COMEDY/ TRAGEDY VOL 32, NO. 26 MARCH 15, 2017 AIDS care nurse’s life is www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com rendered in comic-book form BY GREtcHEN RACHEL HAMMOND For most people who have spent even a short stretch as a patient in a hospital ward, the nurse is the most important person in their lives. Doctors and residents often spend a few perfunctory emotionally distant minutes, usually in the early morning, and family and friends come and go until, in many hospitals, they are barred completely in the evening hours. The nurse isn’t just an avenue to medication, a wash or help in the middle of the night when the IV machine inevitably shocks one out of sleep with a shrieking alarm. They are a desperately needed reminder of one’s humanity in an isolated and antiseptic world, filled only with the omnipresent hissing and electronic language of its machinery barely drowned by the banal drone of daytime television. Turn to page 6 ON WITH THE SHOWS WCT unveils its spring theater/dance preview. Rendering of MK Czerwiec from Taking Photo of Julian Larach, Johnathan Nieves and Jaslene Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. Gonzalez in Sycamore by Dean La Prairie 15-23 Image courtesy of Czerwiec ANTI-VIOLENCE PROJECT KIKI WOMEN’S MARCH OPIOID EPIDEMIC Center on Halsted program relaunches. Movie about kiki scene Women protest Howard Brown Health’s Cori Blum Photo by Peter Johnson screened in Chicago. Trump agenda. helps fight opioid abuse. 8 Photo8 from IFC Films 26 Photo by Gretchen5 Rachel Hammond 5 Photo from HBH 19 12 @windycitytimes1 /windycitymediagroup @windycitytimes www.windycitymediagroup.com 2 March 15, 2017 WINDY CITY TIMES MARCH 22–26 Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra with Bernadette Peters MARCH 31 SAVE $10* WITH PROMO CODE: WCT AuditoriumTheatre.org 312.341.2300 Box O ce: 50 E Congress Pkwy 2016–17 SEASON SPONSORS Dance Sponsor “Made in Chicago” Student Matinee Sponsors American Music Series O cial Hotel Dance Series Sponsor Media Sponsor Partner *Not valid on previously purchased tickets or price level 5. No refunds or exchanges. | Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater by Andrew Eccles. Boston Pops photo by Winslow Townson. WINDY CITY TIMES March 15, 2017 3 NEWS Federal LGBT-housing bill; column 4 Women’s march in Chicago 5 Nurse’s life becomes comic book 6 Center on Halsted’s Anti-Violence Program 8 Event calls for state, federal action 9 Lesbian judge Horan; suburban trans rally 10 30 Under 30 noms urged; AIDS United 11 Chicago’s opioid epidemic 12 In the Life 13 VIEWPOINTS: Monroe; letters 14 HUMAN INDEX ENTERTAINMENT/EVENTS FIRST GALA Spring theater preview: New shows 15 // Theater reviews 19 Spring dance preview 20 DOWNLOAD Spring theater preview: Classics, revivals 22 THIS ISSUE Spring concert preview 23 ‘Unseen’ playwright Mona Mansour 24 AND BROWSE THE ARCHIVES AT ‘Kiki’ showing; Karen Finley show 26 www.WindyCityTimes.com Isaiah Esquire in burlesque movie 27 NIGHTSPOTS 28 Classifieds 30 COMEDY/ Calendar Q 30 TRAGEDY VOL 32, NO. 26 MARCH 15, 2017 AIDS care nurse’s life is www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com rendered in comic-book form BY GRETCHEN RACHEL HAMMOND For most people who have spent even a short stretch as a patient in a hospital ward, the nurse is the most important person in their lives. Doctors and residents often spend a few perfunctory emotionally distant minutes, usually in the early morning, and family and friends come and go until, in many hospitals, they are barred completely in the evening hours. The nurse isn’t just an avenue to medication, a wash or help in the middle of the night when the IV machine inevitably shocks one out of sleep with a shrieking alarm. They are a desperately needed reminder of one’s humanity in an isolated and antiseptic world filled only with the omnipresent hissing and electronic language of its machinery barely drowned by the banal drone of daytime television. Turn to page 6 ON WITH THE SHOWS WCT unveils its spring theater/dance preview. Rendering of MK Czerwiec from Taking Photo of Julian Larach, Johnathan Nieves and Jaslene Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. Gonzalez in Sycamore by Dean La Prairie 15-23 Image courtesy of Czerwiec TEN ANTI-VIOLENCE PROJECT KIKI WOMEN’S MARCH OPIOID EPIDEMIC Center on Halsted program relaunches. Movie about kiki scene Women protest Howard Brown Health’s Cori Blum XUBERANT Photo by Peter Johnson screened in Chicago. Trump agenda. helps fight opioid abuse. 8 Photo8 from IFC Films 26 Photo by Gretchen5 Rachel Hammond 5 Photo from HBH 19 12 @windycitytimes1 /windycitymediagroup @windycitytimes www.windycitymediagroup.com YRS online exclusives at www.WindyCityTimes.com UNDER COVER Cordaro Dont’e Santiago (left) discusses his book, I Will Never Be #1 In His Life: The Story of Dating Downlow Men: Volume 1. Photo by Bronson Pettitt MARSHALL PLAN Human First 2017 Honoree Fred Eychaner Gala Co-Chairs Duane M. DesParte + John C. Schneider Celebrate Ten Years and our Anne Kaplan honoree with a very special Robert Kohl + Clark Pelle performance by Dionne Warwick , Laura Ricke s + Brooke Skinner Ricke s dance to Maggie Speaks and Michael + Cari Sacks more at The Geraghty Chicago APE MILE WCT reviews the movie blockbuster CENTERONHALSTED.ORG/XTRAVAGALA #RISEWITHUS Kong: Skull Island. THAT’S SHOW BIZ Find out the latest about Laverne Cox, Richard Simmons and Justin Hartley. YouTube star Caleb Marshall talks SPARCINC.COM DESIGN: about fitness, his boyfriend and plus Britney Spears. DAILY BREAKING NEWS PR photo 4 March 15, 2017 WINDY CITY TIMES Schneider co-sponsors GUEST COLUMN federal LGBT-housing bill BY CHARLOTTE HELTAI BY MATT SIMONETTE Trump’s America U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Illinois) is the first I’ve been asked to say a few words about allegiance of queer people, but in isolating co-sponsor on a bipartisan bill, introduced March what Trump’s America looks like for queer, those issues they ask us to forget the thing 10, that expands federal housing protections to trans, non-binary, and gender-non conforming that we know: all issues are queer issues, be- the LGBT community. people. cause there are queer people of every color, The short answer, from where I stand, is faith, and nation on this earth, and because The Fair and Equal Housing Act of 2017, also that it looks really scary—and a lot of people all people—not only queer people—are ad- known as H.R. 1447, was sponsored by U.S. Rep. are in far more precarious positions than I am. versely impacted by things like rigid gender Scott Taylor (R-Virginia) and expands protections But I, as a socialist, as a queer, gender non- norms and heterosexism. from Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act, which conforming woman, and as the proud sister So when the Democrats ask us to put our mandates non-discrimination for housing on the of a brave trans man, am afraid. I am afraid “radical” demands aside in order to campaign basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, because Donald Trump does things like rescind for them and the lesser evil they promise us, familial status or disability, to include sexual ori- Obama’s executive order which had given we must remember what that lesser evil re- entation and gender identity. Only 22 states, Illi- trans students, like my brother, the right to ally looks like for oppressed people. Barack nois among them, have such protections in place. use the bathroom they wished to, and I am Obama’s lesser evil looked like thousands of Schneider told Windy City Times that, even in afraid because I know the real, human cost of unarmed Black people shot down by cops, it an especially tumultuous federal political cli- policies like that one being issued from the looked like millions of xenophobic deporta- mate, “You’ve got both sides of the political aisle White House. tions, it looked like a generation of young looking to make a difference. … I think we’re No less than seven trans women of color people in crippling debt, it looked like pipe- hoping that, by building some broader bipartisan have been murdered, in this country, in the lines poisoning our water and orphans in Iraq, support, we push this forward. What’s happening last two months alone: one of them right here and Syria, and Palestine. The Democratic Party on the national scene is consuming so much of in Chicago. Her name was Tiara Richmond. She and their lesser evil-ism surely cannot be our the news, we may be able to find people who was just 24. hope, but that does not mean there is no want to have a positive impact at home.” So, more than afraid, I am angry. I am hope. In a March 10 statement, Taylor, who is a real- angry at Trump and the people who support There is hope; it is right here. In this room estate broker, said of the bill, “Nobody should him, because they do everything they can to [at the International Women’s Day event at face discrimination when it comes to something embolden the ugly forces of bigotry which al- the Chicago Teacher’s Union] is our hope! Our as important as where they choose to live. Bad ready exist in our society. A society in which hope is in the millions of people who have credit, poor references, and a lack of respect for U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider. trans people are fully twice as likely to be un- marched over the last two months, for wom- property should be the criteria for judging with Official head shot employed as non-trans people, and a society en’s rights, for immigrants’ rights, and in soli- whom you should and shouldn’t do business.