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Starlight Theatre is an outdoor theatre operated by Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. Performances are held in the outdoor Bengt Sjostrom Theatre. Operations of Rock Valley College Studio Theatre, an indoor black box theatre, were suspended in 2016. [1] Starlight Theatre also has an award-winning structure designed by Jeanne Gang and Studio Gang Architects [2] that features a unique, one-of-a-kind movable roof, which was added in 2003. [3] Starlight Theatre has transformed itself into a popular destination for the Northern Illinois region. The theatre is situated on 217 acres that were purchased by the college in 1965 from Dr. J.J. Rogers.
In the fall of 1966, a group of Rock Valley College students approached Rueben Johnson, the acting Dean of Community Services, with the idea of creating a theatre program. Their aim was to foster public appreciation for the college's scenic farm setting. The following year, they staged an outdoor musical near the farm pond, which had been purchased in 1965 from Dr. J.J. Rogers. They chose to perform "Finian’s Rainbow," a production that addresses overcoming racial barriers through hard work and a touch of magic. Community members enjoyed this inaugural performance from lawn chairs. Since its inception in 1967, Starlight Theatre has produced a total of 191 productions. [4]
List of Main Stage Performances and Directors
1967: Finian's Rainbow (Dir. David Meisenholder)
1968: Patience & Waiting for Godot (Dir. Donald Colucci)
1969: Oklahoma! (Dir. John Pearce)
1970: Man of La Mancha (Dir. Ted Bacino)
1971: Oliver! & Fiddler on the Roof (Dir. Ted Bacino)
1972: 1776 & The King & I (Dir. Ted Bacino)
1973: My Fair Lady & Promises, Promises (Dir. Ted Bacino)
1974: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying & No, No, Nanette (Dir. Ted Bacino)
1975: Godspell & Jesus Christ Superstar (Dir. Ted Bacino)
1976: Of Thee I Sing, A Little Night Music (Dir. Kirk Denmark), & Once Upon a Mattress (Dir. Jim Smith)
1977: The Sound of Music & The Music Man (Dir. Jim Crow)
1978: Camelot & Show Boat (Dir. Jim Crow)
1979: West Side Story & Hello, Dolly! (Dir. Jim Crow)
1980: Carnival & Funny Girl (Dir. Jim Crow)
1981: The Wizard of Oz & H.M.S. Pinafore (Dir. A. Neil Thackaberry)
1982: Grease (Dir. Dominic Messimi), Jacques Brel, & South Pacific (Dir. A. Neil Thackaberry)
1983: Man of La Mancha (Dir Dominic Messimi), The Pirates of Penzance, & Guys & Dolls (Dir. A. Neil Thackaberry)
1984: Carousel, My Fair Lady (Dir. A. Neil Thackaberry), & George M! (Dir. Victoria Bussert)
1985: Cabaret (Dir. Rod & Ginny MacDonald), Oklahoma! (Dir. Thom Sobota), & Evita (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1986: Barnum (Dir. Michael P. Webb), The Music Man (Dir. Leslie Robbins), & Fiddler on the Roof (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1987: Peter Pan, 1776, & Candide (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1988: Camelot, Annie Get Your Gun, & 42nd Street (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1989: Oliver!, Jesus Christ Superstar, & Anything Goes (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1990: The King & I, The Student Prince, & My One and Only (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1991: West Side Story, Shenandoah, & A Chorus Line (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1992: Hello Dolly, Big River, & Into the Woods (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1993: Kiss Me Kate, Rags, & City of Angels (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1994: Meet Me in St. Louis, My Fair Lady, & Evita (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1995: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The New Pirates of Penzance, & Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1996: Bye Bye Birdie, Pippin, Crazy For You, & Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1997: Guys & Dolls, Children of Eden, & The Sound of Music (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1998: The Secret Garden, Cinderella, & Western Star (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
1999: Annie, Once on this Island, & Fiddler on the Roof (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2000: Godspell, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, & Hans Christian Andersen, The Storyteller's Story (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2001: The Music Man, Grease, & Rebels (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2002: South Pacific, Honk!, & 42nd Street (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2003: Big River, Just So, & The Children of Eden (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2004: Show Boat, You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Hot Mikado, & Seussical (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2005: Oklahoma!, Jesus Christ Superstar, Disney's Beauty & the Beast, & Chess (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2006: Cats, State Fair, Miss Saigon, & Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2007: Peter Pan, Disney's Geppetto & Son, Jekyll & Hyde, & Ragtime (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2008: Jonah- An Old Testament Yarn, The Wiz, Little Shop of Horrors, & Thoroughly Modern Millie (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2009: David the King, Evita, The King and I, & The Producers (Dir. by Michael P. Webb)
2010: Chicago, Aida, Annie, & Rent (Dir. by Michael P. Webb)
2011: The Phantom of the Opera, After Dark, The Drowsy Chaperone, & Hairspray (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2012: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Little Women, Into the Woods, & 9 to 5: The Musical (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2013: Starlight Express, Xanadu, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, & Les Misérables (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2014: The Sound of Music, Tintypes, Honk!, Spamalot, & Angel (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2015: Mary Poppins, The Last Five Years, Memphis, & Young Frankenstein (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2016: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera, & Children of Eden (Dir. Michael P. Webb)
2017: Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Peter and the Starcatcher, Sister Act, & Godspell (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2018: Shrek the Musical, Jane Eyre, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, & Anything Goes (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2019: Mamma Mia!, West Side Story, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Dir. Christopher D. Brad), & The Addams Family (Dir. Hannah R. Sleger)
2020: No season due to the Covid-19 pandemic
2021: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Dir. Richard Raether), You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown, Once Upon a Mattress, & Little Shop of Horrors (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2022: The Little Mermaid, Disaster! (Dir. Christopher D. Brady), Dreamgirls, (Dir. Mychall Miller-Cornejo) & Hello Dolly! (Dir. Wendy Taylor)
2023: Footloose: The Musical (Dir. Amanda Jensen), In The Heights (Dir. Mychall Miller-Cornejo), Oliver!, & Cinderella (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2024: Legally Blonde (Dir. Clarissa Dahlhauser), Guys & Dolls (Dir. Mychall Miller-Cornejo), The Color Purple (Dir. Marcus Tobias), & Newsies (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
In 2018, Starlight Theatre introduced the Starlittle series. This series contained shows aimed towards young children and families. These shows occurred at the end of the main Starlight season.
List of Starlittle Performances and Directors
2018: Cinderella... After the Ball (Dir. Spencer Douglas)
2019: Madagascar (Dir. Mychall Miller-Cornejo)
2020: No season due to the Covid-19 pandemic
2021: Pinkalicious (Dir. Theresa Garner)
2022: How I Became A Pirate (Dir. Rebecca Jensen)
2023: The Stinky Cheese Man & Other Fairly Stupid Tales (Dir. Jennifer Thompson)
In November 2023, it was announced that the Starlittle series would be retired and replaced with the Starbright series which are shows that primarily cast from the ages of 8 to 18.
In November 2023, Starlight Theatre announced that the Starlittle series would be retired. It has been replaced by the Starbright series which casts from the ages of 8 to 18. Unlike the Starlittle series, the Starbright series is not primarily for young children and families but is a series where young talent can get involved at Starlight. The Starbright series premiered in 2024.
2024: Disney's Beauty and The Beast (Dir. Jennifer Thompson)
Starlight Theatre has done a number of Shakespeare performances. These performances are done on the Ray Castle Stage, which is rebuilt every year in the east lawn next to the Bengt Sjostrom Theatre.
List of Shakespeare Performances and Directors
2018: The Taming of the Shrew (Dir. Hannah R. Sleger)
2019: Twelfth Night (Dir. Kevin Poole)
2020: No Shakespeare due to the Covid-19 pandemic
2021: Macbeth (Dir. Claire Dahlhauser)
2022: A Comedy of Errors (Dir. Jo Laughran)
2023: Love’s Labour’s Lost (Dir. Kevin Poole)
Starlight Theatre has put on several productions in a black box theatre created on the stage of the Bengt Sjostrom Theatre. This black box theatre has come to be known as “The Cabin” and is reserved for productions performed in the fall and winter. The productions put on in the cabin have been mostly Christmas shows, with the exception of 2022. These productions are referred to as “traditions.”
List of Tradition performances and directors
2018: A Charlie Brown Christmas (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2019: A Christmas Story: The Musical (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2020: No tradition due to the Covid-19 pandemic
2021: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Dir. Christopher D. Brady)
2022: The Rocky Horror Show (Dir. Andrew Harth)
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.
Evita is a musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. It concentrates on the life of Argentine political leader Eva Perón, the second wife of Argentine president Juan Perón. The story follows Evita's early life, rise to power, charity work, and death.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a sung-through musical with lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the character of Joseph from the Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly; their first collaboration, The Likes of Us, written in 1965, was not performed until 2005. Its family-friendly retelling of Joseph, familiar themes, and catchy music have resulted in numerous stagings. According to the owner of the copyright, the Really Useful Group, by 2008 more than 20,000 schools and amateur theatre groups had staged productions.
Julie Covington is an English singer and actress, best known for recording the original version of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina", which she sang on the 1976 concept album Evita.
The Really Useful Group Ltd. (RUG) is an international company set up in 1977 by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is involved in theatre, film, television, video and concert productions, merchandising, magazine publishing, records and music publishing. The name is inspired by a phrase from the children's book series The Railway Series in which Thomas the Tank Engine and the other locomotives are referred to as "Really Useful Engines".
The Princess of Wales Theatre is a 2,000-seat live theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located on King Street West, in Toronto's downtown Entertainment District. The theatre's name has a triple meaning: it honours Diana, Princess of Wales, with whose consent the theatre was named; it links the building to its sister theatre, the Royal Alexandra, one block to the east, also named – with Royal assent – for a former Princess of Wales; and it recalls the Princess Theatre, Toronto's first "first-class legitimate" playhouse, that stood three blocks to the east until 1931.
A show tune is a song originally written as part of the score of a work of musical theatre or musical film, especially if the piece in question has become a standard, more or less detached in most people's minds from the original context.
Music Theatre Louisville was a non-profit organization in Louisville, Kentucky, dedicated to producing, presenting, and developing diverse and affordable entertainment. Up through 2008, the company staged several shows during the summer at Iroquois Amphitheater in Iroquois Park. In 2009, the company moved to the Bomhard Theater at The Kentucky Center.
The Premiere Collection Encore is a 1992 compilation album by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The album acted as a follow-up to The Premiere Collection: The Best of Andrew Lloyd Webber. In the four intervening years, the original London production of Aspects of Love and Lloyd Webber's new production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat had both opened; therefore a number of tracks were included from those shows.
Robert Felix Torti is an American actor of stage and screen.
The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois is a respected Chicago area regional theatre. Attached to the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort, the theatre produces an average of five musicals each year, presented in the round, as well as productions aimed at younger audiences. A small, live orchestra provides accompaniment.
The Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival is an annual award presented by the Society of London Theatre in recognition of achievements in commercial London theatre. The awards were established as the Society of West End Theatre Awards in 1976, and renamed in 1984 in honour of English actor and director Laurence Olivier.
Gary James Bond was an English actor and singer. He is known for originating the role of Joseph in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, his performances in several high-profile West End plays and musicals, and his portrayal of protagonist John Grant in the Australian film Wake in Fright (1971).
Eric Kunze is an American stage actor and singer. He showed an early aptitude for singing and was involved in choir and theater at Rancho Buena Vista High School. He is best known for his roles on Broadway.
Op zoek naar Joseph was a 2008 talent show-themed television series produced by the AVRO in the Netherlands. It searched for a new, unknown lead to play Joseph in a 2009 Dutch revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Plays-in-the-Park is a government-sponsored outdoor amphitheater located in Edison, New Jersey. Middlesex County's Plays-in-the-Park has been in existence since 1963. Generally, three full-scale musical productions run in the summer, from June to August. In the fall, the theater is transformed into a black box where the annual children's show takes place; the indoor children's musical tradition began in 1992. In the winter, Plays-in-the-Park uses the State Theater in New Brunswick, NJ to put on their final show of the season. Plays-in-the-Park has been using the State Theater for their annual production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat since 1994.
The Rock Valley College Studio Theatre was an indoor community theater located on the Rock Valley College campus in Rockford, Illinois; its operational status has been put on hold indefinitely, a casualty of the Illinois Budget crisis. It is often conflated with the Rock Valley College Starlight Theatre, which operates in the nearby Bengt Sjostrom Theatre, an award-winning outdoor complex known as Starlight Theatre by local residents. Confusion exists as both theatres are operated by the RVC Theatre Department and stand in close proximity to one another.
Drayton Entertainment is a not-for-profit professional theatre company based in Southwestern Ontario operating seven venues across the province: the original Drayton Festival Theatre in Drayton, Huron Country Playhouse and Playhouse II in Grand Bend, King's Wharf Theatre in Penetanguishene, Schoolhouse Theatre in St. Jacobs, St. Jacobs Country Playhouse in Waterloo, and Hamilton Family Theatre Cambridge, formerly Dunfield Theatre Cambridge in Cambridge.
Ozark Actors Theatre is an Equity theater company in Rolla, Missouri founded in 1987 by pianist Gail Andrews-Hintz and founding Artistic Director F. Reed Brown with the help of actress Cindy Beger and her friend Kathy Pukas. In 1993, The Cedar Street Playhouse became the home of Ozark Actors Theatre. Ozark Actors Theatre quickly gained a reputation for doing quality theatrical productions, and drew acclaim in Missouri and nationwide. In 2010 Jason Cannon became the artistic director, and Pamela Reckamp took the position in 2015.
The 2020 Laurence Olivier Awards was held on 25 October 2020 at the London Palladium and hosted by Jason Manford, who presented all of the awards except Special Recognition.