The Spotlight Theatre in Moline has announced their 2023 season, which is filled with popular musical titles.
The approved schedule is:
And season tickets will be available soon, the Spotlight announced Wednesday on Facebook. “Come celebrate with us at ‘Tuck Everlasting’ this weekend! It’s going to be a beautiful 2023!” the post said.
One of the new shows is an old evergreen — 1962’s “Oliver,” based on Charles Dickens’ classic “Oliver Twist,” which was originally planned for the Spotlight 2020 season. While it was fully cast that year, it will be re-cast for the 2023 production, Spotlight co-owner Brent Tubbs said Friday.
“Oliver” is very familiar, but “we love taking new takes on the classics and stuff like that, but then we also love bringing in pieces that haven’t been done around here before, as well,” he said. “I mean, it’s crazy how much gets pumped out every year.”
In that vein, the four-year-old Spotlight (1800 7th Ave., Moline) will present the regional premieres of “SpongeBob” (which opened on Broadway in December 2017) and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “School of Rock” (which premiered in December 2015). The community theater rights for both those newer shows became available just in the past year.
Tubbs is good friends with Greg Hipskind, director of the QC Rock Academy, and it was a natural to get those students involved in trying out for the “School of Rock” band (based on the hit 2003 film starring Jack Black). The new musical will be a partnership between the two groups.
“We had just kind of kept our eye on that show for a while now just ‘cause I love the movie and the musical, and the whole story of the kids. And I mean, the finale of that show is just going to be insane,” Tubbs said. “The kids actually playing is such a huge part of it, so I had already put that bug in Greg’s ear and he was all for it from the get-go.”
Both “School of Rock” and “SpongeBob” will be area premieres, as Spotlight has done local premieres for “The Lightning Thief” and the current “Tuck Everlasting” (which runs through this weekend).
Focusing on family-friendly
Spotlight also seems to enjoy focusing on shows that are either family-friendly, or feature young protagonists (like “Matilda,” “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,” and this season’s “Peter and the Starcatcher,” “Lightning Thief” and “Tuck”).
“I guess, subconsciously, we have,” Tubbs said Friday. “Because we have kids of our own and we love kids and I’m always drawn to stories with kids in it, for some reason, I don’t know. Just the thought of ‘School of Rock’ and that ending the whole finale, where they’re finally getting to shine and be themselves and do the thing they love.
“That just really, really speaks to me as a parent and as an adult,” he added. “I think we do kind of gravitate towards the family-friendly. I mean, we obviously have a strong connection to a lot of families already with all of our children’s programming. We do have a lot and it’s just kind of being around kids all the time.”
They picked “SpongeBob” (based on the wildly popular Cartoon Network series), because it’s so much fun, Tubbs said.
“We put it in our June slot, the summer slot, when kids are out of school. It’s tropical, it’s fun,” he said. “It’s very a summery show. We watched it and kind of fell in love with it.
“The music is actually each song in the show was written by a different band,” Tubbs noted of the varied score, with songs by David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Sara Bareilles, Steven Tyler, John Legend, Plain White T’s, Lady A, Panic! at The Disco and They Might Be Giants. “It’s a whole crazy melting pot of artists that wrote the music for the show. It’s just very fun and funny.”
Pairing “All Shook Up” and “Grease”
The Elvis jukebox musical “All Shook Up” (which premiered in 2005 and has been done at Circa and Music Guild) was put strategically as the first show of the year.
“We’ll be producing are our first high school class show, which is ‘Grease,’ so that will fall right around the same time as ‘All Shook Up,’” Tubbs said. “So that was a strategic idea on our part. We’ll be able to use a lot of the same set pieces and costumes and stuff like that, ‘cause it’s the same time period.”
Spotlight has never done a full high school class, through the fall. They have done high school summer camps.
“Those have been going great, so we decided — we’ve had a lot of people ask about a high school class that goes for several more weeks, like we do our other kids’ classes.
The smash Mel Brooks musical, “The Producers” (2001) is scheduled to debut Sept. 30, 2022 at Spotlight, starring Chris Tracy as Max, Max Robnett as Leo and Kirsten Sindelar as Ulla.
The holiday show this year is “A Christmas Story” (2012), also based on a popular film, from 1983. “Tuck Everlasting” (based on a popular children’s novel) will be performed at 7 p.m. tonight (Friday), and Saturday, plus 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 12. For tickets and information, visit the Spotlight website.
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