With her professional recognition including an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards, and 2009 citation as the National Association of Black Journalists' Journalist of the Year, Washington Post columnist and NPR host Michele Norris will speak at an October 19 Davenport RiverCenter event sponsored by public-radio station WVIK and the Joyce and Tony Singh Family Foundation, with Norris giving a keynote address on Intelligent Conversations: The Power of Words.

Quick-witted improvisation, audience participation, and loads of laughs will be on hand when Davenport's Adler Theatre, on October 18, hosts an evening with the nationally touring comedians of Whose Live Anyway? – the hilarious stage show inspired by TV's Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and a touring sensation boasting famed stand-up and improv comedians Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Joel Murray, and Jeff B. Davis.

With their latest production staged in conjunction with the Quad Cities' area-wide Holocaust-remembrance project “Out of Darkness” (OutOfDarknessQC.com.), the professional dancers of Ballet Quad Cities present a remembrance of their own in Our Will to Live, an original program of dance vignettes boasting music by composers affected by the Holocaust. Taking place at Davenport's Adler Theatre on October 8, the repertoire for this two-act ballet runs the emotional gamut from exhilarating to painful – though the company's artistic director and co-choreographer Courtney Lyon realizes that potential patrons might incorrectly expect a night solely devoted to the latter.

Lauded by the Washington Post as "unforgiving and darkly hilarious" and the New York Times as "brutally honest and outrageous," comedian, author, and actress Patricia Williams - better known by her stage moniker Ms. Pat - will perform two standup sets at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Rhythm Room on October 1, the headliner beloved as the star of the Emmy-nominated The Ms. Pat Show and host of the podcast The Patdown with Ms. Pat.