If Peter Jackson taught the world anything with his epic three-movie The Lord of the Rings series, it's that audiences want their Tolkien to be faithful to the original work. So when Susan Holgersson started comparing J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit with Patricia Gray's script, "I started to realize there was a situation there," she said. Playcrafters Barn Theatre decided about a year ago to do the play, and Holgersson was selected as its director in August.
Ghostlight Theatre's production of the Sam Shepard play True West - running the next two weekends at the Holzworth Performing Arts Center at Davenport North High School - will mark the end of the organization's days as an enigma, putting on shows periodically but infrequently and without any discernible pattern.
They said it would be short, and they meant it. Clocking in at just under 45 minutes, last weekend's production of Augustana College's annual Short Play Festival was a collaboration of four student producers and featured Tony Kushner's script East Coast Ode to Howard Jarvis.

When Zach Pethoud read the script of The Guys by Anne Nelson, he decided it was an opportunity he couldn't turn down. "I knew right away that if I didn't direct it locally, someone else would," he said. So the Bettendorf native gathered a cast, secured the Bettendorf High School auditorium stage, and worked hard to put together the Quad Cities premiere of the play, which will be presented weekends from December 6 to 14.

With The Primitive opening this weekend, New Ground Theatre is doing something it's never tried before, and director Chris Jansen is very excited. The Primitive "is a charming romantic comedy!" she said.

Most people hated the Interstate 74 bridge construction, but theatre actress and director Melissa McBain loved it. Being stuck on the bridge gave her an opportunity to chat regularly with journalist and author Stephen G. Bloom about Shoedog, the play he co-wrote. The piece will get its world premiere this weekend with three performances at Quad City Arts, with McBain directing.

Melissa Coulter was thrilled when she was asked to direct a show at Ghostlight Theatre. What she didn't yet know was that the show, Das Barbecü, is actually a musical comedy loosely based on Richard Wagner's four-hour Ring opera, is performed in country-western style, and calls for a fairly large cast of about 15 people.

New Ground Theatre, which this season has produced the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays Wit and Proof, will next month stage a musical about teen suicide. Not only that, but the script of said musical was written by the company's artistic director, Chris Jansen.
When Nancy Heerens-Knudson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985, her son - who was in kindergarten at the time - thought she was in the hospital for an elbow problem. He didn't know about the breast cancer until he was in sixth grade.

About a year ago, Genesius Guild members J.C. Luxton and Cait Woolley had an idea: to bring Shakespearean theatre to a more intimate space than the outdoor Lincoln Park venue in which the Guild performs every summer.

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