Making an eagerly awaited stop at the Adler Theatre in support of his most recent album Here Comes the Truth – the inspiration for the performer's 2017 Netflix special – comedian and singer/songwriter Rodney Carrington brings his standup and vocal talents to Davenport on October 12, sharing the country-themed gifts that have made him an internationally touring crowd favorite and platinum-selling recording artist.

Performing a Moeller Nights concert on October 11, the Heligoats – what NPR called “a strange name for a guy strumming a guitar, but oddly befitting someone who stuffs his songs with so many sideways ideas and observations” – delivers acoustic indie rock courtesy of singer/songwriter Chris Otepka, whom NPR declared “writes songs that are brainy in the best way: clever without straining for cuteness, wry but never smug.”

For the group's first concerts of the 2018-19 season, the professional vocal ensemble the Nova Singers will travel Out of Darkness, Into Light on October 13 and 14, delivering Illinois and Iowa presentations that find noted composers wrestling with life’s darkest moments and exploring the uplifting powers of hope, light, and love.

Friday, September 28, 10:45 a.m.-ish: It used to be said, and maybe still is, that those wanting to sell film scripts during Hollywood pitch meetings were required to describe their potential projects in 25 words or fewer. That always sounded a little restrictive to me. Yet as I headed into my latest quadruple feature, I was pretty sure I could effectively nutshell Friday's lineup using only four words per title: “abominable snowman discovers humans,” “amusement park serial killer,” “Louisa May Alcott – again,” and the day's jump-starter “Haddish schools Hart, bitches!”

You may think a teenage dramedy that confronts complex social issues such as homophobia, abortion, teacher/student affairs, and other unspoken issues could be a seriously dry, heavy lump that leaves an audience more burdened than amused. Yet I’ve always loved the John Hughes film The Breakfast Club and how it comedically compartmentalizes its stereotypical high school students into the micro-environment of Saturday detention, forcing them to face who they are and where they fit in their high-school hierarchy. So it was consequently interesting to sit in on the September 25 technical rehearsal of the Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s newest, and quite admirable, Barn Owl Series production Speech & Debate.

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of hearing my colleague at St. Ambrose University, Marian Lee and her musical cohort pound out some fantastic French music – sophisticated, complex and still relevant. Interpreting that music, your dancers were absolutely impressive – detailed, crisp, upbeat, easily avoiding any camp in the rompier moments and conveying some profoundly human material with their silent bodies. I’m in love with them!

With San Francisco's SFGate.com calling it “two hours of high-class hilarity” and “a generous gag-fest packed with rib-tickling delights,” Geneseo's Richmond Hill Barn Theatre continues its 50th-aAnniversary season of audience favorites with the commedie del'arte slapstick Scapin, a work that the Washington Post labeled “buoyantly self-aware” and “a delightful contemporary farce.”

For its first musical presentation in the venue's first year of operation, the operators of Moline's Spotlight Theatre will take advantage of their venue's locale – the former site of the Scottish Rite Cathedral – with an ideal production for the architecturally grand space: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the lauded stage adaptation of Disney's Oscar-nominated hit running October 5 through 14.

Nominated for the 1994 Tony Award for Best Musical and boasting a cast of nearly two dozen musical talents, the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue A Grand Night for Singing will be presented October 6 and 7 as a special fundraiser for Quad City Music Guild and the Prospect Park Pavilion, treating patrons to a song-and-dance showcase in which, according to the New York Times, “the songs flow together in a sequence that treats them as lighthearted extensions of one another.”