Spotlight Theatre picks 2024 season
Women will be front and center in many Spotlight Theatre shows that are scheduled for 2024.
The theater (1800 7th Ave., Moline) has announced the following productions for next year:
- February: “Legally Blonde”
- April: “Anastasia”
- June: Disney’s “Tarzan”
- August: “Ripcord”
- October: “Evita”
Spotlight hasn’t picked a December 2024 show yet, but expects to announce that later this month, Spotlight co-owner Bent Tubbs said Tuesday. He’s very happy to bring in two popular shows originally scheduled for 2020, “Tarzan” and “Evita” (postponed due to COVID).
“We’re really excited to finally get to do those obviously,” Tubbs said. “It’s always tricky putting a season together. So just kind of with the other shows we were looking at, it felt like those really plugged in really well to make a well-rounded season.”
“Legally Blonde” and “Anastasia” were picked because they’re simply great shows, he said, noting the latter will be a QC community theater premiere.
“ ‘Legally Blonde’ is just such a fun, upbeat show,” Tubbs said. “And our February show has kind of tended to be more younger people in the show.”
Previous February musicals at Spotlight have included “All Shook Up,” “The Lightning Thief” and “The Wedding Singer.”
The licensing rights for “Anastasia” (music and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and a book by Terrence McNally, based on the 1997 animated film of the same name) recently become available and Spotlight wanted to lock that down, Tubbs said.
“That’s one we’ve kind of been keeping an eye on, for sure,” he said. “Just because it’s such a great story and the music is so beautiful on that one.”
What are “Ripcord” and “Puffs”?
They chose the comedy “Ripcord” (by David Lindsay-Abaire) for August 2024 partly to offer variety from all musicals.
“Last year we did five musicals, and in our first season we did six musicals. And what we found was six big musicals was a lot,” Tubbs said. “It was a lot to put together in a year or so.”
Last August, Spotlight didn’t do a mainstage show and started looking at non-musicals for that time slot. This August, they will present the comedy “Puffs.”
“What if we just did not do a huge musical and we just did a straight play?” Tubbs asked. “One thing that kind of pushed us to do it too was that we talked to a lot of performers around here that really enjoy doing just straight plays.”
“We thought, well, that’d be really good to have that option in there for people that wanna do a play in our space,” he said. “So ‘Puffs’ is an absolutely hilarious show and ‘Ripcord’ is no different.”
Tubbs and his wife Sara (co-owner of the theater) saw the show a couple years ago in California.
“It’s been on our mind ever since because it is hysterically funny, but also has just this really great touching story,” Brent said.
Spotlight originally wasn’t going to do a show this August, but wanted to plug in “Puffs” (a Harry Potter parody) since it would be a lot of fun and more manageable, he said.
“It didn’t really work in any of our kind of big musical slots. So we were like, maybe if we put that in our August show because it’s not as, you know, musicals are always so much. There’s so many people involved in the musicals.”
“Puffs,” subtitled “Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic,” is a 2015 original play by New York-based playwright Matt Cox. The play is a parody of the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling.
Having several female-driven shows for 2024 was “intentional, but kind of a happy accident as well,” Tubbs said. “And then we got ‘Tarzan’ smack dab in the middle there to balance things out.”
“Ripcord” (2015) is set in a senior living facility, focusing on two older women at odds.
“As this odd couple embarks upon increasingly emotionally and physically dangerous tricks in order to break each other, secrets are revealed, lives are jeopardized, and peach cobbler is enjoyed. David Lindsay-Abaire’s Ripcord is an often slapstick, always surprising comedy, an enemies-to-friends story for a pair of excellently well-rounded, mature women,” according to a synopsis.
Lindsay-Abaire is known for penning the 2007 Pulitzer winner “Rabbit Hole,” as well as the book for musicals “High Fidelity,” “Shrek” and “Kimberly Akimbo.”
For more information on Spotlight, visit the theater website HERE.
