Black Box Theatre in Moline has cancelled their first week of the upcoming show “The Turn of the Screw.” The theater released the following statement today: Due to the current situation with the corona virus, The Black Box Theatre will be cancelling the first week of The Turn of the Screw. Our plan at the present time is to open on April 2 for 4 performances, but we are going to follow the news and required protocol as the situation unfolds. Thank you for your patience as we all navigate this unprecedented time in our communities across the nation.  Read More

The Black Box Theatre in downtown Moline will open their fourth season with “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” a play by Celeste Raspanti. “We chose to do the play in honor of Holocaust Remembrance” said director and co-founder of the theatre, Lora Adams. The piece is an inspiring story that shows how art can be used in times of tragedy and is centered around Raja, a Czech teenager forced into Terezin, a Jewish ghetto. The camp was a stopping point before being sent to the death camps, particularly Auschwitz. Fifteen thousand children under the age of fifteen passed through Terezin. Less... Read More

In April 2013 Mary Pruess was named General Manager of WQPT, Quad Cities PBS. During her tenure WQPT moved offices, restructured master control and programming and continued with a focus on the creation of local television programming, to be aired along with PBS programming. As Mary put it “We are creating a new way of being a public broadcasting station.” In December 2018 Mary retired as WQPT’s General Manager, but continued on with the station as Director of Capital Projects and Planning.  With the leadership phase of the signal improvement capital project titled “Aspire Higher” completed,... Read More

Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds humor, especially with the addition of perspective, and you’ll find each element of this formula in “Loser’s Bracket,” the latest show at Moline’s Black Box Theatre. It’s always great to see original works on the local stage, all the better when those works are of a quality to deserve that spot, and “Bracket,” by area playwright Clay Sander, certainly fits that description. The play’s strength is its dialogue and character, both of which ring clear and true to small-and-midsized towns and the long-standing and sometimes strained... Read More

WQPT, PBS for the Quad Cities region will celebrate the 20th anniversary of America’s Test Kitchen with a special event on Thursday, December 5th at Scott Community College’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Center.  The free event will begin at 6:00 pm and will include demonstrations of the show’s fan-voted most popular recipe (shrimp scampi), tours of the culinary lab, food samples, talks from a gadget expert, America’s Test Kitchen giveaways, and much more. “We are excited to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of America’s Test Kitchen with the Culinary Arts Program at Scott... Read More

Listen schweetheart, if you’re looking for a play that hearkens back to the good old days of radio, you should check out Black Box Theatre’s “The Man with Bogart’s Face: A Radio Play,” opening Oct. 11. In short, a man whose identity we never know has his face altered to look like Humphrey Bogart and is involved in a Maltese Falcon-type caper. And just like the film noire 1940’s movies there are dames and heroes and villains, oh my, all played for laughs. Reviewers called it “a fast-moving story with action and staccato dialogue that literally bring Bogart to life.”... Read More

The Black Box Theatre opens the multiple Tony Award-winning musical Assassins. With a book by John Weideman and Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics the “panoramic story of our nation’s culture of celebrity and the violent means some will use to obtain it, embodied by America’s four successful and five would-be presidential assassins. Bold, original, disturbing and alarmingly funny, Assassins is perhaps the most controversial musical ever written.” Assassins presents the lives of nine people who assassinated or tried to assassinate the President of the United States. From John... Read More

The Black Box Theatre opens the multiple Tony Award-winning musical Assassins. With a book by John Weideman and Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics the “panoramic story of our nation’s culture of celebrity and the violent means some will use to obtain it, embodied by America’s four successful and five would-be presidential assassins. Bold, original, disturbing and alarmingly funny, Assassins is perhaps the most controversial musical ever written.” Assassins presents the lives of nine people who assassinated or tried to assassinate the President of the United States. From John... Read More

The Black Box Theatre in downtown Moline will present the musical “The Last Five Years,” opening March 28.  The Drama Desk winner is an intimate musical about two twentysomething New Yorkers who fall in and out of love over the course of five years, with the woman (Cathy) telling her story backwards, while the man (Jamie) tells his story chronologically. The two characters only meet once in the middle at their wedding. Written by Jason Robert Brown, who is known for his work writing songs for the Broadway musical “Parade”, “The Last Five Years” was born out of his own failed marriage.... Read More

Looking for something sweet as pumpkin pie on your theater plate this Thanksgiving week? The Black Box Theatre is presenting the holiday romantic comedy “It Had to Be You” by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. The play will star Black Box Theatre Co-founder Lora Adams opposite actor and cartoonist Jason Platt. The play is directed by Patti Flaherty and features Gregory Kerr, who also serves as the production stage manager. Set construction by Michael Kopriva and light design by David Miller. The plot involves failed actress, health food nut, and would-be playwright Theda Blau, who wants to find... Read More