items tagged with Dakota Jones and the Search for Atlantis

The Reader's chief theatre reviewer, Thom White, saw and wrote about 52 area stage productions in 2011. I saw 39 and reviewed 12. Obviously, during our second-annual breakfast chat on the Year in Theatre, there was a bit to talk about.

Every year, St. Ambrose University’s theatre department produces four mainstage shows over the nine months that school is in session. It’s somewhat surprising, then, that given the myriad authors to choose from, the university opted to reserve half of the slots in its 2011-12 season for works by a single playwright.

Yet what’s more surprising is that the author in question isn’t one of the usual theatrical suspects – Shakespeare or Williams or O’Neill. Rather, it’s St. Ambrose student Aaron Randolph III, a 32-year-old pursuing additional degrees after graduating in 2002 from the school’s music department. His family musical Dakota Jones & the Search for Atlantis will be staged in the university’s Galvin Fine Arts Center December 3 and 4, and his comedy The Plagiarists runs February 24 through 26.