With its songs by theatre legend Stephen Schwartz and its original life-size puppets created by West Liberty's Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre Company, Disney's My Son Pinocchio Jr. serves as the 2024-25 season opening for the students talents of Young Footliters Youth Theatre, the one-act show's October 18 through 20 run at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts treating audiences to a brand-new take on the beloved cartoon masterpiece.

A three-time Tony Award nominee that stands as one of the most popular, enduring, and beloved comedies on the résumé of playwright Neil Simon, the vaudeville salute The Sunshine Boys enjoys an October 18 through 27 engagement at Moline's Playcrafters Barn Theatre, this 1972 Broadway smash inspiring a run of 538 performances and an Oscar-winning movie adaptation.

If Halloween is approaching, it must be time for that annual theatrical command: “Let's do the 'Time Warp' again!” Consequently, the Circa '21 Speakeasy will stage its ninth-annual presentation of the cult-musical smash The Rocky Horror Show from October 18 through 27, treating audiences to live performances of classic songs in this nutty, interactive experience that has been delighting show regulars and virgins alike for more than half a century.

Boasting a cast of 24 students ages 10–18, and led by the company's artistic director Ashley Becher, The Odyssey Experience serves as the first mainstage production of Davenport Junior Theatre's 2024-25 season, its October 12 through 20 run treating audiences of all ages to an interactive, 60-minute delight adapted from Homer’s epic The Odyssey.

Hailed by the Chicago Reader as a stage thriller that "ticks along like a stylish and well-oiled clock," playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's new take on the Alfred Hitchcock classic Dial M for Murder enjoys an October 18 through November 2 run at Moline's Black Box Theatre, the Chicago Sun-Times adding that this "crackling murder mystery" finds Hatcher providing "layers of meaning and 21st-century relevance."

The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Of Mice & Men is a skillful incarnation of this story, and director Justin Raver, alongside his cast and crew, brought it to vivid life in this production – one that's as stark and realistic as Steinbeck's words themselves.

Kitty: This show definitely made an impact because we’ve both been singing the songs since Friday night.

Mischa: Curse you, Andrew Lloyd Webber!

Boasting a company name that suggests mysteries of its own, Ben Gougeon, Alexander Richardson, and the Sound Conservatory are back with Rock Island Tunnel Co.'s The Tapes: An Immersive Revolution. Running October 11 through 26, the production is both similar to and quite different from last winter's The Stacks – partly because, not long after that show closed, the library stacks themselves vanished.

The city of Davenport needs a new performing arts supervisor and a new location for Davenport Junior Theatre, fast.

An intimidating ogre, a feisty princess, a wisecracking donkey, a diminutive tyrant, an ambulatory gingerbread man, and other fantastical figures take over Davenport's Adler Theatre on October 10 with the nationally touring arrival of Shrek: The Musical, the Tony-winning fairytale slapstick based on the Oscar-winning animated smash, and a show that Variety called a work of “irreverent charm” that “never stints on spectacle or laughs."

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