items tagged with New Ground Theatre

“I think it came from going to church,” says area actor Pat Flaherty of his childhood interest in theatre. “Because I’d go to church, and I’d see this guy who was holding everybody’s interest through the whole service. It was very dramatic – they’d light the candles and ring the bells and everything – and for a while I thought I wanted to be a priest because of that.

“It turned out I just wanted to be on stage.”

I make a conscious effort to suppress expectations prior to seeing a production, for fear they’ll rise to the unattainable. With Genesius Guild’s Ajax, however, I couldn’t help it. I was so taken with last year’s Andromache, performed in traditional period masks, that I was giddy with anticipation to see this summer’s Greek-tragedy offering. And despite a few apparent stumbles over lines and one glaringly missed cue, director Don Wooten’s effort did not disappoint. Saturday night’s performance of Sophocles’ piece captivated me with its creative execution.

Allow me, if you will, to get the unpleasantries out of the way right away, so that I can expound upon the virtues of New Ground Theatre’s debuting drama Under the Radar. The play, inspired by the local gay scene in the late 1970s, isn’t eloquent in its verbiage or impressively acted; the dialogue is amateurishly written; and for the most part, the individual performances are adequate, at best.

Fortunately, though, the employment of news, game-show, and other TV-programming clips from 1978 provides context for the social environment of the time, and elevates the piece to a place of educational significance.

For the final production in her company’s 10th-anniversary season, New Ground Theatre Artistic Director Chris Jansen chose to direct a rather epic piece: the debuting period drama Under the Radar, which features numerous plotlines and changes of locale, and concerns our area’s gay scene in the late 1970s, with particular attention paid to the relationship of one long-term gay couple.

Based on that description, it sounds as though Jansen is tackling a Quad Cities-based, pre-AIDS version of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Yet when, with a good-natured laugh, she says of the mammoth undertaking, “Some idiot wrote 11 characters into it,” know that Jansen isn’t being derogatory. At least, not toward anyone but herself.

[Author's note: The following was written for TheCurtainbox.com, the Web site for our area's Curtainbox Theatre Company, of which I've been a proud member for nearly a year.]

Recently, Curtainbox Theatre Company founder Kim Furness and I sat down over a glass of wine – all right, maybe a couple of glasses – to celebrate her company's 10-year anniversary. She had recently taken over the directing position for the Curtainbox's latest production, Speed-the-Plow (in the wake of original helmer Philip W. McKinley’s recruitment as new director of Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark), and during our conversation, was happy to share her thoughts on the company’s history. (The David Mamet comedy Speed-the-Plow – featuring Erin Churchill, Dan Hernandez, and myself – runs at the Village of East Davenport’s Village Theatre from April 10 through 23, with preview performances April 8 & 9.)