Courtney Crouse (who earned his master's in theater from Western Illinois University) is shown at right among cast members of "State Fair" at Clinton Area Showboat Theatre in 2022.
Courtney Crouse and Tommy Ranieri are both enthusiastic theatre directors who are taking on recent roles as artistic directors of, respectively, our area's summer-stock organizations the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre and the Timber Lake Playhouse.
Their passion for the craft and their new summer homes were obvious in recent interviews about the theatres located just 24 miles apart, one on each side of the Mississippi River.
Clinton and Crouse
A 2004 graduate of Missouri’s Stephens College, Crouse has spent three decades in the industry, and has performed in, directed, and/or produced more than 100 productions. He has an MFA in theatre from Western Illinois University, and among his credits, Crouse was in Circa '21's 2011 production of Happy Days: The Musical, playing Arthur “the Fonz” Fonzarelli. Despite his successes as an actor, however, Crouse said, “I've stopped performing, and I do enjoy directing more.”
Now in his first full season as artistic director in Clinton, Iowa, Crouse directed two Showboat productions in 2024, although he also worked at Timber Lake many years.
In 2022, while in grad school, Crouse got an offer from former artistic director James Beaudry (who also previously ran Timber Lake) to play the father in State Fair at the Showboat, his first experience there. After grad school, he offered to direct Rock of Ages and Million Dollar Quartet, both staged in Clinton last season.
"We had a wonderful summer," Crouse said recently. A native of central Missouri, his father owned and operated a community theatre, and Crouse continues to serve Stephens College as an adjunct theatre professor.
After working at Timber Lake from 2004-16, including as associate artistic director under Beaudry, Crouse spent several years in Chicago, and then earned his master's from WIU in 2023. His thesis project was directing Cabaret.
Crouse also directed a Marvin Hamlisch songbook production in Chicago, in June 2015, at the Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre. He had loved the composer (who died in 2012) his whole life, and that presentation – the revue set among employees at a piano bar – has been the show's only public staging to date. Crouse, however, is working on getting it licensed for other theatres, saying, "Every other composer of his ilk has a revue of their music.”
Noting that Clinton and Timber Lake are great supporters of young talent, Crouse said, "I really just enjoy working with young actors; it's one of my favorite things, I really love just connecting with these people and seeing them go on to do great things," adding that the 2004 acting company at Timber Lake featured Kyle Post, who went on to be in Broadway's original casts of Kinky Boots and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
“I love seeing a young actor, having them come in and play, and this person is someone I can help with their journey – see if I can help them unlock some things that are gonna make them a better artist. And in the process, they inevitably make me a better artist. It's a lot of fun. I want to help them grow and I love seeing them go off and become such wonderful people and performers."
Clinton is a training ground for performers in their early 20s, providing them opportunities to work with professionals. "You come to a place like Timber Lake or the Showboat, and you're going to be immersed with 12 to 18 of the most talented people in the nation your age, doing the thing you want to do," Crouse said. "A three-month summer season almost gets you, like, five years of work on yourself. You really become a better performer."
Some Showboat productions include Equity performers and 80 percent of the casts are the same from show to show. This summer's lineup of musicals includes:
* June 12 - 22: The Addams Family (directed by Crouse)
* June 26 - July 6: Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
* July 17 - 27: Bright Star (directed by Crouse)
* July 31 - August 10: Almost Heaven: The Songs of John Denver
Theatres such as the Showboat and Rock Island's Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse, Crouse noted, often pick shows that people are familiar with – or shows from writers they're familiar with. Though many may be unfamiliar with its title, that's true for Bright Star, a 2014 bluegrass musical penned by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell.
"It's just gorgeous," said Crouse, who described the work as a Southern Gothic mystery. "Steve Martin definitely helps people get in the seats, but people are surprised with the heart and the energy he puts into this, which is quite different from what you normally know about Steve Martin, but no less wonderful.
“I really like the boat,” said Crouse of the intimate, 217-seat venue, “because you have to be creative. That's sometimes when people do their best work – when you have to be pushed out of the box. That's one of my favorite things to do. 'How do we take a big show like Addams Family and put it in this space?'”
Timber Lake and Ranieri
Tommy Ranieri, a 28-year-old native of Long Island, New York, has worked across the country, including on Broadway and many cruise lines. But in leading the Timber Lake Playhouse (TLP) in Mount Carroll, Illinois, since January 2024, he also stands as the nation's youngest artistic director of a regional Actor’s Equity theatre,
He earned a BFA in drama directing from New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, an institution that he described as “like Harvard Law School for directing. Playwrights Horizons partners with Tisch for directing, and there were a lot of new works. It was all about creating new ideas and telling new stories as a director."
Ranieri acted in his first community production at age 12, in Guys & Dolls. He loves theatre for its "radical empathy – going out of your way to feel what somebody else feels," he said, noting he directed his first show, Godspell, at 17 after appearing in three productions of the musical.
One of his favorite shows he directed was in Long Island during the first year of COVID: a fairly new musical titled The Wildness, which, in the fall of 2020, was presented in an open-air, tented presentation in a law-firm parking lot. That's how he got his job on Broadway.
"I helped open up eight shows they were running," Ranieri said of the Nederlander Organization, which reopened in summer 2021. Ranieri also worked as a facilities manager and in production management, and served as the COVID safety manager for the Nederlander Organization's Broadway reopening of the Tony Award-winning Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. "It was crazy, but it was great."
Ranieri started as a freelance director at TLP in 2023 (for 9 to 5: The Musical) after having directed at the Dollywood theme park in Tennessee. Last summer, he directed Anything Goes and Jekyll & Hyde at TLP, the latter winning the Chicago BroadwayWorld Awards for Best Musical and Ranieri's direction.
In addition, he introduced the Andy Bro New Works Commission, which offers early to mid-career playwrights the opportunity for a full-scale production in the summer season, honoring the theatre’s founder. Bro was the co-founder of TLP, which opened in 1962, and while serving as its principal artistic and executive director during its first two decades, he mentored many young theatrical artists. Bro died in 2020 at age 89.
This August at TLP, Ranieri will present his world-premiere musical (its score by co-writer Alexander Sage Oyen) in the Andy Bro New Works Commission: a currently untitled comedy about a fallen comedian forced to return home on parole to save her family's glue factory.
"You have the ability to see something that has never happened before and never will happen again," said Ranieri of his love for theatre. "You're telling the story in that room at that time, to that audience. That's why it's important -- you have live storytelling when personal human connection is like nowhere anymore … . The perfect experience is the one that's happening right now, because it's happening right now."
The Timber Lake summer season features:
* Through June 15: Saturday Night Fever (directed by Ranieri)
* June 20 - July 6: Rock of Ages
* July 11 - 27: Waitress
* August 1 - 17: Disney's Frozen
* August 22 - 31: Andy Bro New Works Commission (directed by Ranieri)
* September 12 - 21: The Bridges of Madison County
For composer Jason Robert Brown's Bridges musical, Ranieri is bringing in a projectionist from Broadway's Smash to have live cameras for projections on a big screen – TLP's first-ever attempt at the scenic effect. "I'm so pumped, I'm so looking forward to it," Ranieri said. "It's going to be stunning."
Like Crouse's, Ranieri's TLP job takes up just one-third of the year, and he has other projects he can work on the rest of the time.
"I'm country mouse/city mouse," Ranieri said. "I have the ability to be at the forefront of what the next generation of making theatre looks like. I was 27 when I was asked to do this; that's, like, crazy. People trust me, though, and feel like I'm the person who can lead the artistic organization. It landed in my lap in a great way.”
And as with the Clinton Showboat, TLP – which boasts 371 seats and a fully operational stage turntable – has a resident company of about 14 actors, many of whom are just out of college.
“I believe in cultivating young talent,” Ranieri said. “You're shaping what that next generation is gonna look like, and you can help catapult their career, getting them to the next place." Timber Lake alumni have included Rockford native Joe Mantello, who directed the original Broadway production of Wicked.
"It's like the coolest opportunity ever,” Ranieri said, “so I feel an awesome responsibility in this job. That's why I take it super-seriously. This has total national impact."
For more information on, and tickets to, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre (311 Riverview Drive, Clinton IA), visit ClintonShowboat.org.
For more information on, and tickets to, the Timber Lake Playhouse (8215 Black Oak Road, Mt. Carroll IL), visit TimberLakePlayhouse.org.
