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Conversations featuring authors and influential leaders in the arts, media and business.
To hear Bob Doepel reflect on Chicago Scenic Studios, the company he founded almost 40 years ago, you might think that it just happened to come together. In truth, Doepel has elevated the process of making things come together, often under impossible deadlines, on projects that materialize overnight, to an art form.
Read MoreRich Daniels and The City Lights Orchestra return to the Auditorium Theatre on November 17th for ELLA & LENA: The Ladies and Their Music, a centennial concert celebration of Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne. Chicago vocalist and producer Joan Curto will be joined by many of Chicago’s top artists including E. Faye Butler, Beckie Menzie, Tammy McCann, Paul Marinaro, Tom Michael and Sophie Grimm with a 17-piece orchestra featuring songs from the Great American Songbook.
Read MoreOur Conversation this week comes in the form of a letter from Ron Keaton. Ron agreed to step in when business called me out of town. It was a chance for Ron to give his unique point of view on a big night of recognition for Chicago's professional theatre community and share comments from award recipients in many of the categories.
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Glen Shuld kept a journal every day for a year in his life. He happened to be 12 years old at the time and attending an integrated grade school during the Vietnam era.
Read MoreFor Brenda Didier, directing Porchlight Music Theatre's production of Billy Elliot The Musical is like coming home again. The show opens the company's 23rd season in their new digs at the Ruth Page Center in Chicago a place that is very familiar to Didier. She has vivid memories as a young dance student. And perhaps most helpful, particularly to the story of Billy Elliot, is rekindling the excitement she experienced realizing her own dream that began when she was eight years old.
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There's a little motto that the amazing E. Faye Butler saved until the end of our delightful conversation between rehearsals on September 8th at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
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This week, more conversations with artist's whose work this year has been recognized with a 2016-2017 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award nomination.
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The 2016-2017 Joseph Jefferson Equity Award nominations were announced this week. There were 158 nominations in 33 categories for Chicago Equity theatrical productions during the period August 1, 2016 through July 31, 2017.
Read MoreAs he faced his own cancer treatment in 2003, Jonny Imerman decided that no one should fight cancer alone. Three years later, Imerman Angels was born. Whether you are on or have completed a cancer journey, or have a loved one fighting the disease, our conversation with Imerman CEO & Executive Director Benjamin Bornstein, a three-time cancer survivor, just might be a game changer.
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When I was growing up in rural Vermont in the early 60's, we had a party line telephone system. Our unique ring was one short and one long, the cue that someone had dialed our number and it was our turn to talk on the line. If you tried to call in when someone was on the phone, you got a busy signal. If you tried to call out, you would sometimes interrupt whoever was talking at the time. Most days, things worked pretty well.
Read MoreIf not for a comment by Walter Matthau on the set of Dennis the Menace, Randall Newsome might well be still behind the camera.
Read MoreAs successful social media entrepreneurs, bloggers and cook book authors, Kit Graham and Jocelyn Delk Adams, know a thing or two about “likes” and “followers.” Both joined me for Conversations at the Skokie Theatre on June 22nd to discuss their careers in food, travel and beyond. You can hear the entire Conversations podcast HERE.
Jocelyn Delk Adams and Kit Graham join the conversation ...
Kit Graham on building a following through blogging and social media:
“It’s really just a matter of creating consistent content over a long period of time and finding people who engage with that content and reaching people on different platform. Some people use Facebook, some use Instagram, others use Twitter, some are on Snapchat, some use all of them, but they don’t check all of them every day. For me it’s been a lot of diversifying to reach a larger audience and try to maintain the consistency across all of the platforms and to vary them to fit the platform.”
Jocelyn Delk Adams on the importance of a good photo:
“Being a blogger requires that you wear lots of hats. Whether it’s the promotional side for social media or the photography side, we spend a lot of time really working on our crafts and really developing that [photography] because when you go to someone’s website or open a cook book, you want to see photos that will make you cook or make you bake. You want to look at a picture and say ‘I’m hungry, Like I gotta have that’ … If I can get that response from people, that’s half the job.”