Currently on its 2024-2025 national tour, Dear Evan Hansen, which recently finished a run at Iowa City’s Hancher Auditorium, remains one of the most emotionally stirring productions to emerge from the recent wave of contemporary musicals.
Hancher Auditorium
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘The you is a door’: Abdurraqib sets high bar for Mission Creek 2024
Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival (which just kicked off its 19th year) has always fundamentally been about two things: creative place-making and wild moments of synchronicity. As such, it could have had no better opening than Thursday night’s reading by author and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib.
Posted inEastern Iowa Arts & Entertainment
Hancher to debut Infinite Dream Festival this fall — two weeks of music, conversation and a spaced-out art installation
Infinite Dream Festival, a new two-week, multidisciplinary festival will debut in Iowa City this October, organizers announced Wednesday. The festival is a collaborative effort between the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium and the Office of Performing Arts and Engagement. Infinite Dream will include orchestral, jazz and alternative music; a conversation with Iowa Writers’ Workshop alums […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Workers behind the scenes of Iowa’s biggest productions seek ‘voice, power and protection’ through unions
Hancher Auditorium’s relationship with the local stagehand union dates back to when the University of Iowa first created the venue. “Hancher opened the same fall that CAMBUS started [1972],” recalled Mark Falk. “That was my freshman fall. [I thought] ‘Look at all this new stuff, that’s cool.’ As long as there’s been a Hancher, IATSE’s […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
UI Dance works with experimental choreography duo FLOCK on 2022 Dance Gala
The University of Iowa’s Dance Gala is still weeks away, (mark your calendar for Nov. 11 and 12!) but we’re already eager to attend one of the two shows at Hancher. As always, Gala-goers can expect to spend the evening watching dancers perform faculty members’ new, innovative choreography. This year, they’ll also be introduced to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Urban Bush Women to explore issues of body image, race and gender in Hancher performance, dance workshop
“This process … really predates us all.” Chanon Judson, one of the artistic directors of Brooklyn, New York-based dance company Urban Bush Women, is speaking of the company’s practice of applying culture to dance. “We are all part of a lineage that has been doing that since the beginning of time.” Urban Bush Women was founded in 1984 by dancer and choreographer Jawole Willa Zollar, who still holds the title of Chief Visioning Partner of the group.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Les Misérables,’ Kristin Chenoweth and ‘Letters from Iraq’: Hancher announces 2018-19 season
Hancher Auditorium has announced its 2018-19 season, and it’s jam-packed with the most prestigious music, theater and dance touring the region. Tickets go on sale to the general public Aug. 1, but donors who gave over $100 to Hancher in the last year should watch their mail for the season brochure with early ordering instructions. A full season schedule can be found on the Hancher website.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Ms. Marvel author G. Willow Wilson discusses faith, gender and the comics industry
Muslim-American writer G. Willow Wilson will give a free lecture at Hancher Auditorium on Oct. 8 at 2 p.m. titled A Superhero for Generation Why. The lecture is a part of Hancher’s Embracing Complexity series, which focuses on Muslim art and Islamic artists like Wilson, and also kicks off the Iowa City Book Festival.
Posted inCommunity/News
Just announced: Prairie Lights brings Bernie Sanders to Hancher on Aug. 31
Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is coming to Iowa City. Prairie Lights is hosting his appearance at Hancher Auditorium on Thursday night, August 31. Tickets will be available through the Hancher box office starting on July 14 at 10 a.m.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Interview: Kelly Link offers a quiet but ferocious start to the Mission Creek Festival
Kelly Link Prairie Lights — Tuesday, April 4 at 4 p.m. Hancher — Tuesday, April 4 at 6 p.m. The Mission Creek Festival this year starts not with a bang, but with an insistent whisper — the sort you can’t possibly ignore. The kind that lures you close, that forces you to listen. At 4 […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Letter to the Editor: The curious case of Hancher, the cashless auditorium
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]I am writing for an explanation as to why the new Hancher Auditorium does not accept cash. Unfortunately, I no longer own a credit card, so the inconvenience of this situation practically ruined my enjoyment of the concerts I have attended there thus far. I went so far as to complain to the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Hancher receives substantial grant from Association of Performing Arts Presenters
Iowa City’s newly reopened Hancher Auditorium announced today that it is one of four recipients of a Building Bridges: Arts, Culture and Identity Individual Grant. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) awarded five Building Bridges grants earlier this year: four to individual organizations and one to a consortium. The Building Bridges program, co-funded by […]
