As both a mother and a daughter, I found Midnight Your Time resonant and meaningful. Riverside Theatre’s current streaming production, Midnight Your Time by Adam Brace, is a one-woman show featuring Riverside co-founder Jody Hovland. Directed by Adam Knight, this is the story of a mother learning a new role as her adult children have […]
Articles by Laura Johnson
Joy Vandervort-Cobb animates a whole ensemble of characters in Riverside Theatre and PURE Theatre’s ‘No Child …’

Over the past seven months, theater companies in eastern Iowa and elsewhere have reinvented themselves, branching out from traditional spaces onto streaming platforms to keep performance and themselves alive. Starting Thursday, Riverside Theatre — in conjunction with PURE Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina — offered another to their audiences: a recorded play that audiences can […]
Book Review: ‘Delicate Rain’ by Deneishia Jacobpito

Deneishia Jacobpito’s story Delicate Rain, released in April of this year, follows the short journey to healing of the main character, Francesca DeLouise (Frank). Frank has spent her life in New York City, but finally, much to the dismay of her best friend, Lynn, she decides to head west. The opening of the story is […]
Theatre Cedar Rapids Underground goes online: 10th annual festival pivots amid ongoing COVID concerns

Theatre Cedar Rapids is underground and online this year as they prepare to present their 10th-annual Underground New Play Festival. This year’s theme, The Mysterious, offers theatergoers an opportunity to see 13 original plays written, directed and performed by people with Iowa connections. The plays will be presented May 16 and 17 in an online […]
In a time when we need theater most, Mirrorbox brings actors together online

Mirrorbox Theater is known for firsts. Iowa premieres. New writing. Topics that are tough. Shows that inspire conversations into the night, well after the curtain has fallen. Friday night, March 20, was no different. Earlier in the week, I saw that Mirrorbox’s Artistic Director, Cavan Hallman, asked on social media who had worked with the […]
Riverside’s ‘Stages’ is 75 minutes of honest human experience

Riverside Theatre opened the Iowa premier of the one-man show Stages by David Lee Nelson on Feb. 28. Nelson’s show and performance are remarkable for several reasons. Co-created and directed with Riverside’s Producing Artistic Director, Stages is the chronicle of Nelson’s own lived experiences with stage four colon cancer. Nelson is both playwright and actor. […]
TCR shows how to murder your way to the top, with humor and music
Book Review: ‘Paper Planes: A Collection of Poems not Crumpled on the Floor’ by Lovar Davis Kidd

Cedar Rapids-based dancer, educator and poet Lovar Davis Kidd started the new year by self-publishing a volume of poetry entitled Paper Planes: A Collection of Poems not Crumpled on the Floor. This collection calls to mind the author’s spoken word performances, and most of these pieces beg to be read aloud. The short book is divided into […]
Riverside’s ‘The Agitators’ a timely exploration of 19th century concerns that still plague us

Riverside Theatre opened its first play of 2020 with an intense reminder of the importance of history, civil rights and activism. Jessica Link portrays Susan B. Anthony and Curtis M. Jackson is Fredrick Douglass in this retrospective of their friendship and political lives, which often found them at odds with one another. […]
Giving Tree’s ‘The Tin Woman’ warms the heart with artful storytelling
‘Almost, Maine’ a welcome reprieve from the frenzy of the season

Iowa City Community Theater opened Almost, Maine (John Cariani, 2004) Friday night. The minimalist sets (Jeffrey Allen Mead), lighting that mimicked the Northern Lights (Mike Jesse) and a series of eleven heart-touching scenes beautifully directed by Nate J. Sullivan all came together to provide a delightful evening for everyone. […]
Book Review: ‘Heart Notes’ by Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey

Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey’s second volume of poetry was self-published in October, just five months after his first volume (Look, Black Boy) was released. Heart Notes departs from race as its central topic and focuses on aspects of love, which Rainey explores through widely varying structures and types of poems. In fact, if you’ve ever wondered whether […]