up: Runner-Up:

ARTIST: Rick Leech SHOWS: High on Fire at Empty Bottle on Fri 12/30 and Sat 12/31 MORE INFO: rickleechdesign.bigcartel.com

We’re heading into our third week of intensive election coverage here at Reader HQ, and it’s starting to get weird. Unexpected missives from public offices, strange requests from elected officials. A refreshing enthusiasm for speaking to our reporters, on the record and in depth. It’s a big difference from our usual goings-on, which largely focus on the cuteness of certain dogs and whether or not we should hyphenate “face sitting.” Should all return to normal by May....

Kuma’s Corner Runner-Up: Au Cheval

Dr. Daniel Berger 2835 N. Sheffield #500 773-296-2400 nstarmedical.com Runner-Up: Dr. Terryll Joy

By Erin and Mel, advertising execs, drinking buddies Mel: And then we pretty much blacked out. Erin: So of course everyone rushes into the bathroom and investigates. It was huuuge. Mel: I tried to do a handstand on the dance floor. Erin: I said, “Ladies, normally I would keep this to myself, but last night I woke up and I saw a blond ghost in this room. Maybe the blond ghost did it?...

Beth King, 44, is deputy director and director of development and communications at Intonation Music, a Bronzeville-based organization that helps Chicago youth make music on their own terms. She believes that music is community, and that community is where meaningful change starts. My father, who is legitimately kind of a con man—when I moved in with him at 13, he was a professional gambler—was so excited. He was like, “Every job in the world is sales....

Jessica Swale’s 1896-set drama should come with a trigger warning. I mean, perhaps I’m projecting, but when an esteemed scholar (“he dines with Darwin, for crissakes!”) starts lecturing on why women are physiologically unfit for education (the brain leaches blood from the reproductive organs) and pronounces educated women a threat to the very foundation of all humanity, I high-key wanted to vault over the front row and punch him in his fucking foundation, even though he was in 19th-century Cambridge University, bedrock of Western education and hardly an outlier in the sciences....

Nikolas Cruz, the suspect charged in yesterday’s mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead, was reportedly armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, a category of weapon that should be—and once was—banned in the United States. In 2016, after a similar rifle was used in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, we took a quick look at what had happened to the ban. All of the NRA-endorsed congressional representatives named in the resulting post are still in office: In April 2013, California senator Diane Feinstein introduced a proposal that would have brought back a national assault weapon ban....

Lower Dens emerged out of Baltimore’s fertile underground music scene in 2010, and they’ve since built a catalog of immersive, slow-boiling indie rock elevated by Jana Hunter’s inviting, resonant vocals. During the first half of the 2010s, they dropped three albums, which makes the four-year gap between 2015’s Escape From Evil and last year’s The Competition (Ribbon Music) feel like an eternity. Just before releasing Escape From Evil, Hunter wrote a Tumblr post identifying as genderfluid and discussing their history of struggling to fit into the gender binary; in the ensuing years, they underwent testosterone therapy, and Hunter now uses they/them and him/his pronouns....

Pick Me Up Cafe Pizzeria Uno Finalists: Mia Francesca’s, Play Chicago Kitchen & Cocktail, SX Sky Bar

Blum Animal Hospital 3219 N. Clark 773-327-4446 blumvet.com Runner-Up: Metropolitan Veterinary Center

Black History Month is coming to a close this weekend but there’s no reason to stop learning about and celebrating African American achievements. While Washington Park’s DuSable Museum of African American History is closed to visitors at the moment (they’re observing safety measures in regard to COVID-19 transmission) their website has free videos featuring Black thought leaders and historians in conversation, as well as lesson plans and other resources for teachers....

We did it! We made it out of the dregs of winter and even got a sun beam or two this week, so there’s no excuse for laying low. Get out of the house and make something of yourself with our recommended list of things to do. Fri 2/7: Movie Club at the Logan Theatre presents the 1st Annual Naw-Scars or the “1st Annual Anti-Oscars Academy Awards Anti-Event For Anti-People Burn it All to the Ground Awards Thing,” a performative response to this year’s Oscar nominations....

It’s 8 AM on a Friday in Boystown and 26-year-old Danielle Larsen unlocks the door of the CBD Kratom shop. She has long black hair and wears black Converse sneakers, high-waisted jeans, and a green short-sleeved polo with the shop’s logo stitched on the front. The corner storefront is drenched with sunlight, filled with the not-too-loud pulsation of a Muse song, and ready to receive its first customer. The shop is airy, with a wood-laminate floor and high ceiling....

This week’s gig poster is for another real gig, albeit a virtual one. Artist Yewon Kwon created this poster for an upcoming album-release livestream by Brooklyn-based duo Anteloper, aka Jason Nazary and former Chicagoan Jaimie Branch. To participate, please e-mail scollojulin@chicagoreader.com with your name, contact information, and your original design or drawing (you can attach a JPG or PNG file or provide a download link). We won’t be able to publish everything we receive, but we’ll feature as many as possible while the crisis continues....

Emile Griffith is the sort of historical anomaly who should naturally inspire great dramas. Born poor on the Island of Saint Thomas in 1938, he was sexually abused by a male relative and abandoned by his mother when she became a sex worker—a development that so horrified him he pleaded for admittance to the local reformatory. At 15 he found his way to New York City and took a job in a hat factory, a natural fit as he’d been designing elaborate millinery for years....