2024 – 2025 Season
The SRC Theatre Program 2024-2025 season of productions has been announced. The program produces one play each fall and one play each spring. All SRC Theatre productions are presented in the Taylor Hall Theatre on the SRC Canton Campus.
Fall 2024
For Fall 2024, Spoon River College Theatre presents The Book of Will (2017) by Lauren Gunderson, recognized as the most-produced living American playwright in 2017, 2019, and 2020. Shortly after Shakespeare’s death, his beloved friends set out to make sure that their comrade will live on by publishing the texts of his many plays. Their struggle to accomplish this challenge is a (mostly) true story of loss, laughter, legacy, and love. The Book of Will runs November 8-10, 2024. OPEN AUDITIONS for The Book of Will, open to ANY resident of the SRC district, will take place September 3 & 4, 2024, in the Taylor Hall Theatre on the Canton Campus. Here are The Book of Will audition sides/scenes for download.”
Spring 2025
For Spring 2025, SRC Theatre presents The Runner Stumbles, a 1976 drama by American playwright Milan Stitt. It is 1911. A young Catholic nun has died under mysterious circumstances in a remote parish in northern Michigan, and her superior, Father Rivard, has been charged with her murder. The action of the play weaves together various parts of the priest’s timeline, alternating between the murder trial in the narrative present and scenes from the time before Sister Rita’s death. The Runner Stumbles was inspired by real events from the early 20th century. Performances run March 1-3, 2025.
SRC Drama Program
The SRC Drama Program has an academic curriculum that includes acting courses as well as drama-oriented classes for humanities and fine-arts credit. Each academic year, student-centered performance opportunities are available with planned productions in both fall and spring semesters. The Drama Program offers performing grants (scholarships) to recognize and reward the work of talented students.
In the academic year 2015-16, the student organization STAGE: SRC Theatre Artists Group for Education was created. The group has as its advisor SRC drama and English instructor Douglas Okey. STAGE provides support and awareness for the program as well as a pool of interested and talented students to participate in theatre productions.
The SRC Drama Program has produced graduates who have gone onto careers in performance, including TV and film actor David Pires and, most recently, New York stage performer Kyle Motsinger. A student from the 1990s, Jacob Welch, is a theatre professor and award-winning lighting designer.
In the years since founding director Bob Gorg retired in 2008, the program has undergone various transitions. Most recently, in the 2013-14 academic year, the program had been in hiatus for the purpose of rebuilding. During that year, our “black-box” theatre production space was extensively renovated and updated through the expert consultation of SRC graduate Jacob Welch.
For more information about upcoming productions and opportunities in the SRC Drama Program, contact Douglas Okey or by phone at (309) 649-6308. Click here for a printable brochure with information about the SRC Drama Program and student organization STAGE.