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The 2003 edition of Bailiwick Repertory’s annual showcase of emerging directors has been spread out over three installments: “Chicago Works,” running January 27-February 11; “In Adaptation/Translation” in April; and a gay- and lesbian-themed series in June. The “Chicago Works” portion, listed here, features ten short plays organized into programs of three or four plays each; all the scripts are new works by local authors. Performances take place Mondays and Tuesdays at 7:30 PM at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W....

Friday 9/28 – Thursday 10/4 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 29 SATURDAY Each participant in today’s Earth Charter Community Summit will get a chance to sign the charter, a “declaration of interdependence calling for a sustainable global society.” The document–inspired by the 1992 Rio Earth Summit–includes input from people in 56 countries and will be presented to the UN next June. It calls, in part, for the peoples of the world to “join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace....

“Project Sunshine…began in 1955 at the University of Chicago,” writes David Proctor in a recent issue of the Boise Weekly. “Willard Libby, later a Nobel Prize laureate for his research into carbon dating, instructed colleagues to skirt the law in their search for bodies…. Documents declassified by the U.S. Department of Energy show that scientists from the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority worked with their American counterparts to take the bodies of 6,000 [deceased and stillborn] infants from hospitals in Australia, Great Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, South America and the U....

Some problems fall into an unlucky category: bad enough to make your life difficult, but not bad enough to get you on television. Earlier this summer open auditions for the NBC reality show Starting Over were held at the Hyatt Regency on Wacker. A few problems that didn’t make the cut: “I have a fear of being successful.” The scene took 17 minutes–an eternity on TV. By the end Rain had dragged Josie by the arm into the bathroom....

Fern Bogot was photographed by Leah Missbach in April 2000 as part of the CITY 2000 photodocumentary project. I interviewed her the following September in her home, which was liberally decorated with food-related tchotchkes. Project Kesher is another organization I volunteer for. We work with Jewish women in the former Soviet Union. Women from the Western world who have expertise in some area will go over and run a seminar about leadership training, grassroots organizing, health care, personal safety, other topics that are of import to women over there....

For about four years Jennifer Liu ran a highly regarded youth drama program at Holstein Park. Then one day last month she quit–the latest victim of budget cutbacks the Park District says don’t exist. As part of her job, she ran Holstein’s after-school youth drama program and was part of its summer camp. She also directed community productions featuring adults and children. “I loved those productions,” she says. “I did everything....

On their newly released CD, Macedonian Blues: Laments and Dances (Proteus), Chicago guitarists Goran Ivanovic and Fareed Haque concentrate on the music of a war-torn nation–Macedonia being one of the Balkan countries formerly part of Yugoslavia, Ivanovic’s birthplace. These days, when Americans have a heightened sensitivity to world crises, this set of melancholy folk songs, recorded the month before the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., packs a timely emotional punch–but Ivanovic and Haque have forged a partnership that’d be impressive with or without an extra nudge from international politics....

Ever since the word “auteur” became part of the standard English vocabulary in the late 60s and early 70s there’s been some confusion about its meaning. In French auteur simply means “author,” and when Francois Truffaut started formulating a “politique des auteurs,” or policy of authors, in Cahiers du Cinema in the mid-50s, he had in mind a critical policy that recognized the stylistic and thematic unity certain directors gave their films....

Where Have You Gone, Jimmy Stewart? If it were up to me, I’d trim down Art Shay’s Where Have You Gone, Jimmy Stewart? and Alan Berks’s Goats and present them as a double bill. These pieces need to be seen together, if at all, because neither is terribly compelling by itself. By far the most interesting thing about them is their uncanny and entirely unintended symmetry. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

MOLLIE O’BRIEN, KAT EGGLESTON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Vocalist Mollie O’Brien, a native of Wheeling, West Virginia, first found a national audience in the late 80s and early 90s in a bluegrass duo with her brother Tim. But she still has the taste for the pop, R & B, and jazz she picked up in New York in the 70s, before she moved to her current home in Colorado–and this broad range of interests comes out in her solo work....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In June, Reuters profiled Jerri Lyons, 55, of Sebastopol, California, who conducts seminars on the legalities and etiquette of do-it-yourself funerals, which she promotes as an alternative to expensive funeral-home services. According to Lyons, personally bathing and dressing a deceased loved one makes the loss easier to accept. Tip: The deceased should be put on ice after about 24 hours (in a pinch, packages of frozen vegetables can be substituted for ice)....

The music Indian percussionist Ravish Momin makes with violinist Jason Kao Hwang and bassist and oud player Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz is even more diverse than you’d expect. Their forthcoming debut, Climbing the Banyan Tree (Clean Feed), is a profound and organic fusion of Indian, Middle Eastern, and Western musics–the goal isn’t to see how many different things they can cram into one package. Momin’s an adept tabla player but here sticks mostly to a standard jazz kit, though he doesn’t swing in any conventional sense; his thoughtful compositions frequently employ the extended rhythmic cycles of Indian classical music and root the music’s melodies and harmonies in Middle Eastern modes....

The Curious Theatre Branch’s 15th annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe runs through 11/20 at the Curious Theatre Branch, 7001 N. Glenwood. Admission is $12 or “pay what you can”; for information and reservations, call 773-274-6660. It’s not easy to negotiate the subject of motherhood–to chart a course between the Scylla of sentimentality and the Charybdis of gleeful attack. Veteran solo artist Jenny Magnus makes the attempt in Cant, a 45-minute monologue (with songs)....

I am a gay, healthy, native dude from the midwest attending a sleepy university. I’ve got a great group of friends and a pretty well-rounded social life. With school and all the organizations I belong to, you would think that I was swimming in a sea of eligible gay men to escort to the local hoedown. Unfortunately, I am not attracted to many gay men, nor the gay scene itself. I know it is self-defeating, but I can’t end this cycle....

Too Good for His Own Good Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “He’s an exploration-type director, and that can be good,” says Smith-Faust. “Phillip will take something that you’ve never heard of before, and he’ll make something happen with it. [But] The Cave Dwellers didn’t really have any relevance to who we are as a people. I think he had a lot of other shows that basically were very risky....

Walid Beitouni’s convenience store, 7 Days Liquor, sits in a strip mall that also contains a small travel agency, a bridal shop, a dry cleaners, and a Polish-Lithuanian restaurant. The nondescript neighborhood around 87th and Oak Park in south suburban Burbank is dominated by shopping centers with huge parking lots, houses with flags in the windows, and a few two-story apartment buildings. You can see jets heading into Midway just a few miles north....

Darien Sills-Evans directed and stars in this touching and thoughtful drama about two African-American men, each of whom finds love in the Netherlands. A restless, fast-talking expatriate (Sills-Evans), living with his Dutch wife in the Hague, becomes so frustrated over his stalled acting career that he invites his calm, sensitive ex-roommate from New York (Bobby Lyle) to come over and collaborate with him on a play. Sills-Evans has an insider’s feel for the world of fringe theater, where the camaraderie is as transitory as the marquee, and he vividly juxtaposes its promise of sexual and creative fulfillment with the comfort and responsibility of marriage....

Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso has made only one new studio album since 1997’s superb Livro, the powerful Noites do norte (Nonesuch). But he’s released three live albums in the past five years, including the new double concert album Noites do norte ao vivo (also on Nonesuch). Here, Veloso reprises much of his last studio disc and, using songs by fellow countrymen Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Marcos Valle, examines the role of slavery and African traditions in Brazilian culture....

Obviously New York singer Chris Lee was feeling a bit more ambitious when he named his second album, Chris Lee Plays & Sings Torch’d Songs, Charivari Hymns & Oriki Blue-Marches (Smells Like), than when he released his debut last year, simply titled Chris Lee. The first one was a stunner that seemed to come out of nowhere: supported by a deeply in-the-pocket trio, Lee delivered dynamic soul-pop tunes in a voice as agile and powerful as Jeff Buckley’s but with a far less baroque delivery....

Why I am a Catholic. “As a young Catholic woman, I’ve kind of gotten used to the Catholic Church not reflecting me,” writes Heidi Schlumpf (U.S. Catholic, July). “Its language doesn’t include me, its homilies hardly ever pertain to my life, and many of its jobs are not open to me. My disconnection seems to increase as I look higher up the hierarchical ladder. To them, my opinions don’t matter, my concerns are not priorities, and my requests for change are a nuisance....