NOVEMBER
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Eight actors play nearly 100 roles in Moises Kaufman’s new play, The Laramie Project, which tells the story of the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard through the eyes of his friends and family as well as citizens of the Wyoming town where he lived. The character studies are taken from two years’ worth of interviews conducted by Kaufman and members of his NYC-based Tectonic Theatre Project, who’ve used their subjects’ real names and own words. Previews of the Next Theatre’s production begin tonight at 8; the show opens November 12 and runs Fridays through Sundays through December 16 at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes in Evanston. Preview tickets are $18, $14 for students. Regular tickets range from $22 to $28; call 847-475-1875.
10 SATURDAY “Why do they hate us?” Today an international group of journalists will try to provide some answers to that nagging question at a Chicago Humanities Festival roundtable called Ourselves as Others See Us. Included are correspondents from Egypt’s Al Wafd, the Lithuania Daily, Spain’s La Vanguardia, Russia’s RTR TV, and Canada’s Globe and Mail. Chicago Tribune international affairs writer Richard Longworth moderates. It’s at 1 at the Northwestern University School of Law’s Thorne Auditorium, 375 E. Chicago. Tickets are $5 in advance, $6 at the door. Call 312-494-9509. See Section Two for a complete Humanities Festival schedule.
Gwar front woman Slymenstra Hymen holds the Guinness world record for fire breathing. She also eats glass, shoots 25-foot lightning bolts from her fingers, and illuminates neon bulbs in her mouth using electrical current passing through her body. She’ll perform at tonight’s appearance of the touring Girly Freak Show, along with show cofounder Ula the Pain-Proof Rubber Girl, “sword swallower and female oddity” Miss Behave (also a Guinness record holder), and “Mistress of Fire” Cammanda Galactica. Tub Ring opens. It starts at 8 at the Note, 1565 N. Milwaukee (773-489-0011). Admission is $8 and you must be 21 or over.
