This risque musical parody of the beloved animated children’s TV special takes the show’s moral–that misfits are valuable–and turns it into the lesson that being normal isn’t normal. Rudolph (Brannen Daugherty) is a cross-dresser, his girlfriend (Melissa Pond) is a perky riot grrrl, and Herbie (Adam Keune), who wants to be a dentist, is just not out enough for his fey fellow elves. David Cerda’s script pokes pointed fun at the way gays and straights alike try to make people fit into niches and occasionally makes a swipe at political commentary: one of the misfit toys is an actor wearing an empty box labeled “WMD play set....

I am a single parent with a wonderful 15-year-old son. My son’s father, my ex, is a gay man. We’ve accepted this and we love him dearly, but there are issues affecting my son that my ex is ignoring. My ex has also been diagnosed with HIV. This was heartbreaking news for all of us. Now my ex has announced that he is undergoing hormonal treatments to become a woman. He kept his therapy and the entire process a secret until two weeks ago....

If the text in this ensemble-created work sounds familiar at times, it’s because the piece is a montage–assembled via a process Free Street calls a mash-up–of lyrics sampled from songwriters as diverse as 50 Cent, Toby Keith, Elliott Smith, and Cole Porter. Given the way pop songs have permeated our national consciousness, rhyme and meter easily yield to conversational rhythms in this story about five citizens (and a silent chorus of “weird sisters”) stranded in an urban bus station while a riot rages outside....

The rise of MTV was one of the key factors leading to the 1985 demise of Soundstage, the live music show produced here by PBS affiliate WTTW, says Randy King, executive vice president for television at the station. Now the dearth of music on MTV is a big reason that King has revived the show, which makes its local premiere on Thursday, July 3, at 9 PM. “In looking at the state of performance on television now, especially in the rock and pop area–other than the occasional network special, there wasn’t much out there,” says King....

The intangible known as chemistry is one of the things that make baseball such a mystery. Chemistry is obvious in basketball–where it can take the form of an extra pass for an open shot or a helping hand on defense. But because baseball is such an individual sport–it all comes down to the battle between pitcher and hitter–team chemistry would seem to be inconsequential. Yet it no doubt exists, and not just as a pitcher and catcher working well together or a second baseman and shortstop forming a fluid double-play combination....

In mid-October, two days after Stephen Ambrose’s death, a group of American Theatre Company artists sit at a table bringing his favorite war back to life. Actor John Sterchi reads aloud, imitating the cruelly teasing Teutonic voice of Axis Sally, the Third Reich counterpart to Tokyo Rose. “‘So you fliers in Jeemy Stewart’s Liberator group got in trouble over Kassel today. You didn’t liberate anyone. How many Liberators did vee shoot down–30?...

War Comes to Rockford The graduation was a major national story, but you’d never have known it from reading the Sun-Times and Tribune, which kissed off the event in briefs published days later, or from Hedges’s own New York Times, which ignored it until last Sunday, when its national survey of commencement speeches mentioned in passing that “perhaps the least-civilized expression of ideas in the [Iraqi war] debate came at Rockford College in northern Illinois....

The 21st annual Women in the Director’s Chair International Film & Video Festival, featuring narrative, documentary, animated, and experimental works by women, runs Friday, March 15, through Sunday, March 24. Screenings are at Preston Bradley Center and WIDC Theater, both at 941 W. Lawrence; Chicago Eagle, 5015 N. Clark; Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State; and Video Machete, 1180 N. Milwaukee. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $8, $6 for students, seniors with a valid ID, and members of Women in the Director’s Chair....

Friday 2/2 – Thursday 2/8 3 SATURDAY Today Ernest Dawkins and his Englewood Jazz Band will play at a free forum on Englewood’s cultural history as part of a three-year initiative to raise community awareness of neighborhood artists. Historian and author Timuel Black will start the program by discussing the neighborhood’s most famous residents, including Nat King Cole, Henry Threadgill, Eddie Johnson, Joe Williams, and Roscoe Mitchell. Audience participation is encouraged....

The Adding Machine One of those successes, first produced in 1989, was a sensitive, intelligent, visually daring version of Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine. This expressionistic send-up of white-collar life circa 1923 turned out to be ideally suited to a puppet interpretation, and not just because the play’s protagonists–an awful pair of lower-middle-class urban dwellers, Mr. and Mrs. Zero–are essentially puppets of a system that means them no good. Puppetry also heightens the best qualities of Rice’s script: the cartoonish characters, hard-boiled dialogue, and short, comic-strip-like scenes....

CHRIS JONAS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Soprano saxophonist Chris Jonas has played in Cecil Taylor’s large New York ensemble and William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, and over the past four years he’s graduated from studying for his master’s under Anthony Braxton to working in Braxton’s groups and coconducting his recent collaboration with the Slovenian National Radio Orchestra. Like his mentors, Jonas cultivates a fluid relationship in his music between spontaneous gestures and planned ones; elaborately scored structures and dense improvisations can coexist within an album-length composition, sometimes as contrasting elements and sometimes as simultaneous events....

Alert–product being used improperly in bedroom at 123 Maple St. The publicity materials for the Food Marketing Institute show at McCormick Place in May promise a session on the “Evolution of the Bar Code”: “Imagine the potential of a bar code that is able to continuously transmit information about itself via the Internet throughout its ‘life.’ Distribution centers will automatically receive shipment instructions, stores will receive instantaneous replenishment instructions, and microwaves will receive cooking instructions–all without human interaction…....

Niche marketing comes to the library. In her September 27 on-line newsletter “NeatNew and ExLibris” (marylaine.com), Marylaine Block lauds suburban Morton Grove’s “Webrary.” Among other things, it tries to make reading user-friendly by posting book lists that “really zero in on reader preferences,” such as “Asian Magical Realism for high school kids, Genealogy Mysteries, Little Old Lady Sleuths, Cat Mysteries…Bridget Jones Readalikes, Neal Stephenson Readalikes, Terry McMillan Readalikes…Sports (a very extensive and detailed list, sorted by individual sport)....

Mysterious Object at Noon With Somsri Pinyopol, Duangjai Hiransri, To Hanudomlapr, Kannikar Narong, Kongkiert Komsiri, and Mee Madmoon. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I don’t want to suggest that I know much about Thai cinema. But the two most memorable Thai filmmakers I’ve encountered–the radically different Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul–confound the stereotypes so thoroughly they make it clear that we Americans don’t know what Thai cinema is....

In this uproarious and often scathing debut feature (1999), writer-director Frank Novak charts the dissolution of a working-class marriage, as a war of nerves between husband and wife escalates to absurd extremes. The wife (Petra Westen) is having a lesbian affair with a solicitous, upwardly mobile accountant, and the unemployed husband (Bob Miller), prodded by his beer-swigging buddies, erects a Berlin Wall in the middle of their house. Embracing the voyeurism of reality TV, Novak exposes the foibles and odd obsessions of his characters (the husband collects action figures), yet his empathetic portrayal of blue-collar Los Angeles, neatly summarized by Elizabeth Burhop’s trashy set design, builds to an unexpectedly sweet conclusion....

Listings of holiday craft fairs, trunk shows, open studios, and special gallery events will run through December. Send information to artlistings@chicagoreader.com. Check back for schedule updates or call for more information. Admission is free unless otherwise noted. Ceramics, calligraphy, clothing, jewelry, and more. Through 12/24. Tue-Fri noon-6 PM, Sat-Sun 11 AM-7 PM, 5225 S. Harper, 773-288-7450. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Functional and decorative ceramics, plus art metal and metal jewelry by Mary Laskey....

The Widow of Saint-Pierre With Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Emir Kusturica, Philippe Magnan, and Michel Duchaussoy. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In any case, no one ought to assume that the only nonintellectual movies out there are the ones without subtitles. The recent smash success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon might open the door to some of the better entertainments from around the world, which deserve to be shown at the mall alongside Someone Like You....

Even in 1996, Nada Surf’s faux-Weezer smash “Popular” seemed too kitschy to be true, as though written just to spark ironic nostalgia on some future Rhino comp–Who Sucked Out the Feeling? Forgotten Hits of the 90s. The Proximity Effect, which went straight to the cutout bins, seemed a likely swan song, but four years and a curt “see ya” from Elektra later, they’ve reemerged with the quietly remarkable Let Go (Barsuk), which seems designed specifically to not bowl you over....

Poetry slams have come a long way since 1985, when members of the Chicago Poetry Ensemble started reading their work at the old Get Me High Lounge in Bucktown. Today there are poetry slams in every city large enough to support a coffeehouse or two. The National Poetry Slam began 14 years ago, when Chicago poetry-slam pioneer Marc Smith and some local colleagues went to San Francisco to face off against their Bay Area counterparts....

This happened back when I was in my younger, it’s-all-about-getting-sex days. My friends and I came here for drinks one night. I went up to the bar to get cocktails, and this pretty blue-eyed blond put her hand on my arm and told me she wanted to take me home. Without hesitating I went, “Give me one minute.” I took the drinks back to the table, then came back to her and said, “Come on, let’s go....