A legendary theatrical work that won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–1963 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opens the 2025-26 season at Iowa City's Riverside Theatre, this savagely funny and painfully emotional drama helmed by Riverside's artistic director Adam Knight and featuring venue favorites Tim Budd and Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers.

Presented as part of the German American Heritage Center's popular "Kaffee und Kuchen" series, the September 14 program 20th Century German Expressionism will find Western Illinois University's Keith Holz addressing moments in the history of German Expressionist art from the 1905 founding of Die Brücke in Dresden to glimmers of its renewed popularity in European museums today.

Revered for its Oscar-winning black-and-white chiaroscuro cinematography, and currently boasting a 96-percent "freshness" rating on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic Shanghai Express continues the “From Hitler to Hollywood” film series hosted by the German American Heritage Center, its September 17 screening at Davenport venue The Last Picture House treating audiences to a work that made New York magazine's 2020 list of "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."

On September 5, Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox will host a release party for the Quad Cities' fine- and experimental-arts publication Undercurrent, an insightful new magazine that includes resources for artists, upcoming regional events, and local arts-community news.