The People of Much Ado: Cast & Crew Interviews by John R. Turner

The People: Cast

Denise Yoder: Doña Petra, Princess of Aragon
Mark Garden: Don John, Prince, bastard brother to Doña Petra
JC Luxton: Benedick, Soldier, friend to Claudio
Noah Stivers: Claudio, Right hand to Doña Petra, friend to Benedick
Kitty Israel: Corrada, Soldier, attendant to Don John – AND – Ursula, Employee of Leonetta
Jessica White: Leonetta, Former soldier of Messina; Hero’s mother
John Smick: Antonio, Brother of Leonetta – AND – Seacoal, Man of the Night Watch
Lily Blouin: Beatrice, Niece of Leonetta, cousin to Hero
Mattie Gelaude: Hero, Daughter of Leonetta, cousin to Beatrice
Ryan Elgin: Borachio, Employee of Leonetta, follower of Don John Friar Francis
Jen Brown: Margaret, Waiting-gentlewoman attendant on Hero A sexton
Ben Graham: Dogberry, Master Constable of the Night Watch
Milo Houdyshell: Verges, Man of the Night Watch, attendant to Dogberry
Mischa Hooker: Oatcake, Employee of Leonetta, man of the Night Watch
Jenny Lynn Stacy: Balthasar, Soldier, musician

The People: Others

Jarrod DeRooi: Director
Liz Sager: Stage Manager
Matt Moody: Venue Manager

The Interviews

Denise Yoder (Doña Petra)

I’ve been listing roles in these interviews that people had in previous plays. But when it comes to Denise Yoder, it might make more sense just to enumerate the three or four productions she HASN’T been in.

From Prenzie’s very first production (with three parts in Measure for Measure) to now, nearly every playbill has had the name Denise Yoder on it as a character or working behind the scenes.

Just a list of her characters is a study in Prenzie history and philosophy. Gertrude in Hamlet. Lady Macbeth (2005 version). Olivia in Twelfth Night. Margaret in Much Ado (2009 version). Lady Paulina in Winter’s Tale. One of the unforgettable Dames of Denmark. Volumnia in Coriolanus.

Add to that Quince in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Tranio in Taming of the Shrew, Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, the title role in Tartuffe, Kent in Lear, Wrath in Faustus, Touchstone in As You Like It, Banquo in Macbeth (2019 version) and now “Doña Petra” instead of Don Pedro in Much Ado.

Prenzie is famous (or notorious) for gender-switching roles, and Yoder has been the spearhead of this trend.

“Well, a big part of it is that more women than men audition for parts in plays nowadays. Remember, women couldn’t even ACT in Shakespeare’s day—all female parts were played by men—and that necessarily limited what a ‘woman’ in a play could do. Now we can open those parts up and allow more freedom and character development.

“And, once again because of the constraints of his era, the male parts were the better ones. So with more women auditioning, it seems natural to let them try these meatier parts.

“We don’t do it just to do it. Changing Don Pedro to Doña Petra gives a whole different slant on things, opens up new layers of interaction between major characters. These switches in ‘who can be what’ are happening in society as well, and it seems right to reflect this on the stage.”

Along with acting and public relations, Yoder is also one of the fight masters for Prenzie, making sure the fight scenes (involving swords, daggers, and even Nepalese kukris) look good and stay safe.

How does a teenager in the early 1980s decide she wants to grow up to be an actor and fight manager?

“That’s not how it happened. Theater wasn’t on my radar at all.

“It wasn’t till my mother took me in eighth grade to see a production of DRACULA for Halloween. I was entranced. At the end of the play, they drive the stake through his heart and he drops into the coffin, and I said to myself ‘I wanna be a part of this!’ ”

She took speech and acting in high school, did some of the school plays, and then went on to get a degree in athletic training at Ohio U, leaving the acting stuff behind.

Then, after returning to the Quad Cities, a friend got a part in a Richmond Hill Players production, and the acting bug returned to life.

This is where the creation story begins. She loved working with Genesius Guild, which only works outdoors and in the summer. She and her friends wished they could do Shakespeare all year round; with a lot of scraping and scrounging and calling in of favors, they produced MEASURE FOR MEASURE, the famous “Show out of Nothing” in 2003.

And now it’s twenty years later.

When one has been Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, Tartuffe, Touchstone, Doña Petra and so many other immortal characters, What’s Left?

Denise gets a faraway look in her eye and says, “Well, it’s kind of difficult. Nothing is really screaming at me, because you kind of age up and out of things. I’m just happy to be able to do great theater and shows that people talk about. It’s crazy when you think how long we’ve been doing this.”

Crazy? Not at all. It’s theater.

Mark Garden (Don John)

[Editor’s note: This interview was conducted in Feb. 2023; since then, Mark also appeared on the Genesius Guild stage as Menelaus in “Iphigenia in Aulis.”]

The juiciest role in most drama is that of the villain. This is three times as true in Shakespeare.

So the villain has to be good at what he or she does.

But when that villain is only in his SECOND PLAY ever—that is a rare gift.

Mark Garden has the role of Don John in Prenzie’s production of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

This comedy from Shakespeare’s middle period is the first Prenzie production in three years. The show is one of his wittiest, with Benedick and Beatrice starting out with total disdain for each other that blossoms (with much help) into deepest love. Of course, everything that could possibly go wrong with this love story does, and the ways disaster is defeated are more than half the fun of this engaging work.

Mark’s stage experience consists of one play—the role of the raging, bigoted Juror No. Three in TWELVE ANGRY JURORS by Reginald Rose (Playcrafters, 2022).

I was honored to have performed the same role 20 years back, and was amazed by the depth and nuance of Garden’s interpretation. That a first-time actor could nail a piece down so tight was something I wanted to know more about.

“My son was in a play in high school—he played Henry Potter in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’” Yet another bad guy! This must run in Garden’s family.

“He got lots of pleasure out of it, and he urged me to go try. So I went to the audition for TWELVE ANGRY JURORS. Mike Schulz was just so nice and helpful to me, and I got the part of Juror No. 3. It was an intense experience—in a good way. So I wanted to do some more.”

“Several of the other actors at the Playcrafters Barn production were Prenzie members” (in fact, they were Mattie Gelaude, Noah Stivers, Jess White, and Kitty Israel—all of whom are in MUCH ADO).

“They all said I’d love working in a Prenzie production and told me to audition. So I did.”

In the real world Garden is a licensed therapist and mental health counselor. He’s been doing this for 15 years, and never until now began thinking about theater.

“I learned that Sidney Greenstreet never made a movie till he was in his sixties. Maybe I’m like him.” Garden said.

Shakespeare is another learning experience for Garden. Unlike many Prenzie Players, he neither studies nor teaches Shakespeare. But that’s not a handicap for those who want to act.

“Jarrod [director Jarrod DeRooi] is just so supportive and helpful—man, is he organized! This all helps because Shakespeare is a whole new world to me. Yet the emotions and the timing and the humor—it’s timeless.”

What’s his dream role? Not surprisingly, it’s another baddie.

“Scrooge. I’d love to give that a shot. It’s such a wonderful story about change and growth.”

As we talked about his son who inspired him to audition, he let it be known that this month is the one-year anniversary of his death at age 29.

“He was a good man. He’s here with me. He comes and channels through me—it’s a healing thing. This is his gift.”

If it’s going to happen, magic will happen in a theater.

JC Luxton (Benedick)

JC Luxton went to dozens and dozens of plays. He especially went to productions of Shakespeare. Most of the time, he didn’t like what he saw and heard.

“I’d go to every show I could in the early 2000s and sit there, trying to find parts that I liked. When I did, I would think, OK, now how can we make this better?”

This wasn’t just a hobby or a morbid bent of criticism for Luxton. He had a plan.

“I really don’t know how many people were there, Denise Yoder, Andy Koski, Aaron Sullivan and his wife Jill, Mike Callahan, a few others. We wanted to do, not GOOD Shakespeare, but GREAT Shakespeare.”

One of those others, Cait Woolley (now Bodenbender), shared his vision, plus the desire to do Shakespeare indoors and year-round. During one of their meetings at the Hunter’s Club (a venue now long gone), they decided that if JC would direct, Cait would work on a venue and act. If there was a second play, they could switch jobs.

“So we rented a place nearby called The Peanut Gallery, which ALSO doesn’t exist anymore, and went to work.

“I wanted the actors to be really into the content and the meaning of the words. I wanted them to understand the era. I wanted them to contribute to the rep-resentation. We were going to have a pretty bare stage, like Shakespeare did.”

They chose MEASURE FOR MEASURE as the work to do, and, twenty years ago as of March, put on a show that sold out and got noticed. The famous “Show out of Nuthin’ ” has been written about before, and probably could use a revival, on stage and in print. But it happened, and it was good. No—it was GREAT.

Twenty years on, Luxton shakes his head in wonder. “I really didn’t know whether it would go beyond that one show. Then you, John, were in the second show (HAMLET), and then there was a third (TEMPEST), and—it’s been a continuous surprise to me.”

Luxton came out of college with an MFA degree in fiction writing from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a minor in theater. Then he faced a difficult career choice because “All I really wanted to do was Shakespeare and improv.

“I was a born ham growing up. I worked with Comedy Sportz and did little things in Iowa City as well as Genesius Guild here. Like the others involved in Prenzie, I wanted to do Shakespeare all year round and not just in the summer.”

Since they started Prenzie 20 years back, the company has grown exponentially. While utilizing almost a dozen venues in the Quad Cities, they have staged all but three of Shakespeare’s accepted plays. In addition, ten works by other authors have been produced, including THE TROJAN WOMEN, THE REVENGER’S TRAGEDY, TARTUFFE, and FAUSTUS.

Luxton has gotten rave reviews for his portrayals over the decades as Hamlet, Macbeth, Hotspur, Prospero, Pericles, Odysseus, Marc Antony—the list goes on.

We shared a laugh over his “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech made over my exsanguinated body on a gurney in JULIUS CAESAR.

“That was my favorite speech in the Antony plays,” he admitted.

What’s left?

“I don’t think I’m into Lear territory yet,” he admits. “I did Iago with a too-young Othello in a different company a while ago, and I’d like to do that over. But Benedick was about the last of my dream parts.”

The Prenzie process is complex and involves deep reading of the text and understanding of the times of the play and even the venue being used. Luxton’s approach to his characters is just as complicated.

“My process is extremely left brain. I memorize like a robot; I drill myself emotionlessly and relentlessly. I study other versions of the play and all the annotations. I do the same with the blocking. It’s cold and intellectual work of nailing the nails in place.

“And then there comes a time when I have to trust I know it all, and start moving into a more contextual relationship based on the right brain. That’s where I am now—I have to start letting things go. There’s a tendency for the early memorization choices to ossify the acting choices, and that has to be exploded. I have to truly find the character after doing what most people think is all the hard work.

“It’s traumatic for me. Now I have to go far into the right brain to where I can marry these two things. I’ve done it many times, so I’m in a hard place, but it’s not a surprise.”

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, a comedy from Shakespeare’s middle period, is the first Prenzie production in three years. The show is one of his wittiest, with Benedick and Beatrice starting out with total disdain for each other that blossoms (with much help) into deepest love. Of course, everything that could possibly go wrong with this love story does, and the ways disaster is defeated are more than half the fun of this engaging work.

See how all this hard work becomes the mighty magic that theater can be.

Noah Stivers (Claudio)

Noah Stivers caught the stage bug about as early as it can be caught.

“My parents used to write and perform skits for talent shows, and they’d have parts for me. So here I was, three years old, maybe just rolling a ball across to my dad, but I was ON STAGE! And people were laughing! And it’s something I just sorta stuck with.”

Twenty years later, he’s in his third Prenzie production, having first shared the stage with this author in COMEDY OF ERRORS, then THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. Not to mention a number of improv gigs, as well as work with Genesius Guild and most recently a role in TWELVE ANGRY JURORS at Playcrafters Barn Theatre.

His reason for doing Shakespeare is different.

“I picked it up because I hated it. I thought I was bad at it, and I really didn’t understand what it was about. So, I decided that to grow and change as an actor I was going to have to do what I was afraid of.”

Fortunately he found the right place to learn what he needed in Prenzie.

“In Prenzie you spend a lot of time working with the language, which is great because I just didn’t know what I was saying at first, or why. But with the help of the other Prenzie actors I found that it’s a higher form of language, more complicated, but, especially in this play, it’s mostly dick jokes!”

Stivers has the part of Claudio, the lover of Hero who goes through a roller-coaster of emotive scenes in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Stivers has changed from hating Shakespeare to making one play a dream role for him.

“Someone mentioned in passing that I should try Hamlet. That’s stuck with me. I don’t know much about the complexities of the character, but I want to learn. I want to try it.”

A passing remark can change a person’s life goals in ways no college course could ever imagine. Well, of course. It’s theater.

Kitty Israel (Corrada / Ursula)

Hers is an imposing presence. She’s six feet tall with pure black hair and ice-blue eyes with pupils that lead to the depths of Hell.

Ok, that was Kitty Israel in costume as Mephistophilis in FAUSTUS. In real life she’s about the same, except the blue contacts are removed to expose more appropriate brown eyes.

“Mephistophilis is definitely my favorite character ever,” Kitty says; “there were so many ways I could go with the part, and of course, playing across from Aaron [Sullivan, Prenzie co-creator and frequent lead character at Prenzie and in other venues] is always fun.”

“But a close second was being Katherine of Aragon in Henry VIII.

“I really thought the part would go to an older person and I didn’t have a shot. I’d have felt great getting the part of Anne Bullen!”

Katherine of Aragon, the discarded queen of Henry VIII, demands great emotional range on stage, from haughtiness to rage to terminal despair.

In Prenzie she’s had important parts in Tartuffe, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Faustus, Henry VIII, Comedy of Errors, Caucasian Chalk Circle, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Now she gets to be Corrada (originally Conrad) and Ursula in MUCH ADO.

Her twelve years in Prenzie show only some of the talents that have made her vital to theatre in the Quad Cities.

As well as working on stage, she directed AS YOU LIKE IT for Prenzie, as well as ROMEO AND JULIET for Genesius Guild.

“I worked for years at Morning Star Academy and directed a number of high school plays,” she says.

Born and raised in Davenport, she attended college in Florida and majored in English education with a minor in theater.

In the real world, besides her work at Morning Star, she’s been a receptionist for a local veterinary clinic and currently does similar work for Cardiovascular Medicine in Davenport.

But her true love is theater. The choice was simple.

“I love attention,” she says. “I remember in kindergarten I got to play a wiggleworm. I had one line and I sang a little song, and I. ATE. IT. UP. I just wanted to be in plays all night long from then on.”

It was during her work on KING LEAR with Genesius Guild that she expressed a wish to be able to do Shakespeare all year round instead of just summer. Luckily, Prenzie vets Alaina Pascarella and Lauren VanSpeybroeck were in the cast and invited her to audition. The rest is a long and entertaining career.

Besides working five days a week for CVM, Kitty has found the stamina to star in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre recent production of TWELVE ANGRY JURORS, and is simultaneously acting in the New Athens Players production of works by local playwright Susan Glaspell.
But when you’ve already been the Queen of England and a preeminent Demon of Hell, what role is left?

“I saw ANNIE when I was little, and I’d really love a chance to be Miss Hannigan,” she said.

Perhaps it’s reassuring that it’s the most scintillating people that want to be the baddies on stage.

And ONLY on stage.

Jessica White (Leonetta)

I’ve had the pleasure of shooting stills of Jessica White in all her Prenzie roles, and it never fails. I miss some great shots because I’m looking around the camera at her in action and wondering, “How in the F——g H—l is she DOING That??”

Many world-class actors never get beyond the self—it’s always JAMISON BIGSTAR AS—(fill in the blank). But Jessica on stage IS Tamora, Queen of Goths in TITUS ANDRONICUS, or Constance in KING JOHN, or the Deadly Sin Envy (plus a kukuri-wielding assassin) in DOCTOR FAUSTUS.

White and the stage have been acquainted for a long time. She was involved with Comedy Sportz for 14 years, as well as frequent stints with the Richmond Hill Players and Playcrafters (she was a juror in TWELVE ANGRY JURORS, the brilliant recent production there, along with four other MUCH ADO cast members).

“Why do this? I guess when they make you do skits in grade school, the minute I got a laugh, that was it. And my grandma, I’d spend time with her and she’d say, ‘Let’s do something!’ and we’d put a show together, and I just loved it.”

“Besides that, both my parents were jocks, and I tried sports in high school and was just rubbish, so I got into speech team and the plays, and I found people I could relate to. I love the weirdness of theater people.”

Weirdness is something she gets to study professionally. Jessica does background investigations for people getting security clearances with the federal government.

“I do a lot of interviews. This isn’t like private investigating—these people know they’re being investigated. Nothing dramatic. Lots of paperwork.”

Acting sounds like a sensible release. But for years, Shakespeare wasn’t high on her list of plays to do.

“I had no desire to do Shakespeare. But I was doing Comedy Sportz with Jake Walker, and he knows I love horror, and he asked, “Would you be interested in doing some HORROR Shakespeare?” — and he summarized TITUS ANDRONICUS for me, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll give that a shot.’”

TITUS ANDRONICUS is Shakespeare’s goriest play, with thirteen murders, as well as mutilation, rape, and cannibalism. It was his biggest moneymaker—so, little has changed, has it?

“I loved doing it, but it took me three weeks to get all the blood out of my hair and ears,” she admits.

And now she’s in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING with Prenzie.

“I knew this was going to be a lot of work—I didn’t read it till the day before auditions—but’s its great to be acting again after all the quarantine years, and to be with a cast of such fantastic people that I’ve worked with a bunch already is great, too.”

As far as dream roles, Jessica looked pained. “I knew you’d ask this,” she said. “I’ve been really lucky and fortunate to have gotten some great roles, I’d love to do HAMLET just to be in the production. I always wanted to play Ophelia, but I’ve missed the age bracket. To me, any part that I get, I want it to be the best that I can do, so it becomes my favorite role at that time.”

See what magic Jessica White brings to the theater as Leonetta.

John Smick (Antonio / Seacoal)

After a three-year hiatus, the PRENZIE PLAYERS are mounting a production this March.

Prenzie Veteran Jarrod DeRooi will direct Shakespeare’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. This comedy from Shakespeare’s middle period is one of his wittiest, with Benedick and Beatrice starting out with total disdain for each other that blossoms (with much help) into deepest love. Of course, everything that could possibly go wrong with this love story does, and the ways disaster is defeated are more than half the fun of this engaging work.

Playing the parts of Antonio and Seacoal, we have JOHN SMICK.

John Smick looks nothing like a “bad guy.”

Commanding any space he’s in, his white beard and ready smile makes one think Santa Claus more than Saruman.

But he’s made a number of bad guy characters come alive, such as Bill Sikes in “Oliver,” Lazar Wolf in “Fiddler on the Roof,” and Fulton Greenway in “Elf.”

“’Oliver’ gave me a chance to use a Cockney accent—I love doing accents and different voices—and I terrified lots of little kids for all the right reasons in that show,” he says, laughing. “I loved doing all the characters in different voices when I read to my children.”

Smick was born and raised in Keokuk, Iowa, then spent seven years in Iowa City getting his master’s degree in English. And what does one do with an English degree nowadays?

“I’m a software designer. It’s called being a business analyst, but what I do is software.”

When not designing commands for computers you can see him with the City Circle Theatre Company in Coralville. But now he’s here in Davenport, working with Prenzie.

“JC (JC Luxton, one of Prenzie’s founders) and I have been friends since we were in grad school, and I’d come here and see Prenzie shows and just loved them. This is the first chance I’ve had to be in one and I’m thrilled.”

All actors have a ‘dream role” they’d love to tackle. John’s is “King George III in Hamilton. I’d kill that role. But I’ll never get a chance to do it,” he says wistfully.

But the stage is where dreams come true.

Lily Blouin (Beatrice)

You’re casting the lead role of Beatrice in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Do you:

___ A. Pick a talented lead singer from musical productions?

___ B. Look for a train enthusiast who is also a historian for Tall Ship Lynx?

___ C. Find an expert in Stage Combat?

___ D. Check out a roller-derby queen known as JULIUS SQUEEZER?

Well, this is a trick question. Because this is Prenzie, and:

___ E. You can have all of the above.

Lily Blouin will star as Beatrice in Prenzie’s 2023 production of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, bringing all these skills to the stage, and so much more.

“I’ve only been in the QC area for three years. Before that I was in Galesburg and originally came from Alaska.

“Why acting? It was in me. My dad was a preacher and I never had a problem putting myself out there in front of people. I don’t know if I really want to be the center of attention, but I find myself there. I’m a LOUD person, and I love the spotlight.

“In tenth grade my debate teacher said I should try out for the school production of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS. I got a part and have been doing it ever since.

“In college I got a BFA in musical theater with an emphasis in stage combat. I went on to get a Masters in history with an emphasis in the fall of the Roman Republic and the American Revolution. I got so into Caesar and whether he was as bad as everyone says he was, that in roller derby they began calling me Julius Squeezer!

“At WIU I had the joy of working with Bill Kincaid, a man who truly loved Shakespeare, and it rubbed off on me. He believed in the unrehearsed method, since Shakespeare had little rehearsal time. He stressed word analysis, emphasized action over reciting—and this is all what Prenzie is doing!

“I moved to the Quad Cities as a consultant for non-profit organizations—helping them on the administrative side of things—and an old friend, Adam Lewis (frequent Prenzie actor and director) told me I’d just love it in Prenzie. He was right!”

“Beatrice is a tough one to play. She would be easy to make shrewish and unlikeable. Everyone in the play says she’s enjoyable, though. So I want to like her and show that she’s likable to the audience. It’s been fun finding the joy in her and not just her caustic side. I enjoy her strength and cleverness—I wish I had more of that!”

It has been hinted that Lily has been seen sometimes to sit down and rest for as long as five minutes. During my interview I saw no evidence of that.

“I quit consulting to be an artist full time. I’ve written plays about the 150^th anniversary of the railroad in Galesburg and about Abraham Lincoln. Now I’m directing SQUIRREL GIRL GOES TO COLLEGE, one of the Marvel characters I hadn’t heard of before. She’s bitten by a squirrel and gains squirrel-like superpowers. Now she’s in college and is trying to keep her identity secret to protect her classmates, but it doesn’t work out that way. Her motto is ‘Eat nuts and kick butts,’ so you get an idea of where this play is going.”

Lily Blouin will be bringing this energy to the Prenzie Stage. See her before she zooms away.

Mattie Gelaude (Hero)

This interview should have been an audio. No words can show how much of Mattie Gelaude is represented by her infectious, frequent laugh.

Perhaps she goes home and reads all the grim parts in Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens novels out loud all night, but when she’s with other people she spreads a love of life that’s desperately needed in our world.

And she can act. Starting with AS YOU LIKE IT, she’s been a big part of ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, KING JOHN, CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, and now MUCH ADO.

Why acting? There’s a pause, and more infectious laughter, and she says, “I don’t know! My family’s not all that creative—Dad’s a mailman and Mom works for the government. I loved going to Circa ’21. The first Shakespeare I saw was in Wisconsin where they did MUCH ADO. I can’t really put my finger on what it was.”

Besides Prenzie she’s done work with Playcrafters, including THE CRUCIBLE, FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS, and, most recently, the performance of TWELVE ANGRY JURORS where no less than six current cast members were on one side of the stage or the other.

In the outside word she works for Blackhawk Bank & Trust. “I started out as a teller, but now I’m in human resources. I interview people all the time, yet I can’t do one myself! I hate public speaking, but if you give me something to memorize and tell me what to do, I’m right there!”

Mattie’s been chosen to play several good-hearted heroines. The most involved was Grusha from CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE.

“Grusha is on stage practically the whole time during that show. And her world is falling apart around her, and there’s war and violence and she has this baby that isn’t hers that she’s trying to take care of since it was abandoned by its parents—it’s a lot to express on stage, with no down time at all!”

The part of Hero is not quite as intense, though she does wind up “dying” in the course of the action after being accused of unchastity. Is this still a big deal in our world?

“It certainly shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s why we read Shakespeare. His problems are still our problems.”

In MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, she took the role of Fenton, the suitor of Ann Page, and did it as a woman in another of the gender switch roles Prenzie employs.

“Three characters wanted to wed Ann, and she chooses Fenton, which gives a totally different angle to the whole love relationship. Being a queer person myself and having people like that in my life, it was really cool to express myself through theater.”

Another crystal laugh. “I’m sorry, I don’t give good interviews!”

Oh, yes you do, Mattie.

Ryan Elgin (Borachio / Friar Francis)

“And one man in his time plays many parts,” says Jaques in AS YOU LIKE IT. That’s as true now as it was 400 years ago. Ryan Elgin, for instance, came out of college a theater major and spent some years driving semis.

“I worked for a lighting company, setting up lights for sporting events and such. Now I do inventory control for US Foods in Iowa City.”

Actors tend to have pretty mundane jobs. There are teachers, nurses, hairdressers and secretaries among us. Perhaps that’s why we get more outlandish on stage.

“I have two parts, pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum, Borachio, one of Don John’s henchmen, and Friar Francis. So, I’m trying to differentiate the characters so that one isn’t too much like the other.”

It’s been a long hiatus for Elgin, nearly 25 years. In college he did mostly tech work, but did act. Reality, as with so many of us, put theater behind survival for decades.

Then his son was in an extracurricular program in Iowa City with director Jarrod DeRooi’s son, and both sons and fathers became friends. As Jarrod developed his ideas for directing MUCH ADO, he was able to talk Ryan and other acting friends into joining the cast.

“It’s fun, but I’m trying to get the rust off. The more acting you do, the better you feel about it. Of course, my approach has changed. When I was younger the memorization was the hard part and the acting was easy; now it’s the other way around.”

Ryan is another actor who does not carry a dream role in his mind.

“Shakespeare was never an overpowering thing to me. I like it, but I prefer doing physical comedy, something to bring laughter—anything that gets that reaction from the audience.”

There’s plenty of that in Shakespeare.

Jen Brown (Margaret)

For many, the ultimate terror is being alone on a stage with hundreds of people looking at you and being expected to perform. Jen Brown is different.

“I have a much higher tolerance for being on a stage in front of strangers than I do being in the midst of strangers making small talk,” she says.

For the audience, that’s a good thing. Since the age of four, Jen has been entertaining people, from the moment she was part of the crowd on stage in CAROUSEL to today. “And I have loved EVERY SINGLE THING I have done in theater since that moment.”

She suffered a “horrible hiatus” of some years not acting after college, and then hit the ground running in local theater in Iowa City where she lives — and here with the Prenzie Players.

She began with Prenzie ten years ago in the title role of BEAR GIRL, an original play by JC Luxton, and went on to important roles in MACBETH, THE REVENGER’S TRAGEDY, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, and her stunning portrayal of Gloucester in LEAR.

Gloucester is captured by Lear’s enemies and has her eyes kicked out with a boot. It is one of the most intense scenes in any of his plays, and Jen Brown made it all hers.

“That was one of my favorite scenes to play, ever. There is nothing better than to play a strong character who is brought low; you have everybody’s entire attention.

Nobody was breathing during that scene. No one would move out of their seats for intermission until I left the stage. That’s power.”

In MUCH ADO, Jen Brown is Margaret, a gentlewoman who attends on Hero, love interest of Claudio, and is falsely accused in the plot to scandalize Hero by Don John.

Outside of Prenzie, Jen has served for 19 years as instructor/associate professor of English as a Second Language at the University of Iowa. She has also acted extensively in Iowa City and is currently directing ANGEL STREET, a different take on the classic GASLIGHT, at the Dreamwell Theater.

“It’s wonderful to be in a Prenzie production again, especially with Jarrod. We played brother and sister in BEAR GIRL, so he’s been my ‘sibling’ ever since. Plus, we were both in LEAR.

“The exploration of gender roles in Prenzie fascinates me. I’m personally gender non-conforming, so I think, ‘Gender-schmender, what’s it matter?’ But society has been tremendously gendered throughout cultures, times, and spaces.

“So since one of the major purposes of theater is to examine society, when one has the ability to thoughtfully choose when to upend expectations of gender, race, age, whatever, it is something to seriously consider doing.”

Ben Graham (Dogberry)

The desire to act can overwhelm our common sense.

A person who works third shift, for instance, and has a demanding job like being a Direct Service Professional, helping mentally and physically challenged people in their daily lives, would (and should) treasure every second of down time they can find.

But here’s Ben Graham from Rock Island, half an hour out of bed and preparing to rock the stage as Dogberry, the put-upon and loopy constable in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

“I was a tech nerd in high school and college,” Ben says. “Then I focused on comedy. I was in a group called Black List, doing underground comedy, did Comedy Sportz for awhile. I’ve done a lot of musicals, most recently THE 25^TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE.

“Shakespeare terrified me. It was so totally different from improv, having everything scripted out. Then I got a chance to do Bottom in MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM in the Genesius Guild last summer, and was surprised at how much I loved doing it.

“Prenzie is an intimidating body to audition for. It’s the premier Shakespeare group in the Quad Cities. It’s an institution. So I’m really excited to be working with these people.”

Maybe in the future Ben would like to be Max Bialystock in THE PRODUCERS, or even Sweeney Todd. But right now he’s concentrating on Dogberry and the fulfilling job he goes to after rehearsals are over for the night.

Milo Houdyshell (Verges)

Onstage or behind the scenes, you will find Milo Houdyshell doing important things. But it’s not like they planned it that way.

“I got into theater, I guess you could say, by being ‘volun-told.’ We’d moved to a little high school in Iowa, and the choir director came to me and said, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good in choir, would you like to be a background singer and dancer in the musical?’ And I said, ‘Sure!’”

And what was that musical? ZOMBIO AND JULIET, of course. First published in 2012, it is now also, of course, a musical.

“At the end of the show, they let the zombie chorus run through the audience, and I grabbed a lady’s leg, and she screamed!”

Yet another way to be “bitten” by the acting bug.

Milo has been in theater ever since, though mostly behind the scenes. They’re on the board of directors at Playcrafters and they do plenty of work backstage there. But they’ve also been involved with the production of “Peter and the Starcatcher” and played Rheba in “You Can’t Take it With You.”

And now they’re in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING with Prenzie.

“This is so different for me. I’ve had some other things going on in my life, and coming here and working with people I’ve come to love is the escape I needed. And I really love Shakespeare! I love how it feels to speak Shakespeare’s English. I’d never heard of Prenzie before, and my school drama director told me about it, and here I am!”

Milo brings to life the part of Verges, the sidekick to the bumbling sherriff Dogberry. “I’m the little puppy who follows behind him,” they say, but, this being Prenzie, it’s likely they’ll wind up doing more than that.

Mischa Hooker (Oatcake)

Actors have many ideas about what constitutes a good time. Some of these concepts require fast vehicles. Some involve blue cats. For Calgary native Mischa Hooker, he went to Cincinnati for grad school because “they had a program there called ‘Judaeo-Christian Studies in the Greco-Roman World,’ which would allow me to study both Greek and Roman culture and early Judaism and Christianity at the same time.”

Hooker capitalizes on his love of the ancient world in many ways. He’s been an instructor of Classics at Augustana since 2008, and started acting in Prenzie’s “Roman” plays by Shakespeare with JULIUS CAESAR in 2015. He’s also been a part of TIMON OF ATHENS, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, and CORIOLANUS, as well as non-Classical era Shakespeare such as LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST, KING JOHN, and THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

“I feel halfway between introverted and extroverted, so acting is a good way to hit those things. You’re out there in front of people, but you have prepared things to say, and are literally ‘not yourself.’”

Outside of Prenzie he’s worked in other venues, such as Playcrafters and the Black Box Theatre, and just recently got on the other side of the stage directing SPOTLIGHT ON SUSAN GLASPELL, a series of plays both by local artist Susan Glaspell and that he adapted from her short stories. The successful run just ended March 5 and had kept him busy since before December of last year.

“I have a hard time asking people to do things, but I found out with this production that I can’t do everything myself. If the New Athens Players project continues, and I hope it does, I’ll have a complete set crew as well as a stage manager next time. I deceived myself to think doing three small pieces would be easy—it wasn’t. But the magic that helped make it work was having the right people on stage to pull it all together.”

Now he can concentrate on the part of Oatcake, one of the followers of bumbling, beleaguered sheriff Dogberry in MUCH ADO.

While Oatcake isn’t a major part in this work, that works to Hooker’s advantage, because he has more irons in the fire. During the COVID plague he began a series of audio works for release on the internet, presenting, for example, KING ARTHUR’S SOCKS by Floyd Dell, another writer in Glaspell’s orbit, and a rendition of Edgar Lee Master’s SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY (in progress). More works are to come. This level of work is obviously Hooker’s idea of a good time.

My idea of a good time is, I’m afraid, a bit more mundane. I’ll soon sit down and curl up with my coffee-table book edition of TRAVELS WITH TRILOBITES, a profusely illustrated study of those cute, Cambrian critters we all know and love. Expect a review soon.

Jenny Lynn Stacy (Balthasar)

Prenzie’s production of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING needed Jenny Lynn Stacy.

Whenever you have Shakespeare, you gotta have music.

A good Shakespeare play is never just people declaiming. The actors have to be able to act, fight, sing, dance, and tell jokes with all the aplomb of SNL casts and guests combined.

Shakespeare’s characters frequently break into song or play instruments on stage. A well-rounded gentleman of his era was required to.

But in today’s world, where most people can barely thumb their phone keyboards, this becomes difficult to cast.

So when Director Jarrod DeRooi needed to fill the role of the troubadour Balthasar, Prenzie veteran Matt Moody introduced him to Jenny. They performed some of their works for him, and he offered them the part.

You don’t have to suffer to be an artist, but the two often wind up together. I don’t need to tell you the hard or beautiful parts in Jenny’s life. They put it all into song, sung with their amazing fill-any-theater-you’ve-got voice accompanied by acoustic guitar. They’ve been performing solo and in bands for years, “and I hope to keep doing it till my hands don’t work anymore.”

Acting, on the other hand, hasn’t been a primary interest. “I worked in a haunted house for three years, so that involved some acting, but I haven’t done anything like this since high school. The character of Balthasar the troubadour is totally different from me. I’m introverted and anxious and he’s boisterous and brassy.

“It’s way outside my comfort zone, so I’m calling it ‘fun-comfortable.’ But these Prenzie people are so great—they’ve made it easy to switch from musician to acting. I hope to get into the next production.”

Jenny would like to be able to perform outside the country again, as they did pre-COVID. “I spent a long time in England, especially Cornwall. Music there is appreciated. You go to play in a bar or wherever and people SHUT UP AND LISTEN. They get very moody if you talk during a performance. It’s a real different experience working there than here.”

Jenny is also embarking on a new band experience. The group Todaso (“as in ‘told ya so,’” they explained) started performing in the Village Theatre in April.

Jarrod DeRooi (Director)

Jarrod DeRooi had been in Prenzie for a long time. Just how long?

“You should know, you got me into it!” he says, laughing.

In 2009 I dragged a reluctant but talented techie from the SCC theater to audition for THE WINTER’S TALE. The rest, I assure you, is history.

“In my freshman year in high school, everyone else had grown but I hadn’t. So in football practice I was either getting hurt or sitting on the bench till I got sick of it. I needed a conflicting extra-curricular activity to get out of football, so I tried acting, and I loved it. It was a whole lot better than thinking I was going to die out on the football field.”

He went on to do exceptional work in WINTER’S TALE, CYRANO DE BERGERAC, JULIUS CAESAR, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, LEAR, LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST and as the lead in CORIOLANUS.

The first time he was on stage in high school was as Don John in MUCH ADO. “So when Cait [Prenzie co-founder Catherine Bodenbender] asked me what I wanted to direct, I said MUCH ADO since it was the first show I’d ever done.”

One thing a director needs is limitless energy, something Jarrod has in abundance. A man who has filled many teaching jobs over the years, he is currently serving as artist in residence in the Iowa City school district. “I just finished there, teaching in 49 classrooms in three weeks. Now the play rehearsals kick into high gear.”

As a first-time director, he says, “the process is going frighteningly well. I am extremely fortunate to have an amazing cast and an amazing production team supporting me through all of it.

“The glory of Prenzie is it doesn’t operate like any other company that I’m aware of. Everything is communal, everything is open for conversation. Even people who aren’t in the show are welcome to give their advice and feedback. There’s never the feeling of having too many cooks in the kitchen because it’s one of those things where everybody’s opinion is valued. And no one gets upset when their opinion isn’t taken.”

A quick example of this happened in a first rehearsal of a scene where Ursula (Kitty Israel) has to keep a letter away from Beatrice (Lily Blouin). Kitty, who is six feet tall, just used her height to keep Lily (who isn’t six feet tall) from getting it. It feels natural because it is. It looks spur-of-the-moment because it was.

“I’d be a fool to think I was the smartest person in the room, or the most experienced person in the room. I told the cast, ‘I will give you and provide maybe 30 or 40 per cent of what this will be. The rest will come from all the creative, beautiful, wonderful, committed minds in the room. It will come from us playing and experimenting. Having the liberty and space to play, which is what we are here to do, to put on a play.’ And so we play.”

People working together, innovating, agreeing, having a good time. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

Liz Sager (Stage Manager)

Setting up for this interview, my phone on its tripod kept falling over on the couch between us. Before I could fix it, Liz Sager got up and pulled a table across the room for the sound system.

“Stage managers are problem solvers,” she said.

And that’s just one of the many skills she has.

Liz is stage managing MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, the first Prenzie production in three years. This comedy from Shakespeare’s middle period is one of his wittiest, with Benedick and Beatrice starting out with total disdain for each other that blossoms (with much help) into deepest love. Of course, everything that could possibly go wrong with this love story does, and the ways disaster is defeated are more than half the fun of this engaging work.

Stage managing is one of the more high-stress jobs in theater. Even a simple show has dozens, if not hundreds, of props, decorations, pieces of furniture, rugs, illumination (depending on the era)—the list is truly endless. And they all have to work, to be in the right place at the right time, in the right position for the actor to grab it when needed on or off stage. And the stage manager is the person who makes it happen. Even the lead in a play has scenes they are not in, allowing them to catch their breath. A stage manager is always “ON.”

Liz likes it that way. She also stage managed Prenzie productions of As you Like It, Macbeth and King John. She’s spent time in front of the curtains as well, appearing in The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Henry VIII, as well as a number of the Greek works put on by the Genesius Guild.

An Iowa native, Liz spent her childhood listening to the music her mom played while doing housework, which tended to be CATS or LES MIZ or PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, or even “classic” pieces like SOUND OF MUSIC or WEST SIDE STORY. So the thrill of theater and song got into her system from the start. Then, at age ten, she got to see the travelling tour of LES MIZ at Hancher Auditorium, and the fix was permanently in.

Sager has an MFA in dramaturgy and taught in New York for a year. Dramaturgy includes the study of dramatic compositions and adapting work for the stage, as well as the task of upgrading a work (sometimes known as “script doctoring”). Real life intervened and brought her back to Iowa, where, after too long as a waitress, she began studying to be an interpreter in American Sign Language.

She now works through an agency in Cedar Rapids and subs for other interpreters all over the area, something she enjoys.

She also enjoys Shakespeare, of course, and used to teach MUCH ADO in her classes. Her dream role is Beatrice in fact, and while she didn’t get it in this production, she’s totally happy that Lily Blouin will be doing it. “She’s fantastic,” she says. We’ll be talking to Lily about this role shortly.

But for now, when folks have the swords and cups and masks and flasks to wave around all the tables and chairs and settings on the stage the night you go to see MUCH ADO—thank Liz Sager for it.

Matt Moody (Venue Manager)

A performance must have a venue. Prenzie has made use of at least a dozen stages since it began. For August’s performances of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, it returns to the Village Theatre in East Davenport. And managing, tending, and otherwise holding up this place with his bare hands, is Prenzie veteran Matt Moody.

For four years he’s served as general manager of this theater, as well as serving on the Board of New Ground Theatre.

In real life he’s employed in Muscatine at HNI furniture manufacture.

“I’d acted in high school and college, but kind of let it go by the wayside after that. Then I went to see Othello at Genesius Guild in 2004, and this brilliant actor was playing Iago. I went backstage after the show, and it was my old college friend, JC Luxton! He said “Hey, you should come out for this, and I’ve been working in another group I started called Prenzie, you should come out for that too!”

I said, “Wait, JC—I’ve been engineering for 15 years, I’m handicapped—I can’t act anymore.”

But he kept telling me to try. I didn’t get into their next show (MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM). I went to see it, and it was so magical, so different from any other theater I’d ever seen, I had to come back and try again.”

His first play was RICHARD II. I was there too, and remember him, when not playing several parts, working backstage building and repairing an exquisite crown for Stephanie Burrough with copper and brass tubing and a hand torch. I can only play with words—someone who can actually build a physical object is a magician in my book.

Since then, he’s been involved either in front or behind the stage on just about every Prenzie show, having major roles in CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, MACBETH, TROILUS & CRESSIDA, and MERCHANT OF VENICE, and smaller pieces in many others.

I asked what his best work was, and, like many of the best actors, he’s really reluctant to talk much about himself.

“I think I did my best work as the king in ALL’S WELL THAT END’S WELL,” he finally suggested.

I then reminded him of a few other notable performances, such as Swollen Hand and Thunderbird in JC Luxton’s play BEAR GIRL ten years ago.

“Well, yeah, that was really good, getting to play both father figures from the story of Chief Black Hawk, the good and the evil side both.”

But then there’s one role that outshines the others, especially one night in particular. I was amazed by his work in the title role of TIMON OF ATHENS in 2015. But I missed the night when he lost his pants.

“There’s this scene where I’m rolling around on the ground with the prostitutes, and I was paying them to go back to Athens and give everyone venereal disease—”

(There’s just nothing like Shakespearean humor, am I right?)

“—and there was a ripping feeling, and when I came out of the cave the pants just gave way. I had a second wondering, well, maybe someone could run me out a pair of pants backstage? But NO. I just did the right thing and left it. It was the most natural thing in the world since I was wearing a disheveled, torn-up tuxedo anyway. And it worked out really well.”

Having played Antonio in the first Prenzie version of MUCH ADO back in 2009 in this very theater, he now is working hard to get everything ready for the first Prenzie show in three years.