An eagerly awaited annual event rides, jumps, and spins into Moline's TaxSlayer Center on April 27 and 28 as the Moline venue hosts Monster Jam 2019, bringing a new level of high-flying, four-wheel excitement to the entire family with racing, two-wheel skills, donuts, and freestyle competitions.
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This feature collects articles published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and by CapitolFax.com and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
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Race is an issue that, in daily life, can feel like a daunting one to approach. Yet Davenport's Putnam Museum & Science Center is addressing the subject head-on in its new, interactive, and accessible traveling exhibition RACE: Are We So Different? Open to museum guests from January 26 through June 15, RACE aims to help visitors of all ages better understand the origins and manifestations of race and racism in everyday life by investigating race and challenging its misconceptions through the framework of science. And as Putnam President and CEO Kim Findlay says, it's an exhibit designed “to explore race through history, science, and culture – which happen to be the three things the Putnam focuses on.”
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Appearing locally in a special partnership between the Davenport Public Library and Rock Island Public Library, National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds – the award-winning author of works including 2017's Marvel Comics novel Miles Morales: Spider-Man – will read from and deliver presentations on his literary output in a trio of special area engagements at the Davenport Main Library on March 28 and Rock Island High School on March 29.
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Described by TheBroadwayBlog.com as a “groundbreaking combination of storytelling, music, and technology” and Theaterlife as “an electrifying visual delight,” the dance-fusion ensemble iLuminate will light up the Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on April 19 and 20, demonstrating why, in 2011, this singular sensation became a national obsession during its run on TV's America's Got Talent.
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From the looks of things, the fine print of Governor JB Pritzker's most important legislative priorities should start becoming public not long after state legislators return from spring break on Tuesday April 30.
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On February 7, U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) released the text of a joint resolution calling for a “Green New Deal.”
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Senator Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake) spent more than a year holding hearings and overseeing negotiations which eventually produced SB1829 – a massive omnibus bill on sexual harassment.
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The difficulty of our times is not that we are locked up; we aren’t. The difficulty is that far too many of us are manipulated into choosing a prison cell over freedom.
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Freshman Representative Terra Costa Howard (D-Glen Ellyn) was reportedly none too pleased when Think Big Illinois began running TV ads in her district.
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A legitimate musical-theatre classic that won both the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying wraps up Augustana College's 2018-19 mainstage theatre season from April 26 through May 5, treating audiences to a joyously biting, tune-filled delight that the New York Times called “crafty, conniving, sneaky, cynical, irreverent, impertinent, sly, malicious, and lovely – just lovely.”
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With DC Theatre Scene calling the show “a wonderfully fun production” that's “clever enough to charm all ages,” Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse opens its 2016 season of high-spirited family musicals with Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook, an adaptation of Barbara Park's beloved children's book that the Maryland Theatre Guide described as “almost too much fun to be as heartfelt as it is.”
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Praised by the Chicago Tribune for its “warmhearted wit leavened with wistful regret” and “inner light of emotional honesty,” playwright Lauren Gunderson's astronomical drama Silent Sky enjoys its area premiere at Moline's Black Box Theatre May 2 through 12 – a work that, according to the Tribune, “shines with the luminous joy of re-centering women whose achievements have been too long overlooked by the telescope of history.”
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One of children's literature's most beloved tales enjoys a world-premiere QC Theatre Workshop presentation May 3 through 19, with the Davenport venue housing a debuting stage adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's literary classic The Little Prince – a family-themed presentation incorporating comedy, music, dance, and puppetry written by the company's Artistic Director Aaron Randolph III.
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With Variety magazine praising its “imaginative flair” and the Huffington Post calling the show “beautiful and wondrous” and “pure bliss,” the new stage musical Finding Neverland brings the joys of J.M. Barrie and Peter Pan to Davenport's Adler Theatre on May 7 – a touring production in the Broadway at the Adler series that Time magazine deemed “a spirited, tuneful, nimbly staged delight.”
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Delivering what the Associated Press calls “the next best thing to seeing the Beatles” and what the Toronto Star deems “a fun-filled family crowd-pleaser,” the gifted musicians and iconic impersonators of Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles bring their touring production to Moline's TaxSlayer Center on April 24, intoxicating crowds with their newest stage spectacular The Best of Abbey Road Live!
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Touring in support of the band's sophomore album Lightning Round – an August release in which, according to Rolling Stone, its musicians “refine and polish the blend of indie-pop, folk, and rock that they introduced on their 2015 debut” – the Minnesota-based Bad Bad Hats play a Moeller Nights concert on April 24, demonstrating the talents that NPR described as “programmed to fire all neural pathways associated with carefree indie-rock fun.”
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Appearing locally a mere four days after the release of their latest album – a fully re-recorded, remixed, and remastered 10-year-anniversary edition of their Against the Grain debut – the Canadian post-grunge rockers of The Veer Union play Davenport's Redstone Room on April 25, their 2018 album Decade II: Rock Acoustic inspiring XSRock.com to state, “If Decade II doesn't get your blood pumping, there is a good chance that you might not even be alive.”
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The invigorating sounds of modern and classical jazz will be on beautiful display on April 25 in the 27th Annual Black Hawk College Jazz Festival, an evening of sensational student talent augmented by the performances of Detroit-based jazz pianist (and former BHC instructor) Corey Kendrick and the University of Northern Iowa's trombone professor Dr. Anthony Williams.
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Modern folk auteur and Moeller Nights headliner Sam Amidon lands at the Triple Crown Whiskey Bar & Raccoon Motel on April 26.
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The curse of La Llorona, as explained in the fittingly titled The Curse of La Llorona, is a piece of Latin American folklore too juicy to be employed merely as a bridge to yet another feature starring that nasty porcelain doll Annabelle. Alas, director Michael Chaves' supernatural horror film is being marketed as the latest in the “Conjuring Universe” that entails two Conjurings (with a third heading our way next year), two Annabelles (with a third heading our way this June), and last fall's dreary The Nun (with a second, and inevitable third, TBA). Every cinematic series, it seems, has to be capitalized Universe now, but am I alone in wishing that this latest entry had functioned merely as a self-contained planet?
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Instead of a sweet, 13-year-old white boy waking to find himself in his 30-something body, writer/director Tina Gordon's lighthearted take on Big gives us a rude, 30-something black woman waking to find herself reverted to her gawky 13-year-old frame. In other words, Little is about as familiar-yet-slightly-different as high-concept Hollywood offerings get. With its leads portrayed by Regina Hall, Issa Rae, and the remarkable Marsai Martin, it's also about as enjoyable as they get – though you can't help wishing there were even more here to enjoy.
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Those trailers suggested Big in shiny red Spandex, and the trailers didn't lie. Director David F. Sandberg's comic-book outing, however, isn't reminiscent of the Tom Hanks comedy merely because it's about a young teen magically transformed into an adult. It's also fast and funny and clever and touching in the manner of Big – so much so that all that's really missing is the sight of Robert Loggia on a giant walking piano. And the giant walking piano actually makes an appearance.
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Astoundingly, Disney's animated Dumbo from 1941 clocks in at 64 minutes, and my latest quadruple feature would no doubt start on a cheerier note if director Tim Burton's live-action remake also lasted just over an hour. Alas, this Dumbo is closer to two, and frequently feels more like four.
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It's kind of like what you'd get if a home-invasion thriller mated with a zombie-apocalypse thriller and gave birth to a subterranean Matrix, with Sigmund Freud and Lewis Carroll serving as godparents and Darren Aronofsky performing the baptism.
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Rich oils and paints, vibrant colors, and four-legged majesty will be on display at the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy from April 27 through May 30, with the Bettendorf venue hosting a showcase of numerous works by Texas artist Laurie Justus Pace in an equine celebration fittingly titled HorsePower.
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Drawing inspiration from works of the surrealist and abstract-expressionist movements, particularly those that explore the subconscious, Davenport-based artist Nathaniel Kraft presents an exhibition of his paintings at the MidCoast Centre Station Gallery from May 1 through June 30 – the results of an artistic process, the artist says, “driven by the desire to bring suppressed feelings, memories, and ideas to the surface through abstraction.”
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Hand-crafted works by Midwestern artists from both sides of the Mississippi will be on display at Moline's Quad City International Airport Gallery from May 2 through July 1, with the airport showcasing sculpture, tapestries, mixed media, and more from artists Tim Kowalczyk of Minonk, Illinois, Jan Friedman of Iowa City, and Kelly Schrader of Davenport.
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Beautiful and evocative works by a pair of natural-landscape painters – one a native Canadian, one hailing from Moline – will adorn the walls of the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy from March 30 through April 26, with the Bettendorf venue inviting us all to “Think spring!” in the new exhibition Prairie Light: Pam Ohnemus & Cynthia Starkweather-Nelson.
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Foxes in the henhouse. Elephants in the room. Cats in the cradle. And from January 26 through April 28, there will be Animals in the Museum, as Davenport's Figge Art Museum showcases works in all artistic mediums devoted to the world's furry, feathered, finned, and four-legged friends.
