What year is it? There are scores of protests over racial injustice and civil rights. There’s rioting and police brutality. A global pandemic kills tens of thousands of Americans. A bitter presidential election featuring a former vice president. Debates over law and order and the limits of free speech. Of course, you could be talking about this year, with its collision of cataclysmic crises. But that also summarized 1968, which also featured the shocking assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, which fed into the massive violence in Chicago during the August Democratic... Read More

From David Bowie to Boy George to Caitlin Jenner, gender blurring and androgyny has made for provocative entertainment and social commentary, and perhaps no production has been more bombastic or incisive in recent years than “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which makes its area stage debut this weekend at Rock Island’s Speakeasy theater. The show, an unrepentantly over-the-top musical and dramatic extravaganza about a transgender singer that explores themes of love, freedom, gender identity and social politics, was critically acclaimed, showered by awards and a box office smash since its 1998... Read More