Andy Koski and Aisha Ragheb in Romeo and Juliet More than a third of the area productions I attended this year - a whopping 35 of them - I saw in the 91-day span from May 17 to August 15. And more than half of those shows - 19 in all - were produced by a combined five theatre organizations: Rock Island's Genesius Guild, Eldridge's Countryside Community Theatre, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (CAST), Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, and Davenport's newly established Riverbend Theatre Collective. My experiences with this quintet formed a fascinating theatrical journey, one boasting plenty of highs, occasional lows, randomly bitchy Web-site comments ... .

Joshua Estrada, Craig A. Miller, and Ryan SchabachRyan Schabach is one of the cast members from the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's three-man comedy The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shakspr {abridged}, and I haven't yet determined if he's (a) an exceptionally good actor, (b) completely out of his mind, or (c) both. I'm going with (c), but if other commitments weren't keeping me away from Clinton for the rest of the show's run, I'd be happy to see it again just to be sure.