items tagged with Stephanie Burrough

Theatre can be a great escape, but it can also be so much more. In 2006, most of the area's challenging works were presented by the New Ground Theatre, My Verona Productions, and the Prenzie Players, and over the past year and a half, I've had the pleasure of interviewing the impresarios of these organizations: New Ground Artistic Director Chris Jansen, My Verona producers Sean Leary and Tristan Tapscott, and Prenzie founders Cait Bodenbender, John Luxton, Aaron Sullivan, and Denise Yoder.

So, as I'm on a first-name basis with all of them, permit me to direct a few holiday cards their way:

Here's one for fellow fans of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy: You know how badly we wanted to see The Two Towers after The Fellowship of the Ring? That's how badly I want to see the Prenzie Players' King Henry the Fourth after Saturday night's production of King Richard the Second.

For those of you who aren't Lord of the Rings fans, I think you still get my meaning; King Richard the Second - the first installment in the Shakespeare troupe's three-part cycle of Henry plays, entitled The Henriad - is so thrillingly staged and sublimely well acted that the February continuation can't possibly come soon enough.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Rock Island Masonic Temple

Theatre audiences are often witness to romance and, with the right director and performers, occasionally even to true love on stage. Yet it’s rare to find passion and even rarer to witness carnality, two qualities that the Prenzie Players present in abundance in their juicy new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Rock Island Masonic Temple.

In the Prenzie Players’ hugely entertaining production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Or, What You Will, there’s an encounter so heart-stoppingly strong that it might be the single most effective stage moment I’ve witnessed all year.