Performing Art

When Mac Warren submitted Rent to the Muni’s play reading committee, he knew the edgy show would be a tough sell. The Tony and Pulitzer winning musical, based loosely on La Boheme, depicts New York artists struggling with HIV/AIDS, addictions and death. Although school editions and other versions omit some offensive language and the sexually […]

If there’s one thing the cast and crew of the Muni’s latest production want you to know, it’s this: their Peter Pan is more than just a kids’ show. And while the husband-and-wife directing team of Gil and Ann Opferman have previously directed children’s classics in the White Rabbit series at the Springfield Theatre Centre, […]

It’s more than you,It’s more than me,No matter what we are,We are a family. This dream is for all of us, This one can be real,And you can’t stop us now,Because of how you feel. The words at left are what Jimmy, C.C., Curtis and the others sing in a Miami Beach dressing room to […]

Sangamon Auditorium’s upcoming season, starting in September, is a heady mix of surefire crowd-pleasers and boundary pushing one-offs, finding Broadway touring companies rubbing shoulders with classic rockers, country and folk virtuosos, jazz musicians, world music extravaganzas, operetta ensembles, family entertainers and the occasional uncategorizable act. The season’s theatrical musicals run the gamut from the New […]

“The word of the day is ‘immersion,’” says Legacy Theatre owner Scott Richardson, and truthfully there are few more appropriate terms to describe the Legacy’s production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, now in the middle of a three-weekend stand. The innovative show breaks the conventional fourth wall in numerous ways, most pointedly via the […]

The stories we tell and the songs we sing help us make sense of the past, understand the present and build the future. Civil War Journeys, which opened last weekend at New Salem’s Theatre in the Park and continues its run July 19-22, is not an action-packed drama and it is not a lighthearted musical. […]

“I would say buying real estate is an emotional decision,” says Scott Richardson. “It’s probably not the wisest move, but sometimes you follow the heart. So we bought a theater!” Not just any theater. The building in question, at 101 E. Lawrence, had served as a focal point for local performing arts for more than […]

Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson, the head of the UIS theatre department these last 10 years, is taking a sabbatical this semester, but he is staying home in Springfield. As head of an academic program, he does not normally have the time to act in productions. But his sabbatical has given him time to perform in what is […]

The new year begins with exciting theater in Springfield, with the now-playing Chess, a musical by Benny Anderssen and Bjorn Ulvaes (of ABBA fame) with lyrics by Tim Rice (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita), in a production directed by Laurie O’Brien at the Hoogland Center for the Arts, continuing this weekend (Fri. and Sat. at 8 […]

On Dec. 31, 1987, Springfield became the first city in Illinois to host a First Night event celebrating the new year through the arts. Penny Wollan-Kriel, executive director of the Springfield Area Arts Council, jokes that the organizers could have won a “First Night on a Shoestring” award that year because of how much they […]

Don’t let the music fool you. The stage adaptation of Shenandoah is a drama. Set in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the Civil War, the play explores the impact of the war on a family whose patriarch, Charlie Anderson, says he will protect himself and his family but is against “open season on strangers.” Anderson, […]

What could possibly be more fun than a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake? How about two ice cream cakes and one wedding ring? Throw in a rich software developer named Alvin Chandler, a veterinarian named Brad Chancellor, a good girl, a gold digger, two mothers who want their sons to marry, and a gossipy cousin to […]