Over the past few years, local New Year’s Eve celebrations have become less opulent and more creative, but there’s still something for everyone, from expensive multicourse dinners, downtown fireworks, and all manner of musical offerings to events tailored for children, teetotalers, spiritual seekers, and others who party to the beat of a different drummer. Some things that haven’t changed are the traditional transportation deals–it’s still just a penny to ride the CTA from 8 PM New Year’s Eve to 6 AM New Year’s Day, a free trolley runs from Navy Pier to the Grand Avenue Red Line stop from 10 PM until 2 AM, and certain Metra trains will run late (call 312-836-7000)....

From Stephanie Brooks, whose strange song lyrics have been borrowed from nonmusical sources, to Jan Estep, who makes outline drawings of Antarctica, the 12 artists in this show mostly take a playful approach to art making in the age of appropriation. For his whimsical Build Your Own Chicago, Matt Bergstrom made cards printed with the facades of famous buildings, which can be cut out and put together in three-dimensional form. He also painstakingly assembled each structure and put it in a case, making the familiar hobbyist’s point–that we can all be builders–with a winningly optimistic post-9/11 elegance....

The Curious Theatre Branch’s ambitious yearly showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe began as part of the Bucktown Arts Fest. Over the years it’s mushroomed from a neighborhood happening to an event of citywide significance–especially now that it’s been taken under the wing of the Department of Cultural Affairs as part of a laudable effort to bring an off-off-Loop sensibility to Chicago’s downtown theater district. The Casual Family...

I’m a successful guy with a beautiful wife, who is a successful executive herself. About two years ago I had a seriously stupid affair with an attractive woman at my firm. It lasted six weeks, and then my wife busted us. She did the usual and threw my sorry ass out of the house; I deserved it, I admit. We separated for six months, and after major begging, promises never to do it again, and some intense sessions with a marriage counselor, my wife took me back....

This coproduction by Chicago’s Court Theatre and Seattle’s Intiman Theatre offers an appealing mix of gracefulness and vulgarity. Adapted from Moliere’s 1671 comedy Les fourberies de Scapin by playwrights Shelley Berc and Andrei Belgrader and composer Rusty Magee, Scapin draws on the traditions of 17th-century commedia dell’arte, employing slapstick, song-and-dance episodes, and inventive improvisation. The plot is unabashedly silly: Scapin, a wily servant, conspires to help two pairs of young lovers marry despite the disapproval of stingy, sourpuss fathers....

The Defender Saga: A New Hero Emerges Last May, when Marshall was the only bidder, I wrote that if everything proceeded smoothly he could take over the company during the summer. Marshall, who owns a string of media properties based in Texas and had been interested in the Defender from the get-go, described himself then as “the last person standing.” He might still be Lowry’s preference, but financially he’s now laid out in the back room....

Sloppiness is a trait that rubs Doug Jennings the wrong way, so he stopped me one morning near the corner of 80th and Ashland. Jennings headed into a dollar store to bum a cigarette, not having any of the cheap roll-your-own kind he prefers. Rebuffed by a clerk, he continued his quest. Briefly he took the keys off his shoulder, swung them in the air, then put them back where they’d been....

In the half-hour film 12 Minutes, a death-row inmate scheduled for execution at a quarter to midnight requests a face-to-face meeting with the son he’s never known. The 12-year-old sits across a table from him in a private room, filled with anger. Why now, after all these years? “You sent for me, and now you about to die.” Raymond A. Thomas, a 36-year-old art director for Ebony, is earning some serious recognition for 12 Minutes, his first film....

You Can’t Win Them All Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Obalil’s act followed a fantasy that blew in from the west coast. Theatre Bay Area has undertaken a “Social Marketing Research Initiative” intended to convince San Francisco residents that the performing arts are as vital as fire stations. “People always say if their house is burning, they’d rather see a fireman than an actor,” said TBA’s Belinda Taylor, but never mind....

The second installment of Bailiwick Repertory’s 2003 showcase of emerging directors focuses on new productions based on other sources. (The first segment of the festival, “Chicago Works,” ran in February; a gay- and Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » lesbian-themed series is planned for June.) “In Adaptation/Translation” runs through April 23 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont. Performances take place Mondays-Wednesdays at 7:30 PM; each evening features three or four short plays....

On his new album, Freeman (Burning Music), Burning Spear (aka Winston Rodney) upholds the banner of roots reggae, the bedrock Jamaican music that focuses on the harsh realities of ghetto life and the positive mental attitude needed to survive them. A contemporary of artists like Bob Marley, Junior Byles, and the Wailing Souls, he’s never been a follower of fashion; you won’t hear any guest MCs dropping rapid-fire dancehall toasts on his tracks, or digital dub production flourishes, or lyrics about sexual conquest and conspicuous consumption....

Living in an intensely visual age, we often downplay the importance of sound. But as any musician or deejay will tell you, sound can be as persuasive as visual stimuli–even more so sometimes because we don’t expect it to shake us to our roots. Each of the five pieces in this evening, curated by Mickle Maher, is meant to awaken us to some aspect of the power of sound. In Dead Level, for instance, performer Terri Kapsalis and musician John Corbett explore the ways music and sound effects shape film noir narratives....

People have been setting poetry to music since at least the days of the ancient Greeks, but in the salons of late-19th-century Paris, poetry readings and chamber music were more often scheduled side by side–and about seven years ago, flutist Eugenia Zukerman and actress Claire Bloom began reviving this practice. Other performers have mounted similar ventures, but few have carried it off with such panache and conviction. Both women are commanding presences, poised and graceful; when Bloom reads, you believe every word she says....

We’ve had stadium house, hip-house, deep house, and microhouse, but the most apt way to describe the London duo Freaks might well be “Dada house.” Luke Solomon and Justin Harris combine early Prince, oddball postdisco like Loose Joints’ “Is It All Over My Face?,” and cheap, early Chicago house “jack tracks.” The Man Who Lived Underground (Music for Freaks), Freaks’ second album, kicks into gear with the bizarre “Washing Machine,” whose title is a nod to Mr....

Ed Crabbe turns to the lounge chair blocking an aisle at Harvest, the resale shop he operates with his wife, Cathy, in Rogers Park. He carts the chair out to the sidewalk and positions it just so. Then he goes back into the store for more chairs, an end table, shelves, a lamp, and a coatrack. Soon he’s fashioned a fresh-air parlor on the pavement. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Ladytron has a pretty high ick factor: the members are jet-setting technophiles who generally wear either all white or all black, speak several languages, and have skin as perfect as their short black hair. But the music makes up for the image: they temper their Sprockets-y electropop with baroque goth organ and ambient noise, and their moodiness hovers like a single wisp of cloud on a sunny day. And the foreign tongues come in handy when they strike up a dull ditty–anything sounds hot when it’s sung in French by some throaty babe....

When Cris Mazza received a National Endowment for the Arts individual fellowship last year, some of her supporters steeled themselves for another vigorous round of right-wing protests. Mazza and the NEA have a history of making waves together. In 1997, after the publication of Chick-Lit 2: No Chick Vics, an anthology of experimental fiction by women coedited by Mazza, Congressman Peter Hoekstra of Michigan denounced the book–which includes depictions of lesbianism, oral sex, self-mutilation, heroin use, and fetishism–as indecent and “an offense to the senses....

The term “power trio” first referred to those lean, mean rock machines of the 60s and 70s, and even when it made its way to jazz (usually to describe a pianoless trio of sax, bass, and drums) it retained the implication of impolite strength, if not actual malice. The New Power Trio displays some measure of sinew, particularly in John Crooks’s bass solos, but otherwise the name’s a bit misleading. The NPT has a keyboardist, and it owes more to tasteful trendsetters of the 50s like the Modern Jazz Quartet and Erroll Garner’s trios than to any of jazz’s bad boys....

“I don’t really feel I’m from Park Forest,” says producer and director H. James Gilmore. “I feel I’m from the suburbs. And when people ask me where I’m from, I say, ‘Chicago, a little south of the city.’ Then I pause and add, ‘A suburb.’” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the summer of 1948, at the peak of the postwar housing shortage, the first tenants moved into new rental town houses developed by former Federal Public Housing Authority head Philip Klutznick, Chicago builder Nathan Manilow, and entrepreneur Carroll F....

Corn Productions’ annual fest of campy gore and naughty puns doesn’t quite have the spirit it’s had in past years. The stories are slightly more disturbing, but they don’t communicate the usual wit or emotional stakes. Even the series’ driving duo–Robert Bouwman (who also directs) as the glutton Tiff and Todd Schaner as the sex addict Mom–seemed tired of the material until the finale, when they regained the spark of showmanship....