"It's hard for me to swallow how [people] make so much off of you. Right? And I gotta do the work."

That's from the July 31, 2018 federal surveillance of now-former state Senator Martin Sandoval (D-Chicago) complaining, according to media reports, to one of the founders of the red-light camera company SafeSpeed. Sandoval was bemoaning how he was killing and passing bills on the company's behalf while watching other people make bank off the red-light-cam industry.

It's estimated that the Brothers Grimm composed roughly 200 fairy tales and folk stories between 1812 and 1857. And I know it would be asking a lot, but based on their delectably macabre new fright film, I'd be happy to start a petition demanding that Gretel & Hansel director Oz Perkins and screenwriter Rob Hayes be given a crack at each and every one of them.

Based on the beloved series of children's books originally created by author Gertrude Chandler Warner – a series that began in 1924 and boasts well over 150 titles – the family adventure The Boxcar Children serves as the first stage presentation in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre's 2020 season, a heartwarming entertainment that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel praised for “the chance to identify and appreciate the strength, and the good, that we're all capable of demonstrating in times of crisis.”

Named “a true original” by the New York Times and “the first important dramatist of American public life since Arthur Miller” by Time magazine, Tony Award winner and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist David Henry Hwang serves as the latest guest in Quad City Arts Visiting Artist Series, his February 12 presentation at Augustana College profiling an extraordinary career in stage drama, musicals, operas, film, television, and, as a theatre professor at Columbia University, even academia.

Praised by Americana Highways for his “great storytelling sense and beautiful melodies,” as well as for being “a triple-threat as a new Americana artist,” outlaw-country sensation Cody Jinks takes the stage at Davenport's Adler Theatre on February 6, the artist having inspired Saving Country Music to rave, “Cody Jinks country is the best of both worlds, carrying all the twang and grit you’d ever want, but with the singer/songwriter sentiments that challenge the best poets from country to Americana.”

Lauded as the highest-ranking vocal group in the history of TV's competition series America's Got Talent, the vocal dynamos of the Texas Tenors bring their national tour to Davenport's Adler Theatre on February 12, with two talents from this chart-topping, Emmy Award-winning trio Iowa natives performing once again in their home state.

To download a PDF of the puzzle, click here.

There was a moment during Friday’s conclusion to the Black Box Theatre’s latest production, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, in which one of the child actors realized the artwork he was holding was upside down, so he turned it around. A seemingly small action, but an absolutely honest one. Children often set out to right the wrongs they see in the world, and while I’m certain director Lora Adams didn’t plan this incident, that tiny gesture drove home the reality of the night’s story for me. Even in a place full of horror, children continue to learn, grow, and create beauty, because that’s what children do.