Nancy Maes

Prop: Recycling machine Appearing in: "Pinocchio 3.5," Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences "Pinocchio 3.5" updates the classic tale, with wood carver Geppetto as a computer designer named Gill...

The second annual Video Mundi festival is a locus for the experimental and avant garde. But the featured videos, some as short as a minute, can also be called funny,...

A 2003 documentary by Robert Greenwald contributes fuel for thought about the motivations for the ongoing combat in Iraq. Greenwald's 56-minute video "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War"...

Prop: Monarch butterflies Appearing in: "The Highest Heaven," Chicago Playworks for Families and Young Audiences Monarch butterflies play a big part in "The Highest Heaven," a play about a Mexican-American...

Prop: Chihuahua Appearing in: "L'incoronazione di Poppea" ("The Coronation of Poppea"), Chicago Opera Theater Paolo, a short-haired chihuahua, had no stage experience when cast in Monteverdi's opera "The Coronation of...

Prop: Lighted hoops Appearing in: "FemmeTV," Lavender Cabaret For more than a year, Michelle "Toots" L'amour did a dance using a small hoop in a Lavender Cabaret burlesque show she...

Prop: Pig innards Appearing in: "Rose Rage," Chicago Shakespeare Theater Jennifer Smith, the production manager at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, wasn't worried when she heard there would be raw meat in...

Two of America's favorite ectomorphs come together in Stanley Donen's 1957 film "Funny Face." Debonair Fred Astaire is a fashion photographer who discovers waiflike Audrey Hepburn, who is a clerk...

Prop: Tumbleweed Appearing in: Redmoon Theater's "Winter Pageant" Since Redmoon Theater's 12th annual Winter Pageant is called "The Ballad of Lonesome Pete," director Frank Maugeri envisioned an efficient way to...

Prop: Green slime Appearing in: "Angel City" by American Theater Company In Sam Shepard's "Angel City," green slime oozes from the pouch of a shaman-like script doctor asked to make...