One of William Shakespeare's most delightful yet biting romantic comedies enjoys a springtime outdoor production when students of Carl Sandburg College, from May 7 through 9, present the Bard's Love's Labour's Lost, a much-adored stage work that has also been adapted as an opera, a radio play, and a Kenneth Branagh movie musical.

In the longstanding tradition of “show, don't tell,” a story needs a setting or theme to carry it. Star Trek wasn't really about space; Field of Dreams wasn't really about baseball. Stories are about people, memories, and emotions. And although the actors now performing at the Black Box Theatre talk for 90 minutes about pantsuits, gowns, and boots, Love, Loss, & What I Wore isn't really about clothing.

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 the Black Box Theatre's new presentation of Nora and her sister 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.”

Based on the wildly popular, Emmy-nominated Disney Channel movie, the stage adaptation Disney's Descendants: The Musical will be performed live by students of Eldridge's North Scott High School, its April 16 through 25 run introducing engaging new characters and reuniting family audiences with favorites from such iconic animated entertainments as Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs.