Events Calendar

domestic abuse survivors, which often push the boundaries of available resources, is always challenging, the pandemic has made these challenges even greater.

“With more people isolated at home with their abusers, situations can really escalate. When Iowa started to open back up in May, we saw a 28 percent increase in calls to the hotline,” Medea-Peters said. “We’ve had a 76 percent increase in requests for emergency housing assistance funding because people can’t stay with family or friends. Our housing advocates are sometimes taking 18 to 25 referrals a day.”

At the same time, DVIP has had to modify its practices to make them more COVID safe, replacing many in-person visits with phone and video options and cutting capacity at their shelter in half to 20 beds to allow for social distancing. An overflow shelter opening this month will make up for some of that lost capacity.

The pandemic has also affected their signature event.

“We realized around late June or July that it wouldn’t be safe to get 500 people together for our family meal, and we started planning a virtual event,” Medea-Peters said.

The 24th Annual Souper Bowl will feature many of the same elements that have defined it from its inception: soup from local restaurants and a community coming together to support an important mission. But there are some major changes.

This year there are 10 different soups on offer, chosen from favorites at previous years’ events. In lieu of lining up to pick out a bowl, all participants will receive a commemorative 24th Annual Souper Bowl soup mug. Tickets are available at four levels: the Souporter at $25 comes with a commemorative mug and two 8 oz. containers of soup. The Student and Sliding Scale Souporter at $15 comes with a commemorative mug and one 8 oz. container of soup. The Souporter Family Package is $75 and comes with two mugs and five 8 oz. containers of soup, and the Gift of Giving is $25 and can either be a gift of soup to someone else or a direct donation to DVIP. All packages include the option to choose your soup at checkout or let a DVIP advocate choose their favorite for you.

Orders can be delivered or picked up within a 15-mile radius of DVIP’s location at 1105 S Gilbert Ct in Iowa City.

Another significant change this year is a cut-off date for ticket sales. In the past, you could walk in on the day of the event and purchase your ticket, but this year, ticket sales will end on Feb. 15 so that organizers will know how much soup is needed and so volunteers can plan delivery routes. Though many virtual events over the last year have included a Zoom meet-up or something similar, the Souper Bowl has decided to forego that element, citing the video conferencing fatigue that many are feeling in a year full of Zooms, and the desire to allow participants to create community in their own way and on their own schedule. DVIP made 300 tickets available this year and had already sold half of them by mid-January.

Super Bowl season may not be connected to higher rates of domestic violence, but the COVID-19 pandemic certainly is. So while DVIP’s Souper Bowl is different in 2021, it could be the most important year yet to rally the community around survivors—and soup.

If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, contact DVIP’s crisis hotline at 1-800-3731043 or visit dvipiowa.org.

Tiffani Green is a lifelong Iowan currently living in Coralville. She loves cooking (and eating!), showering her houseplants with benign neglect and forcing her cats to snuggle with her whether they want to or not.

EDITORS’ PICKS PRESENTED BY THE CITY OF IOWA CITY

EVENTS

FEBRUARY 2021

Planning an event? Submit event info to calendar@ littlevillagemag.com. Include event name, date, time, venue, street address, admission price and a brief description (no allcaps, exclamation points or advertising verbiage, please). To find more events, visit littlevillagemag.com/calendar. Please check venue listing in case details have changed.

NOTE! We are listing only ONLINE and OUTDOOR events in this calendar at the moment. “Locations” listed for online events reference the presenting institution. Please visit our online calendar for links, or check the organizations’ websites and Facebook pages. FRIDAY, FEB. 5, Hot Soup/Cold Noses DRIVE THROUGH Supper,

Iowa Humane Alliance, Cedar Rapids, 5 p.m., $10 There’s no such thing as too much soup in an Iowa winter. The annual Hot Soup/ Cold Noses benefit has been reconfigured as a drive-through, with $10 getting you a take-home meal that includes two bowls of your choice—black bean chili, creamy potato, vegetable, broccoli cheese or wild rice with mushrooms—plus bread and dessert. Proceeds benefit the Iowa Humane Alliance’s low-cost spay/neuter program.

More community opportunities this month:

Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 6 p.m. The Nest Best Thing: Building Nest Boxes for Birds, Iowa City Public Library w/ Bur Oak Land Trust (icpl.org)

Thursday, Feb. 25 at 12 p.m. 39th Annual Tribute to Women of Achievement, Waypoint Services (@ waypointservices)

Thursday, Feb. 25 at 2 p.m. 24th Annual Souper Bowl, Domestic Violence Intervention Program (@ iowadvip), $25-75

PRESENTED BY THE CITY OF IOWA CITY WEDNESDAY, FEB. 10, Internet Watch Party: ‘My Bloody

Valentine,’ Late Shift at the Grindhouse (@ICgrindhouse), 10 p.m., Free

Celebrate with your valentine a few days early by tuning in to this 1981 Canadian slasher flick. Starring Neil Affleck, known for his work as an animator (and occasional director) over 13 seasons of The Simpsons, starting in the mid-’90s. The film centers around a Canadian mining town plagued by the memory of horrific murders 20 years earlier. It’s known mostly for its excessive gore and violence, what a Montreal Gazette reviewer called “more than the usual m.p.g.p.—murders per gallon of popcorn.” The Irish shoegaze superstars of the same name, formed two years later, claim no affiliation.

Other Late Shift Watch Parties this month:

Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 10 p.m. ‘Re-Animator’ (1985)

Wednesday, Feb. 17 at 10 p.m. ‘Blade of the Immortal’ (2017)

Wednesday, Feb. 24 at 10 p.m. ‘Killer Kate!’ (2018)

FRIDAY, FEB. 12, Felicia Rose Chavez, ‘The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative

Classroom,’ Prairie Lights Bookstore (prairielights.com/live), 6 p.m.,

Free University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program grad Felicia Rose Chavez will celebrate the release of her memoir/teaching guide, reading from the work and engaging in a conversation moderated by Inara Verzemnieks. Her book explores the climate and politics of privilege within creative writing classrooms and looks to guide readers toward a new pedagogy of inclusion. More information about the book and Chavez’s work can be found at antiracistworkshop.com, and the book itself can be ordered from Prairie Lights ahead of the event.

Also this month from Prairie Lights:

Thursday, Feb. 4 at 4 p.m. Fiona Sze-Lorrain in conversation with Christopher Merrill

Friday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m Kathleen Williams Renk in conversation with Mary Helen Stefaniak

Monday, Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. Kevin Barry in conversation with Susan Orlean

Friday, Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. Michele Morano, ‘Like Love’

FRIDAY, FEB. 12, Artist Conversation and Virtual Reception for This Could Get Snowed On

(Julia J. Wolfe, Kelly Clare, Cicelia RossGotta, Taylor Hansen),

Public Space One (publicspaceone.

com), 7 p.m., Free Public Space One put out an ambitious call this summer for artists interested in engaging with the space outside their two new Northside homes this winter for an exhibit called This Could Get Snowed On. In case you missed the past couple of months, these works absolutely did get snowed on, and they have served as a pointed example of how overcoming the obstacles of the pandemic this past year (PS1’s indoor gallery space is still not open to the public) has accelerated conversations about access and public art. Every passerby and neighborhood resident has enjoyed these works, and now everyone can hear from the artists themselves in a conversation and virtual reception.

Visual art events throughout the month

Friday, Feb. 5 at 5:30 p.m. Virtual Reception—Kimberlee Rocca, Gilded Pear Gallery (gildedpeargallery.com)

Sunday, Feb. 7 at 1 p.m. Remixed Livestream: ‘PRIVY’—Deborah Goffe Performance Salon with Goffe and André Zachary, Center for Afrofuturist Studies (afrofuturist.center) Friday, Feb. 19 at 11 a.m. smART Talks with Ain Grooms and Joyce Tasi, Stanley Museum of Art (stanleymusem.uiowa.edu)

Sunday, Feb. 21 at 1 p.m. February Art in the Afternoon: Amy Dobrian, Artifactory (artifactory.artsiowacity.org)

Monday, Feb. 22 at 7:30 p.m. Grant Wood Fellow Talk with Margarita Blush, Stanley Museum of Art

Wednesdays, Feb. 17 & 24 at 6 p.m. Mural Materials & Methods w/ Thomas Agran, Public Space One, Pay-What-You-Can $5-50 Saturday, Feb. 27 at 2 p.m. Stanley Creates: Star Accordion Book, Stanley Museum of Art

FRIDAY-SATURDAY, FEB. 12-20,

‘Out of Bounds,’ Theatre Cedar Rapids

(theatrecr.org), $25 (suggested) Originally commissioned in 2015 by Hancher Auditorium, this piece created by Jennifer Fawcett and Working Group Theatre was built from interviews with teachers, students, guidance counselors, parents, police officers and more. It’s a story about cyberbullying but, as with all of Fawcett’s work, is ultimately about how we engage each other through our shared humanity. Theatre Cedar Rapids takes it on with fantastic area talent including Rachel Korach Howell, Carrie Pozdol and Omarr Hatcher, making this a must-see for all.

Virtual theatre performances around the CRANDIC:

Fridays at 8 p.m. Out the Box Weekly Reading Series, Mirrorbox Theatre (@ MirrorboxTheatre)

Tuesdays through april 6 Will Power: ‘Twelfth Night’ Series, Riverside Theatre (riversidetheatre.org) Thursday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. 2nd Thursday Series: Operatini—‘Emma’s Misadventures in Zoomland,’ Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre (@CROperaTheatre)

Friday, Feb. 12 at 7 p.m. ‘The Zoomiverse of Love,’ RHCR Theatre (@RHCRTheatre) Saturday, Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m. ‘Put Your Funny Where Your Mouth Is’ Improv Comedy, Iowa City Community Theatre (@ICCT1956)

Sunday, Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. ‘Put Your Funny Where Your Mouth Is’ Improv Comedy, Iowa City Community Theatre

TUESDAY, FEB. 16, Ghost Creek, Mission Creek

Festival w/ Englert Theatre (@missioncreekfestival), 7 p.m., Free In early 2020, the cancellation of the Mission Creek Festival was what truly made the COVID-19 pandemic real for many in the area. This month, the festival brings it back full circle with a short film they call “a hymn to the value of art, of gathering, and of shared experience”—exactly what we’ve all been thinking. Be in community together, remotely.

TUESDAY, FEB. 16, COVID’s Lessons: End of Life and Grief,

Obermann Center (obermann.uiowa. edu) w/ Iowa City Public Library, 7 p.m., Free (registration required)

Managing, navigating and surviving the COVID-19 epidemic has been an exercise in reacquainting ourselves with our humanity in new and challenging ways. The Obermann Center has gathered a slate of experts for a conversation about grief and grieving, and the ways they have shifted in the Western experience from private to all-too-public. Participants include Laurel Lyckholm, Clinical Professor, Hematology/Oncology and Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation; Lilian Akimpaye, on-call RN, Iowa City Hospice; Lydia Maunz, PhD in English; and Lori Erickson, author of Near the Exit: Travels with the Not-So-Grim Reaper.

Classes and seminars throughout February:

Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 3 p.m. Race and Place: Yellow Fever and the Free African Society in Philadelphia, National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library (ncsml.org)

Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 6 p.m. The Settlement, Growth and Movement of the Czechs and their Institutions in Cleveland, Ohio, National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library

Thursday, Feb. 11 at 12 p.m. Iowa History 101: Immigration to Iowa, State Historical Society of Iowa (@IowaHistory)

Thursday, Feb. 18 at 4 p.m. Podcasting with Purpose: Anne Strainchamps and Mark Riechers, Obermann Center

Sunday, Feb. 21 at 5:30 p.m. Free Generative Writing Workshop with Micky Bayonne, Iowa City Poetry and PromptPress (freegenerative.org)

Thursday, Feb. 25 at 12 p.m. Iowa History 101: Iowa’s Black Migration, State Historical Society of Iowa

SATURDAYSUNDAY, FEB. 27-28, Gamicon Zinc,

Gamicon (@Gamiconiowa), 8 a.m.,

Free-$20 For over 20 years, gamers have gathered in eastern Iowa at the annual February Gamicon convention, an event of camaraderie and exploration, where designers and GMs get access to the region’s best gamers and vice versa. This year, inevitably, due to COVID-19, the event will take place entirely virtually, on Gamicon’s Discord server. Registration can be found at tabletop.events/conventions/gamiconzinc. There will be virtual gathering rooms, RPGs, board games, panels and events, Jackbox gaming, a DM workshop and much more.

NOTE! We are listing only ONLINE and OUTDOOR events in this calendar at the moment. “Locations” listed for online events reference the presenting institution. Please visit our online calendar for links, or check the organizations’ websites and Facebook pages.

Planning an event? Submit event info to calendar@littlevillagemag.com. Include event name, date, time, venue, street address, admission price and a brief description (no all-caps, exclamation points or advertising verbiage, please). To find more events, visit littlevillagemag.com/ calendar. Please check venue listing in case details have changed.