RFT 📰

In 2019, Carl Overly Jr., a local actor, decided to quit his day job and devote himself to acting and theater. The plan worked, at first.

In the midst of the pandemic, the Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries held one of its biggest concerts ever. Over 14,000 people tuned in to stream a concert from singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz — a number made more impressive when compared to the concert hall's 700-seat capacity.

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis was in a flurry of preparation in March 2020. Hana Sharif, the artistic director, and her cast and crew were in the midst of staging the world premiere of the musical Dreaming Zenzile.

Numerous individuals who routinely request public records from the City of St. Louis are saying that officials who handle public records treat requests like a "game" and issue "bullshit" responses for why records can't be made available. "It's constant nonsense and game playing," says attorney Emily Perez, who requests public records on behalf of clients as part of her job. She points to a still-ongoing request she made in April for some emails between officials as typical of the frustrating battle with the city for basic public information.

No one out-pizzas the hut, though a former Pizza Hut employee in the Metro East is certainly giving it a try. During the evening shift on Sunday, an employee of the Pizza Hut in Cahokia Heights stole all the money from the restaurant's registers and safe before walking off the job. Cahokia Heights Police Department Detective Sergeant Chris McGinnis tells the RFT that police are not releasing the name of the now-former employee but that they know her identity and are searching for her.

It’s almost your dog’s favorite day of the year — the day when the pooches are finally allowed to splash around in the people pool. At the very end of the swim season, many community pools across the country open up and allow dogs to come in and have one fantastic swim day.

As summer turns to fall, we usually start thinking about the days getting colder and shorter and feel some sadness. But then we remember something correspondingly delightful: Arts events slay in the fall.

Former St. Louis alderman John Collins-Muhammad pled guilty in federal court today for charges related to a bribery scheme. He had previously pled not guilty in June after an unsealed indictment revealed he and three former aldermen accepted cash bribes, cars, an iPhone and other gifts in exchange for political leverage. On Tuesday, Collins-Muhammad pled guilty to theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, bribery racketeering and wire fraud.

Michelle McCausland had something of a signature segment in her drag routines that she'd do to "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music.  She'd pull six, often-tipsy audience members on stage and stack them into a pyramid. James Lesch, who often worked alongside McCausland as DJ Jimmy NoShow, recalls the famous routine with a delighted laugh. "The first time seeing that I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, she's lost her mind,'" he says.

Subscribing to an entire season of performances is a special thing. Not only do you get to see a fantastic run of shows but also committing to doing so ahead of time often gets you out the door and into some crushed-velvet seats when you might have otherwise remained on the couch aimlessly scrolling through Netflix. But maybe you just can't commit that far ahead.

A record number of school districts in Missouri have moved to a four-day school week, according to research by the Missouri State University College of Education. As the 2022-23 school year begins, an estimate of 141 school districts — nearly 25 percent of all districts — will teach students for just four days of school. This is the highest in Missouri history — a number that has steadily increased over the last two decades.

Another day, another click bait-y article on a virtually unknown website downplaying the St. Louis food scene. This time, the offender is Clever, a real estate site that matches buyers and sellers with agents (in other words, not a food website); the subject is barbecue, a sacrosanct St. Louis culinary institution that anyone born within one hundred miles of the arch is bound by duty to defend. In a recent analysis conducted by Clever to determine the "Best BBQ Cities in America," St. Louis comes in at number 26 out of 50 — a ranking that puts our fair city in the bottom half of the list, coming in under such places as Las Vegas, Nevada, Jacksonville, Florida, and Sacramento, California.

A 30-year-old St. Louis man is facing three charges of assault and one charge of resisting arrest stemming from an incident Friday at Dierbergs grocery store that began with him harassing women and escalated from there. Police say that Julius Butler was at the Brentwood location of Dierbergs acting aggressively toward female shoppers. Butler then pushed a security officer when the officer told Butler he needed to leave.

Ivermectin-shilling and COVID-vaccine-hating Dr. Mollie James is now host of a new two-hour segment on Real Talk 93.3 FM. James treated COVID-19 patients at St. Luke's and Mercy Hospitals in St. Louis during the early days of the pandemic, though the hospitals and others cut ties with her after she refused to abide by their vaccine and testing policies. A Riverfront Times cover story in March detailed James' path from hospital worker to conspiratorial outsider.

The Office of the Circuit Attorney in St. Louis city has issued a slew of charges against a 24-year-old man accused of breaking into two homes in the Shaw neighborhood on Friday. Antonio Mosley has been charged with two counts of robbery, two counts of burglary, four counts of armed criminal action, one count of kidnapping and one count of sodomy. On Friday around 4:30 p.m. a 31-year-old woman living on Shaw Boulevard in Shaw told police that Mosley "crawled into her residence through a rear window, brandished a handgun, and then demanded electronics," according to police logs.

A change-of-plea hearing has been set for former St. Louis Aldermanic President Lewis Reed for this Friday at 11 a.m. Reed previously pleaded not guilty to federal bribery charges on June 1. An order filed today suggests he will plead guilty.

This story originally appeared in the Missouri Independent. Thirty lawsuits have been filed over the last two years against a pair of southwest Missouri boarding schools accused by former students of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The latest, filed Aug. 12 against the now-shuttered Circle of Hope Girls Ranch in Cedar County, is the first to proceed in federal court.

Six years after The Glass Menagerie and four years before Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams turned his eye on an Italian immigrant community living in Mississippi in The Rose Tattoo, which depicts a seamstress’ journey from happy wife to sudden widow paralyzed by grief. The play ran for nearly a year on Broadway and had several successful revivals, but today it’s remembered, if it’s remembered, for Anna Magnani winning the Best Actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film adaptation. Now on stage at the Big Top in Grand Center, the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis’ production is directed by David Kaplan, curator and co-founder of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force has provided the public with COVID-19 data. The information included daily hospitalizations, ICU numbers for the St. Louis region and reported deaths. But, the task force announced today that they will no longer be providing the data to the public.

A Missouri preacher has garnered national attention after he chastised his congregation for not showering him with gifts. During a fiery recorded sermon on August 7, Rev. Carlton Funderburke, who is the founding senior pastor at Church at the Well in Kansas City, called on the congregation to reconsider their commitment to him.