Daron Walker

Chatham’s big summer event celebrating that delicious, golden food staple just keeps going strong. The festival is celebrating its 50th year. The fun starts at 4:30 p.m. Friday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the honoring of past event chairs. Then it’s on to the Little Miss Sweet Corn pageant, games for children, more than 70 […]

This Friday, the Capital City Celebration returns thanks to a partnership between the Springfield Jaycees and Springfield Lucky Horseshoes. The event begins at 2 p.m. at Robin Roberts Stadium with a dog pageant, inflatable zone for children and music by local band Astrofix. All of the activities are within the stadium’s gates, which requires a […]

This musical, winner of the Drama Desk Award for Best Musical, follows four eccentric Broadway stars looking for a new stage. The four hear about trouble brewing over a prom in a small Indiana town. There, a student has been banned from bringing her girlfriend to the prom. The quartet sees a chance to spotlight […]

There’s something enchanting about the story of Peter Pan and his adventures on the island of Neverland. He was created in 1902 by Scottish playwright and novelist J.M. Barrie. Since then, the mischievous boy who can fly and never ages has starred in many plays, movies and books. Peter Pan, the leader of the Lost […]

School’s out and it’s county fair season! Some good old-fashioned fair fun certainly can be had this week at what has been called the premier county fair of central Illinois. The Sangamon County Fair features entertainment, livestock shows, exhibitors, queen pageant, carnival, rodeo, monster trucks, demolition derby and all the fair food you can imagine. […]

Now in its 63rd year, this popular festival has earned an unsurpassed tradition of presenting the world’s finest carillonneurs on the 67-bell instrument in a tower. While it typically takes place in June, this year it has been moved up to coincide with Memorial Day weekend. This year’s carillonneurs are Jeremy Chesmann of Springfield, Missouri.; […]

The place to be this weekend is downtown for Springfield’s popular, annual Fat Ass 5K & Street Party for Charity. This hilarious downtown spectacle, born in 2008, just keeps getting better, donating more than $2 million to area charities. The event begins Friday with the Craft Beer and Cigar Festival featuring food, drinks and music […]

Local performer John O’Connor stars in this one-person play written by Herbert Mitgang. The show relies heavily on Lincoln’s own words and, according to the Hoogland Center, “features the folksy wisdom of Lincoln’s biography and the transcendent grandeur of his nation-healing words as president, healing that was cut short by an assassin’s bullet.” Mitgang is […]

Next to Normal is a musical drama that chronicles how a suburban family copes with the unpredictability of a mother’s worsening bipolar disorder. Written by Brian Yorkey, the play won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for drama and three 2009 Tony Awards. It takes audiences into the minds and hearts of each character during the crisis, […]