Designed for fans of the hit Coen-brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Circa ‘21 Dinner Playhouse favorite Southern Crossroads, the Mockingbird on Main's bluegrass musical Big Rock Candy Mountain will receive an August 17 through 20 engagement at Moline's Black Box Theatre, its classic tunes including such iconic numbers as “House of the Rising Sun,” “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life,” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

Lauded by Time Out New York for its “infectiously energetic 1960s tunes” and by The New Yorker for its “well-judged humor and elegant strokes of observation,” the Broadway-musical smash Jersey Boys – running August 17 through 27 – closes the 2023 summer season at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, this multiple Tony Award winner a show that, according to Broadway World, “rousingly recreates the catchy songs, convoluted lives, and roller-coaster careers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.”

Taking place in two cities, two states, and more than two dozen venues, the popular summertime traveling festival Alternating Currents returns to Davenport and Rock Island from August 17 through 20, a Quad Cities celebration of music, film, comedy, and visual arts boasting more than 100 musical performances, comedy sets, film screenings, local art displays, and even pro-wrestling.

German toys have had a significant impact on the world's toy industry, particularly in the areas of design and innovation, and through January 7, these wondrous innovations will be on display in Klassiks for Kinder: German Toys with Joy, an interactive, family-themed exhibition housed in Davenport's German American Heritage Center.

Touring internationally with his "The Age of JAJ" tour that Curtain Call Broadway deemed "a fantastic hour of comedy that will leave you in awe," actor, standup, and current Saturday Night Live performer James Austin Johnson plays Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow Barn on August 17, treating patrons to his uniquely hilarious worldview and talents for impersonation that find him, on SNL, doing sketch-length imitations of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Presented on August 17 as part of the Davenport Public Library's 3rd Thursday at Hoover's Presidential Library & Museum series, the virtual "best of" program Spotlight on the Famous Flour Sacks will recount Herbert Hoover's gift of several hundred decorated flour sacks for his work with the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), a program established – under Hoover's direction – to provide food relief in war-torn Europe.

Held in conjunction with the Davenport venue's current exhibition Los Desconocidos: The Migrant Quilt Project, the "Quilts" episode of PBS' Craft in America will be screened on August 17, offering guests a chance to learn about contemporary quilters from diverse traditions as we celebrate the important role quilts have played in our country’s story.

With the presentation held in conjunction with the venue's current exhibition Endless Flight, Davenport's Figge Art Museum will welcome scholars and the exhibit's artist Edouard Duval-Carrié for the August 17 program Celebrating Haitian Art, a discussion of major collections that exist outside of Haiti, and how making them accessible to artists and scholars throughout its diaspora are important to the preservation of Haitian culture.

With their repertoire of nearly four decades including such top-10 Billboard smashes as "Love Song," "Signs," "What You Give," and "Mama's Fool," the soulful hard-rock and glam-metal musicians of Tesla headline an August 13 concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center, the five-piece outfit continuing to tour with founders Brian Wheat on bass, keyboards, and piano, and Frank Hannon on guitar, keyboards, piano, organ, theremin, bass, mandolin, and harmonica.

Ever since the 2018 musical bio-pic Bohemian Rhapsody won four Academy Awards and grossed more than $215 million domestic and $875 million worldwide, Freddie Mercury and Queen have been hotter than ever – which is sure to be proven by the raucous crowd response on August 11 when Moline's Vibrant Arena at the MARK pays tribute to the iconic British rockers in the stage spectacle One Night of Queen performed by Gary Mullen & the Works.

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