Yo-Yo Ma sits in the middle of the stage, one leg draped over the other, as he listens to a question from someone in the audience. “Ask me anything” appears on a large screen above him. One of the questions comes from a young man, a cello player who wants to know how to overcome […]
Iowa City events
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Review: Private school parents clash over uncomfortably familiar issues in ‘Eureka Day’ at Riverside Theatre
Jonathan Spector’s 2025 Tony Award-winning Eureka Day, with its sharp humor and painfully familiar questions about privilege, progressivism and public health, has found a lively and incisive staging in Iowa City. Under the direction of Kathleen Johnson, Riverside Theatre’s production embraces the play’s contradictions with a mix of warmth and unease — a balance that, […]
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Review: ‘Cello goblin’ Rushadicus and Iowa City’s Weapon X brought an electric circus to the Close House
The music that is popular, the artists that are famous and the commercial music industry that promotes them, exists in a completely different world from the music Public Space One presents.
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Review: Bards bask in the joys, discuss the challenges of their craft at the first Iowa City Songwriters Festival
On Friday at The Den, legendary star and Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy spoke with Hancher’s Executive Director Andre Perry about the mourning process he goes through after an album does not perform as expected. “After a while, you just have to let go,” Tweedy said.
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‘What better place than Iowa City’ for a songwriting festival? Three days of shows, talks begin Thursday
In it’s first edition, the Festival is meant to “elevate the timeless craft of songwriting by blending world-class live performances with educational opportunities and community engagement,” as announced by the organizing team at the Englert Theatre.
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Back at Mission Creek as an author, Neko Case discussed going down the rabbit holes of her own origin story
Case, a Grammy-nominated singer, was in conversation about her recent memoir The Harder I Fight The More I Love You with best-selling author Melissa Febos, a Professor at UI’s Creative Nonfiction Program.
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Review: Mission Creek’s Lit Walk is a sensory, choose-your-own adventure experience
While an author reads, she cannot know that three people are filming her: husband, daughter and granddaughter. It’s a moment to remember. That was the level of intimacy felt on Friday, April 4 during Mission Creek Festival’s Lit Walk. As much a part of the mythos of the Festival as the long list of past music headliners, the Lit Walk, as the MCF website states, gives festival-goers an opportunity to “…hear an unexpected variety of work from a mix of talented local and out-of-town writers.”
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Review: From rapt silence to cathartic screams, Mission Creek’s Day 2 performers crowd-surfed the line between rage and joy
Night two of Mission Creek, in contrast with the first night’s containment at Hancher, encompassed many venues around the downtown area, a return to previous years’ mad dash of “Creekers” around Iowa City looking for the show that will change their lives, whether that be a new-to-you music act or a local literary hero at the […]
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Review: Angels from the Alvin Ailey dance company brought rhythm, reverence and revelations to the Hancher stage
Movement, in all of its forms, is powerful. The fusion of the physical, political, and spiritual forms came together during the Iowa City stop of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s 2025 national tour.
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Reimagining the Black Midwest with a new exhibition at the Stanley Museum of Art
Curated by Reynolds and supported by a five-person curatorial cohort of advisors, “it’s a fine thing” explores the rich and often overlooked landscape of the Black Midwest, including the Rust Belt.
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Review: Dreamwell’s ‘Design for Living’ is a tangled comedic tale
Noël Coward’s Design for Living is a play that demands a deft balance of wit, tension and vulnerability — qualities that are central to an exploration of love, freedom and emotional tangles. Dreamwell’s recent production, directed by Will Asmus, certainly attempts to bring Coward’s dark comedy to life, but the results are, at times, uneven, leaving the audience to question whether the fault lies with the production or the material itself.
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Review: ‘Art is survival’ for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated craftsmen behind this PS1 exhibition
Community members packed the February 7 opening reception of the “Art from the Inside Out” exhibition at PS1 South, giving me the feel-goods. I saw a woman I used to work with and met her mother; I saw friends and met their grandchild. Artists and their families were there, and it was the most class-diverse art show I’ve attended.
