With the New York Times calling it “the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word,” author Annie Baker's thoughtful comedy Circle Mirror Transformation enjoys an August 18 through 27 staging as part of the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's Barn Owl Series, the stage piece also lauded by Variety magazine as “orchestrated with a subtlety and unfailing naturalness that makes the play's small revelations disarming and unexpected.”

Rich and expressive works by a former Muscatine High School teacher who later taught at Augustana College will be on display at the Muscatine Art Center through October 29, when the venue hosts an exhibition of new photographs by John Deason, an Iowa talent who, at the age of seven and following a move to Sioux City, became friends with a neighbor boy whose father was a talented photographer named Grant Jensen.

An official selection for July's IUGTE 20th Anniversary event in Austria and next month's Fort Worth Fringe Festival, Shelley Cooper's one-woman musical Jenny Lind Presents P.T. Barnum enjoys a three-performance run at Moline's Black Box Theatre from August 11 through 13, its creator/star's previous solo productions in the area including popular presentations of Mary & Ethel: How I Learned to Sing and La Divina: The Last Interview of Maria Callas.

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?”