With the crowned winner receiving a cash prize and a featured spot in the Capitol Theatre's Wickedest City Burlesque & Variety Fest on Saturday, April 18, the Wickedest Performer burlesque competition will be held at Davenport's Adler Theatre on April 16, the evening featuring electrifying artists from across the country, including Arizona, North Carolina, Seattle, Des Moines, and the Quad Cities.

Taking place as part of the venue's popular "Kaffee und Kuchen" series, the German American Heritage Center's Verschleppt: The Carrying Off of Markus & Anna Mattes will offer a haunting, moving family saga on April 12, the program presented by John Mattes and Debbi Nitekman Kohl, the latter of whom will also deliver a powerful performance on piano.

With the Richmond Times-Dispatch insisting that while the title "might suggest another church lady play ... the charitable sisters are more like the women of Steel Magnolias, with a few unexpected twists," author Bo Wilson's The Charitable Sisterhood of the Second Trinity Victory Church opens the 2026 season at Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre with an area-debut April 16 through 26 run.

With Riverside Theatre's producing artistic director Adam Knight raving that “Emily Bohannon’s writing is one of the real pleasures of theatre today,” the playwright's stage piece The Fiancé enjoys a world-premiere April 16 through May 3 run at the Iowa City venue, Knight adding that Bohannon’s work "sheds light on characters seldom seen onstage, driven by a search for meaning in a vastness beyond the confines of New York, or even America.”

Kitty: There’s something magical about experiencing theatre from a child’s perspective. Saturday’s audience was full of very eager young theatregoers who were clearly delighted by the show.

Mischa: It was especially interesting to see which moments they particularly reacted to.

Jeff Adamson, clearly delighted by the room’s laughter on its opening-night performance, leaned into the humor with visible enthusiasm, which only seemed to widen the gap between the show’s tone and my own reaction to it.

An eclectic display of artwork created by students in the University of Dubuque’s Department of Digital Art and Design is on display at the University of Dubuque's Bisignano Art Gallery, with works by numerous student talents in The 2026 EDGE Show showcased through April 15.

A full-throttle tribute to the music, madness, and legacy that defined heavy metal, Long Live Ozzy lands at East Moline venue The Rust Belt on April 3, with tribute band Sabbath delivering bone-crushing riffs and haunting as they lovingly re-create the sound, spirit, and stage presence that made Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne legendary.

Reggae-rock and punk musicians from Aberdeen, Maryland, who have opened for the likes of 311, Dirty Heads, Tribal Seeds, and Slightly Stoopid, the touring talents of Ballyhoo! headline an April 8 concert at Rock Island's RIBCO, their most recent album Shellshock boasting the participation of fellow reggae-rock artists The Elovaters, HIRIE, Iya Terra, Kyle Smith and Tropidelic, and their home-state friends of Bumpin Uglies.