Opening the company's second season with a Broadway hit that won seven Tony Awards and nine Drama Desk Awards, the Mississippi Bend Players bring life on the Mississippi to stage-musical life in the June 22 through July 1 presentation Big River, a Mark Twain adaptation praised by the Hollywood Reporter for its “tuneful score” and “episodic storyline that flows as smoothly as the Mississippi River.”

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and currently sitting with a “100-percent fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the informative, incisive, and moving How to Die in Oregon will be screened at the East Moline Public Library on June 23, a film the Hollywood Reporter called “an affecting profile of the patient aid-in-dying debate.”

Presenting what 24OurMusic.net called “artistic synergy done right, combining all the best elements of rock, funk, and hip-hop into something that is cool and enchanting,” the Miami-based musicians of Magic City Hippies will bring their luaded genre blend to Davenport's Redstone Room on June 28 – the latest stop in a June tour that finds the band visiting nine states over 13 days.

Comic books, video and board games, tournaments, cosplay competitions, and loads of special guests will be on hand when Moline's TaxSlayer Center hosts the June 22 and 23 convention Planet Funk Con: Comic Con 2018, a weekend event housing entertainment and shopping opportunities for connoisseurs and collectors of all ages.

The late, great author and humorist Nora Ephron famously shared this piece of advice for women: “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” That message will also be shared in New Ground Theatre's June 22 through 24 presentation of Nora and Delia Ephron's Love, Loss, & What I Wore, a stage serio-comedy that Variety magazine called “a bittersweet meditation on the joys and tribulations of women's lives” and that the Hollywood Reporter deemed “tender and insightful without being sentimental.”

What's the buzz? I'll tell you what's happening over at the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre – the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. And from the outstanding choreography by Katie Johannigman to the stellar vocals by Jesus portrayer Ben Cherington, I was thoroughly entertained.

My kids grew up on Disney's Beauty & the Beast. I've seen the animated movies and TV specials. I've tripped over toys. I have faded photos of my daughter dressed in a brilliant ballroom gown. I've listened to Alan Menken’s soundtrack (with lyrics by Tim Rice and Howard Ashman) hundreds of times, seen the story performed on ice, and watched the live-action film earlier this year. But I’d never seen the Broadway-musical adaptation, and now that the Timber Lake Playhouse has opened its extravagant version of this classic tale, I can cross the live version off of my theatrical bucket list, too.

If you ask anyone at the Statehouse about House Speaker Michael Madigan’s former chief of staff Tim Mapes, they'll all say he "made the trains run on time.”

Based on the beloved Caldecott Honor-winning picture book by six-time Emmy Award winner Mo Willems, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical will delight family audiences at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse from June 12 through 30, its tuneful score, charming sentiment, hilarious comic adventures, and on-stage puppets resulting in a show that, according to ChicagoTheatreReview.com, “hits it out of the park.”