An eagerly awaited autumnal tradition will get the blood pumping on September 25 and 26, as the weekend brings with it the Moline TaxSlayer Center's Active Endeavors Health & Fitness Expo on September 25 followed by the annual Quad Cities Marathon, presented by TBK Bank, on September 26, the latter a Boston Marathon qualifier and the only such event in the country to incorporate five races, four cities, three brides, two states, and one island.
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A live competition in which you can employ your '80s-movie knowledge to win cash prizes? Inconceivable! And yet, on September 28, guests at Bettendorf venue The Tangled Wood are invited to share their knowledge or simply watch the contest unfurl – as you wish – at The Princes Bride Trivia Night, a celebration of the timeless romantic-comedy fairytale and its stunning 34-year legacy.
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Unusual, fantastical, and downright creepy elements of Quad Cities architecture and culture will be explored in an October 2 book discussion at the Davenport Public Library's Fairmount Street branch, with authors Michael McCarty and John Brassard Jr. highlighting Bigfoot, a banshee, and more in their new publication Eerie Quad Cities.
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On October 3, the incredible true story of a noted Prussian army general who became a heroic American army general will be explored at the German American Heritage Center, with the Davenport venue hosting a book discussion with acclaimed author David T. Dixon as he discusses his recent publication Radical Warrior: August Wilich's Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General.
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“Toward a Universal Suffrage: African American Women in Iowa & the Vote for All,” through October 15A fascinating traveling exhibit celebrating contributions to the women’s suffrage movement, Toward a Universal Suffrage: African American Women in Iowa & the Vote for All will be on display at the Davenport Public Library's Main Branch from September 1 through October 15, and will feature profiles of several leading suffragists and civil-rights activists, historical information on voting rights in Iowa and the nation, and a map of important Iowa locations in suffrage and civil-rights history.
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Adjacent to Combat with Clean Boots: Gubernatorial Candidate Jesse Sullivan’s Self-Inflicted DilemmaRepublican gubernatorial candidate Paul Schimpf has mostly followed Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment and avoided speaking ill of his Republican opponents. Until now. When a relative unknown named Jesse Sullivan jumped into the race earlier this month with a nearly $11 million out-of-state-funded campaign war-chest, state Senator Darren Bailey and businessperson Gary Rabine both called him a member of the San Francisco/Silicon Valley “élite” because that’s where his business was located and where much of his campaign money came from.
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“This is what decentralized, collective leadership looks like,” declared House Speaker Chris Welch’s spokesperson Jaclyn Driscoll not long after the chamber approved the climate/energy bill on an unexpectedly lopsided 83-33 roll-call on September 9. The vote was without a doubt a spectacular victory, especially considering the Senate was not able to put together its own package that could pass both chambers and be signed into law.
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Some interviews just write themselves. That rarity occurs when the interviewee is powerful and knowledgeable, relevant, compassionate, accomplished, fun, and most of all, a complete original. Hmmm … you mean someone like Jason Bermas, the independent journalist and documentary filmmaker? Exactly!
Please see the companion piece to this article, Have Our Freedoms Fallen Faster Than the Third Tower on 9/11? by Reader publisher Todd McGreevy. And, please see the Reader's coverage of Loose Change from 2006, The Secret Histories of 9/11.
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We have a real innovator, fearless journalist, and talented filmmaker now living and producing content right here in the Quad Cities. His documentary films have been watched by tens of millions of people worldwide. He has over one hundred thousand followers on multiple social-media and content platforms. He's been interviewed by the New York Times, Vanity Fair and Esquire magazines. I'm talking about Jason Bermas, who is featured on the cover of this September edition. In light of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 travesty and the subsequent accelerated plunge America took into a police state, we would be remiss if we did not re-visit one of the creators of Loose Change and Fabled Enemies, the 9/11 documentary films first released from 2005 through 2009.
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Julian Assange once said, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Assange isn’t in Belmarsh Prison for doing something wrong, but for doing something right. For trying to give the public information which will help them form a truth-based worldview so that they can make intelligent informed decisions about where they want to collectively steer society together.
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The timeless musical tale of boy, girl, and man-eating plant, the beloved and iconic stage sensation Little Shop of Horrors enjoys a September 24 through October 3 run at Moline's Spotlight Theatre, this Tony-nominated delight an early hit for its composers and eventual Oscar winners Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin) and, according to the New York Times, a show that remains “a genially gruesome classic.”
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I was delighted to catch Friday’s opening-night performance of the new musical comedy Disenchanted! at the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse. Directed by Corinne Johnson, with musical direction by Ron May, this show is about the other sides – more disgruntled sides – of the lives of fairytale characters made famous through the wonderful world of Walt Disney, with Snow White and her gang of dissatisfied co-princesses venting their frustrations as storybook/movie characters.
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An 1882 stage classic that the New York Times, in 2018, called “suddenly as timely as a tweet,” Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People will be presented, in a modern-day re-imaging, at Davenport venue the Mockingbird of Main September 30 through October 9, its exploration of the impacts of pollution and moral complacency perhaps even more relevant now than it was in the 19th century.
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A darkly funny, disturbing, and iconic one-act by the absurdist legend Eugène Ionesco, The Lesson kicks off St. Ambrose University's 2021-22 theatre season in the Galvin Fine Arts Center's Studio Theatre, the show's September 30 through October 2 run sure to demonstrate why Stage-Door raved, “The Lesson may be the greatest of Ionesco's plays.”
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Lauded by Broadway World as “an intimate tribute to the life and music of a musical giant,” the country- and gospel-music celebration A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline will be staged at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse September 30 through October 10, a biographical revue boasting iconic hits, tender emotion, and a title character played and sung by Broadway veteran Felicia Finley.
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A five-piece ensemble that, according to WSUM.org, “incorporates rock, bluegrass, jazz, and a little folk, creating nothing but an upbeat atmosphere,” the Chicago-based musicians of Old Shoe play Davenport's Redstone Room on October 1, the band's most recent release Country Home a compilation of 13 original tracks that were praised by GratefulWeb.com for the songs' ability to “paint a diverse landscape of American life.”
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A beloved Quad Cities ensemble that, as stated in DownBeat magazine, “channels its pent-up enthusiasm and not-slight musical ability toward an individuated brand of blues-rock,” the talents of the Avey Grouws Band play an October 1 concert at Davenport's Gypsy Highway Bar & Grill in support of Tell Tale Heart, the group's sophomore album – released on September 24 – that follows the critical and commercial success of 2020's The Devil May Care.
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Serving as the latest stop on the musician's “Hits Deep Tour,” Moline's TaxSlayer Center hosts an October 2 concert with the Grammy-winning, chart-topping TobyMac, whose extensive, critically acclaimed discography has made him one of the best-selling artists in contemporary-Christian and hip-hop history.
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Described by Cleveland.com as “justly acclaimed as a titanic force at the keyboard,” special guest Garrick Ohlsson joins the Quad City Symphony Orchestra for the ensemble's October 2 and 3 presentations of The New World, the first concerts in the musicians' 2021-22 Masterworks season, and performances showcasing a pianist whose recent concert engagement was described by the New York Times as “a vigorous, crisp, and clear performance without a trace of Romantic excess.”
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An internationally acclaimed rapper whose accolades include four Grammy nominations and a People's Choice Award, Tramar Lacel Dillard – better known by his performance alias Flo Rida – plays a headlining concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center on October 3, the musician's repertoire boasting four studio albums, four EPs, 37 singles as a lead artist, and 24 music videos.
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Clint Eastwood isn't necessarily bad here; at times, he's even enjoyable. But while I don't wish to be indelicate, there's no getting around the fact that, at the time of filming last year, Clint was 90, and he looks 90, and sounds 90, and moves 90 … and somehow, maddeningly, not one character in the film seems to notice.
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Paul Schrader's hypnotic, sometimes thrillingly intense exploration of some of his favorite artistic themes – obsession, addiction, guilt, redemption – is such a singularly arresting achievement that it's easy to sail past its structural and performance flaws.
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An introduction to the martial-arts master and eventual world-saver who debuted, in comic-book form, in the 1970s, Destin Daniel Cretton's MCU outing is prototypical origin-story world-building to its teeth, but not entirely unenjoyable.
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Candyman is only director Nia DaCosta's second full-length feature, and it may not be entirely coincidental that the last sophomore effort I enjoyed in so similar a way was Jordan Peele's Us.
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Now playing at area theaters.
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The talents of a gifted painter with two masters degrees from the University of Iowa will be showcased in the latest exhibition at the Figge Art Museum, with the Davenport venue, through September 26, housing the exhibition Franklin Evans: Franklinsfootpaths, an installation that will explore elements of Evans' personal history in Iowa while also encouraging new ways of experiencing the Quad Cities museum.
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Outdoor views of the Quad Cities will be admired and enjoyed in a Bettendorf venue when the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy, from October 1 through 30, houses its exhibition Paint the River: Fifth-Annual Plein Air Paint Out – a collection of works by local artists all created outside, and all executed on subject matter along the Mississippi from the I-80 Bridge to the Centennial Bridge on both sides of the river.
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Returning this fall to the Figge Art Museum's first-floor Gildehaus Gallery for an October 2 through January 2 exhibition, the latest offering in the Figgeo Video series will feature the work of acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Janet Biggs, whose video and performance works focus on extreme situations and experiences, drawing connections between physical and psychological terrains and tests of human limits.
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Two exhibitions of beautiful, evocative, and occasionally comical black-and-white photographs byIowa artists are currently on display at the Quad City Arts Center, with the Rock Island venue, through October 8, treating patrons to the talents of Des Moines' Judith Eastborn and Bettendorf's Mike Leinhauser.
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New works by a trio of Midwestern talents employing a trio of wildly different artistic mediums are currently on display in the Quad City Arts International Airport Gallery, with the Moline airport, through November 1, showcasing eye-catching photography by Mark Dierker of Dubuque, Iowa, works on paper by Jamie Foster of Naperville, Illinois, and ceramic wildlife sculpture by Deana Bada Maloney of Downers Grove, Illinois.
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