On Friday, Feb. 5, the Geneseo-based Richmond Hill Players announced it will temporarily suspend the 2021 season due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. “We will continue to monitor the situation, and when it is safe to return to our theater, we will make a final determination on the 2021 season,” RHP president Jonathan Grafft posted on the theater’s Facebook page and website,  www.rhplayers.com. The theater – which began in 1968 in the top level of an old dairy barn – had scheduled “Becky’s New Car” for the first 2020 show that April, and canceled its entire 2020 season due to the... Read More

Feeling like some sweet music this weekend? Saturday sees the debut of Circa ’21’s bluegrass musical BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN! If you’re a fan of the film   O’ Brother Where Art Thou   and   the Circa ‘21 favorite   Southern Crossroads,   you’re going to love this show. A merry band of misfits sneak into a theatre hoping to stay out of trouble, but instead find themselves front and center in this story about the power of music and seconds chances. Add a down on her luck theatre owner and her wacky assistant, a clueless town mayor, his scheming wife and bumbling sheriff and... Read More

The new year at the Spotlight Theatre, 1800 7th Ave., Moline, brings a new bar and a monthly jazz series starting this month to help spotlight it. The Jazz Lounge – which debuted briefly this past fall in the main theater as a Thursday series with pianist Mason Moss and singer Sara Tubbs – will relaunch on Feb. 20 in the new Blueprint Bar and Lounge, in a previously unused (and totally renovated) room off the Spotlight foyer. “They completely transformed it. It’s gorgeous,” Tubbs (Spotlight co-owner with husband Brent Tubbs) said Wednesday of building owners Adam Bain and Blake Humphrey,... Read More

In a dark, uncertain time, Circa ’21 offers light and unadulterated joy in its latest online entertainment, the fun bluegrass musical “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Fans of the film “O Brother Where Art Thou” and the Circa ’21 favorite “Southern Crossroads” should love this original musical – written and directed by Tristan Tapscott — that features such classic hits as “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life” and many more. In the story set in 1932, a merry band of misfits sneaks into a theater hoping to stay out of... Read More

Though a story of redemption, new life, and surviving an infectious pandemic would have made an ideal return this spring, Quad City Music Guild for the second time on Tuesday announced it would again cancel a planned production of the beloved musical, “The Secret Garden.” While the board of directors informed the original 2020 cast and crew last month that it decided to scrap live performances at Prospect Park Auditorium, Moline, it waited to publicly announce until after its January board meeting Tuesday night. Due to ongoing Covid safety protocols and continuing limitations on audience size,... Read More

Due to ongoing Covid safety protocols and continuing limitations on audience size, the Quad City Music Guild board announced Tuesday it is again canceling the planned Spring 2021 show, “The Secret Garden,” which was originally postponed from last spring. “While these decisions remain difficult, we know how important it is to keep the safety of our participants, patrons, and community at the forefront of everything we do,” Music Guild said Tuesday night on Facebook. They have elected to replace The Secret Garden with a streamed performance, On With the Show: A QCMG Cabaret.... Read More

Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse is thrilled to be working with the talented Bobby and Ashley Becher and their company “Rising Stars” to announce all new Winter classes.  All classes will take place at Circa ’21 or it’s secondary theater, The Speakeasy. “We are thrilled to be working with Ashley and Bobby again” said Denny Hitchcock Circa ’21’s owner/producer.  “They have done a wonderful job with their classes over the last year and we get such positive feedback from all the students who have taking the classes and their parents.  I encourage you to consider this for you child! ... Read More

Bethany Sanders is only 24 years old, but already has 21 years of dance experience  and is quickly gaining a reputation as a passionate teacher and choreographer. The Pleasant Valley High alum started taking tap and ballet lessons when she was 3 and hasn’t stopped moving since. “I absolutely loved it, and added theater to the game when I was 11,” Sanders said in a recent interview. After 5th grade, she started doing theater at Center for Living Arts in Rock Island, and her first musical was “Grease” in 2008, when she was 11, and she performed with Center for Living Arts through junior... Read More

Though long-awaited funding for live-music venues is part of the federal Covid stimulus bill recently signed into law, several Quad-Cities entertainment spaces are taking a “wait and see” attitude regarding the reality. Scott Mullen, executive director of Moline’s TaxSlayer Center, said the $15-billion “Save Our Stages” act that was approved had included language noting some venue owners and arenas like his “don’t qualify due to a requirement they put in that says that 70% of the venue’s events must be artist performances, so buildings with sports tenants are excluded due to the... Read More

Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse, Rock Island, has only been open for two months since March 14, yet it has creatively, persistently found alternate ways to offer local entertainment for people like me who are desperate for it. Far from a luxury or a frill that can be easily excised, arts and culture have proven to be a vital lifeline during the devastating Covid-19 pandemic. As I’ve said before, the arts – at any time – help define who we are; they tell the story of us through a staggeringly diverse number of forms and genres. They lift us up, comfort us, inspire us, express what we may not... Read More