Family. Love. Money. Major occupiers of our time; continual goals and sources of both stress and joy. We want them and work for them, or in spite of them. They facilitate our dreams, or get in their way. We race toward our desires until Death, who always wins, tells us we're done.

An 1882 stage classic that the New York Times, in 2018, called “suddenly as timely as a tweet,” Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (adapted by Tom Isbell) will be presented in radio-play format – and on radio station KALA 88.5 FM – by the St. Ambrose University theatre department October 2 through 11, its tale of a fight against injustice perhaps even more relevant now than it was in the 19th century.

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 fifth-annual presentation of the cult-musical smash The Rocky Horror Show from October 3 through 31, treating audiences to live performances of classic songs in this nutty, interactive experience.

With its author praised by the New York Times for “his knack for telling stories that, at the very moment when they seem to be settling into predictable paths, throw in a zinger,” Jeffrey Hatcher's darkly hilarious Three Viewings enjoys a September 24 through October 3 run at Moline's Black Box Theatre, the playwright lauded by the Los Angeles Times for “his gifts [that] are distinctive, unmistakable, and quite a bit of fun to boot.”

It’s been a painfully long wait, but I finally got to crack open my new notebook and fresh pen for Wednesday night's performance of The Savannah Sipping Society at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse.

Two powerhouse vocal legends will be celebrated by one supremely gifted Augustana College professor at the Circa '21 Speakeasy on September 12, with area stage performer, director, and instructor Shelley Cooper showcasing the musical talents of her musical idols Mary Martin and Ethel Merman in the exuberant one-woman show Mary & Ethel: How I Learned to Sing.

Returning with the venue's first mainstage production since theatres everywhere closed in mid-March, the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse is set to bring audiences loads of laughs and warmth in the area debut of The Savannah Sipping Society, a new comedy of eternal friendship by the authors of such beloved stage works – and previous Circa '21 hits – as The Dixie Swim Club and Mama Won't Fly.

Performing an evening of beloved song classics both under the stars and “Under the Sea,” local talents will fill the parking lot of Moine's Spotlight Theatre in the September 4 and 5 presentation A Night of Disney, with some of your favorite area talents lending their theatrical gifts to much-adored repertoires ranging from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King to Beauty & the Beast.

If you’re hoping to see some live theatre to forget COVID-19 and the pandemic we’re in, then the Black Box Theatre’s latest, The 39 Steps: A Live Radio Play, is not for you – because director Lora Adams and her fantastic cast have embraced the challenges of producing theatre in 2020 in a way that manages to pay respect to this invisible virus while still keeping the show lighthearted and charming.

Appearing in a special virtual presentation hosted by the Bettendorf Public Library, librarian and touring performer Laura F. Keyes, on August 26, delivers a historical portrayal of a famed suffragist in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a celebration of the noted 19th-century feminist who fought for equal rights for women for more than 50 years.

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