Returning with the venue’s first mainstage production since area theaters closed in November, Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse is ready to bring audiences lots of deserved laughs and warmth in the local debut of The Church Basement Ladies in “You Smell Barn.” Running through May 15, the latest encounter with everyone’s favorite group of singing and joking Minnesotans is sure to put a smile on your face and a song in your heart. With all shows at the beloved Rock Island dinner theatre, this new musical comedy is being presented by an outstanding company of professional actors. The... Read More

After more than a year dealing with Covid shutdowns, some much needed laughter may be the best medicine after all. Thirteen months after its last mainstage production, Moline’s Spotlight Theatre is opening the madcap comedy, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised]” on Friday, March 19, at 7 p.m. Performances – featuring Spotlight co-owner Brent Tubbs with Jeremy Mahr and Amelia Fischer – will be this weekend and next, with seating limited to 50 audience members at most in the 500-plus seat theater. The Spotlight, in the former Scottish Rite Cathedral at 1800 7th... Read More

It’s Sunday, and QuadCities.com proudly presents FUN10, a list of the top 10 things to do in the Quad Cities this week, and every week! Every Sunday, we drop a new FUN10, to give you a head start on your week and a heads up on what’s going on over the coming seven days. Check out FUN10 every Sunday for the details on ten awesome events happening around town. It’s a cool read, and a great way to get started planning your entertainment for the week. FUN10 — ten ways for you to have fun in the Quad-Cities, this week and every week, running every Sunday, only on your site for fun, free, local... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! Two days after Broadway theaters shut down last March, Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse held the last performance of the colorful, high-energy “Kinky Boots,” on March 14, 2020. It would be the last mainstage musical there until next week’s “Church Basement Ladies in You Smell Barn” – opening in previews Wednesday, March 17. It’s been a long, frustrating road, with... Read More

The Quad City Playwrights’ Festival is now accepting submissions for 2021. The festival will be held virtually this year. Submissions must be an original work, 10-minutes in length, a maximum of 10 pages, authored by one individual who resides in the Quad Cities area or is an Augustana student or graduate. No adaptions or excerpt scripts from larger works will be accepted. The script may be any genre. As virtual plays have become an established medium, both scripts written to be performed online and those meant for the stage are welcomed. A committee will adjudicate submissions and a select... Read More

Innovation and collaboration in the face of an unprecedented challenge helped the St. Ambrose University Theatre Department and KALA-FM, the public radio station on campus, combine to win a first-place national award at the annual Intercollegiate Broadcasting System conference on Saturday, March 6. The award for the Best Radio Drama honored the Theatre Department’s fall 2020 performance of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, “An Enemy of the People.” The 2019 adaptation of the 1882 play was penned by Tom Isbell, a theater professor at University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD), who is friends with... Read More

It’s been a while, but the Black Box Theatre in downtown Moline will be back with live theater starting Thursday, with a new production of “Dick Tracy: A Live Radio Play,” starring James Driscoll, Matt Walsh, Doug Kutzli, Mark Ruebling, Jenny Winn, Sara Nicole Wegener and Tom Vaccaro in the “Case of The Big Top Murders.” “Dick Tracy and The Case of the Big Top Murders” is a whodunnit focusing on the renowned sleuth’s investigation of murder and mayhem in a traveling circus company. ho killed the clown, and why? Theater veteran Jim Driscoll is Dick Tracy. Lora Adams, BBT co-founder... Read More

The pandemic has suppressed live theater performances and movie theaters alike, but it hasn’t brought down Leslie LaCorte’s spirits. LaCorte, a Language Arts/Theater instructor at North High School in Davenport, IA, is working to keep her students excited about acting by turning it into a virtual experience. Back in early 2020, LaCorte’s theater students were working to stage a production of the musical, Into The Woods. but then the COVID-19 virus began to spread. The resulting national pandemic made it necessary to cancel the production. “We kept up rehearsals online,” she said, “we... Read More

The premiere of opera at Moline’s Bartlett Performing Arts Center again will be delayed, as Opera Quad Cities plans to postpone the tragic Puccini opera “Madame Butterfly” from this June to June 2022. “I think it’s just tough to foresee audiences. I mean, we don’t know what the vaccination rates are gonna be in the Quad-Cities. We don’t know if audiences are gonna feel fully comfortable,” opera conductor Nathan Windt said this week. “There’s just too many unknowns. The idea is that the main performance will happen next June,” he said of the need to postpone... Read More

A Western Illinois University dance instructor has been invited to dance “Spanish Dance,” in celebration of the life of internationally-known dancer Daniel Nagrin. WIU Dance Instructor Donald Laney was the last dancer Nagrin taught “Spanish Dance” to prior to his death. The performance will be part of “The Daniel Nagrin Celebration: A Concert of Solos by the Rebel of Modern Dance,” April 30 and May 1 in the Dogtown Dance Theatre in Richmond, VA. Nagrin’s interesting career history ranged from gigs at summer resorts and clubs to Broadway musical, acting... Read More