"Most of our students work jobs when they're not at school," says Scott Community College (SCC) theatre instructor Steve Flanigin. "So when you say, 'We're going to do a play - who'd be interested?', you have to see who's available before you decide what play you can do. Because if they have to go to a job when we normally rehearse - Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from three to five - then they can't do the show.
"I think that's one of the challenges of doing theatre at a community college that a lot of people don't realize," he continues. "What we do depends on who is here in the fall or the spring, and what their schedules are like. I mean, I'd love to do Hello, Dolly!, but not with four people."
Happily for Flanigin, he was able to secure roughly a dozen student participants for the school's latest production. And while that number wasn't large enough for a Hello, Dolly!, it was perfectly appropriate for the show that he and fellow SCC instructor John Turner did choose: a new adaptation of author H.G. Wells' alien-invasion classic War of the Worlds, running October 20 through 30.
Like most professional performers, Chicagoan Nick Semar has a healthy number of musicals on his résumé.
[Author's note: The following interview with Eddie Staver III was written for 
There's a common misconception that, once the musical- and comedy-filled summer season is over, our area's theatrical output becomes a lot more demanding. But that's absolutely not true. For example, this autumn brings with it the Western charmer Make Me a Cowboy. And the showtune pastiche Give My Regards! And the fairy-tale spoof Honk! And ... .
Quad City Music Guild's new production of The Music Man - the Meredith Willson classic running August 5 through 14 - stars husband and wife Christopher and Erika Thomas as romantic leads Harold Hill and Marian Paroo. And just to be clear: Yes, the couple knows how close to nauseatingly adorable it is for them to be playing these roles opposite one another.
"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.
Odd as it may seem now, there actually was a period in the Harrison Hilltop Theatre's history - a run of 12 shows, to be precise - in which the company didn't produce any musicals whatsoever. Yet after staging a dozen plays between June 2008 and May 2009, co-founders Tristan Tapscott and Chris Walljasper chose to open the theatre's second season with a production of Jonathan Larson's rock musical tick ... tick ... BOOM!
Adulterous lovers. Women and men in drag. Mistreated orphans. Nuns sniffing glue. Grandmas peddling racy underwear.
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.
[Author's note: The following was written for 
