In the moving play, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” audiences get inside the mind of a 15-year-old gifted autistic boy. Augustana College will present a recorded live performance of their production online at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday. The 2012 stage adaption of British novelist Mark Haddon’s 2003 international best-seller originally was scheduled to be performed last December, but was postponed due to the pandemic. Student tickets are free, but must be purchased by first requesting a complimentary code. Faculty and staff... Read More

Christina Myatt, drama director at Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf, continues to give her students acting options. Live theater has persisted during Covid, and their latest production – the small, intimate “Feiffer’s People” – was performed in front of audiences at PV last weekend, and a filmed version will be shown online at 7 p.m. Friday, March 5 and Saturday, March 6. “It went really well,” Myatt said Monday of the eight-member cast in PV’s huge auditorium, at 25-percent capacity maximum. “It’s a smaller cast, it allows us to work in a way, people aren’t on top... Read More

Less than three months after securing its lease and creating its name, the new Deanery School of Music has chosen its first executive director, Rishi Wagle of Bettendorf. A 2016 Pleasant Valley High School alum and 2020 graduate of Brown University, he will work closely with the board and with Hannah Holman, the school’s artistic director, to address the many initiatives associated with the start of this new and unique cultural organization serving the Quad-Cities. “There are so many moving parts associated with an adventure like this that we feel it needs someone who is a quick learner with... Read More

The beloved Stephen Sondheim musical “Into the Woods” – done at Augustana College this past weekend for very limited, campus-only audiences – was a cathartic, unprecedented experience for its young performers. The emotional 1987 musical, combining classic fairy tales and an original story about a baker and his wife, is full of longing, doubt, adventure, danger, hope, grief and perseverance in normal times. But of course, these aren’t normal times, and in the first partnership among Augie’s musical theater, opera and orchestral programs, the student actors found the fantastical tale... Read More

Eighteen months after staging their last full production, Quad City Music Guild will return in June, to perform a filmed version of “Monty Python’s Spamalot” with no in-person audience, to be streamed online three times. Originally scheduled for June 2020 (and postponed with the entire season due to Covid), the original Music Guild cast and crew will return to record the fully-staged version, and stream it June 11-12, 2021 at 7:30 p.m. and June 13 at 2 p.m. Ticket prices are yet to be determined; Guild already had sold over 500 tickets for last June’s show, including many season-ticket... Read More

It’s been a long process, but this Friday, theater students from Davenport Central High School will present a filmed version of Clue: High School Edition. The play will be shown for free on the Broadway on Demand streaming platform, at 7 p.m., Feb. 26. Clue: High School Edition is based on the 1985 Paramount mystery/comedy Clue, which in turn was inspired by the classic Hasbro board game of the same name. The tale begins at a remote mansion – here filmed at Davenport’s Renwick Mansion — where six mysterious guests assemble for a dinner party where murder and blackmail are on the menu.... Read More

Restrictions in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic have forced the cancellation of the annual performance of “The Vagina Monologues” at Western Illinois University; however a series of activities have been planned in its place between Feb. 22-24. “Although we are not having the play this year, I feel like students will benefit and have a true understanding of what ‘The Vagina Monologues’ is if they attend the events,” said WIU Women’s Center Graduate Assistant Trameka Pope. “We are incorporating interactive activities while also educating those... Read More

St. Ambrose University senior Tyler Hughes made his full-length directing debut in the middle of a global pandemic, with another tense story of international crisis. “Two Rooms” by Lee Blessing – a love story of Lainie and Michael, married American educators working in Lebanon during the mid-1980s – features four student actors and was filmed earlier this month, to be streamed this weekend. After Michael is kidnapped by terrorists, Lainie returns to the United States to seek out help from her government to have Michael rescued, only to be stonewalled by the American policy that states:... Read More

Can we ever get out of the rabbit hole? That eternal question is more relevant today than ever, as Davenport Junior Theatre (DJT) continues its 69th season with its second virtual production, “Alice in Wonderland,” directed by local theater artist Bobby Becher. Based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) and adapted by Daniel DP Sheridan, “Wonderland” is a timely story that speaks directly to the viral Wonderland we’ve all found ourselves in over the last year. “Alice in Wonderland” involves 24 students from around the Q-C area. The kids range from ages... Read More

After a fairly hellish 2020, Shelley Cooper is back in musical heaven as the first half of 2021 is shaping up to be very busy and fulfilling. The enthusiastic Augustana College assistant professor of theater arts recently filmed two special performances for Circa ’21; she’s directing a new college production of “Into the Woods” this month; choreographing the next Circa mainstage show in March, and directing the Circa musical after that; performing a one-woman original show at the Black Box Theatre in late March, and then going to Orlando, Fla., to do the same show by June. Plus, you know,... Read More