AUGUST-SEPTEMBER Highlights

A number of Chicago booksellers, ranging from national chains to specialty stores, will showcase their collections of new and used children’s books at the 16th annual 57th Street Children’s Book Fair. This free book fair will celebrate reading and learning with a wide variety of events and activities, including storytellers, dancers, musicians and puppeteers.

JoAnne Akalaitis

Jenny Bacon

Court Theatre
Phédre by Jean Racine
Previews: Thursday, Sept. 5 through Friday, Sept. 15; opening: Saturday, Sept. 14; regular performances through Sunday, Oct. 6.
Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. 753-4472. Previews: $24-28; regular performances: $30-40. Half-price rush tickets and $10 student rush tickets may be available one hour prior to the show.

Court Theatre will open its 48th season with JoAnne Akalaitis’ provocative and passionate production of the classic Phédre myth. In Racine’s 17th-century version of this ancient Greek tale, Queen Phédre lusts after her handsome stepson Hippolytus and, once spurned, pursues a vengeful path that ends in tragedy. Jenny Bacon, who made her Court debut under Akalaitis’ direction last season in the title role of Mary Stuart, will return to play royalty again in Phédre.

[ ] Battle of [ ]ster Run [ ] D. [ ] ... by Henry Darger, undated

Smart Museum of Art
“A Genealogy of Outsider Art” lecture
2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 15
Room 15, Cochrane-Woods Art Center, 5540 S. Greenwood Ave. 702-0200. Free.

On the closing day of the Smart Museum’s exhibition “Outside In: Self-Taught Artists and Chicago,” John Beardsley, a leading authority on outsider and visionary art will present a free public lecture on the history of outsider art. Beardsley, a senior lecturer in the Harvard Design School, is the author of Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists (1995). He also has curated several exhibitions of visionary and outsider art, including Black Folk Art in America (Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1982) and Eye of the World: Miniature and Microcosm in the Art of the Self-Taught (Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, 2002). In his lecture, titled “A Genealogy of Outsider Art,” Beardsley will discuss the diverse origins and ever-evolving definitions of outsider art in both Europe and the United States. A reception and tour of the exhibition led by Richard Born, Senior Curator, will follow.