Let’s start this survey of Iowa’s local theater landscape with a bit of a dramatic flourish: The start of the COVID-19 pandemic was half a decade ago. Apologies if that messes with your tethering to time, but I bring it up for a reason. When looking at the last five years of local theater output, it feels as if the community has persevered. The last half decade saw some form of rebirth or new beginning for many companies and venues.
Take Iowa City’s Riverside Theatre, which upgraded to a larger space on the Ped Mall in 2022. Or About Time Theatre Company, Des Moines’ new actor-owned troupe that launched this year. Then there’s Theatre Cedar Rapids, which broke ground on major renovations last month after a multi-million-dollar capital campaign — all while marking their 100th anniversary.
The theater landscape feels at the precipice of something. It’s the roller coaster poised to drop down the other side. With that in mind, Little Village talked with some of the creative forces driving eastern and central Iowa’s theater companies for the view from the top of the hill: how they’re staging productions that meet this new era of upheaval, and what’s coming next.
“Audiences want a lot of different things. Some want to be entertained. Some want to escape. Some want a forum to look at this moment with a clear lens,” said Adam Knight, executive director of Riverside Theatre. “Our role in preparing a season is to have something for everybody, but something that continues to live in the now. If it lives in the now, by its very nature, it’s going to address this.”
Michael LaDell Harris and Kim Haymes, two members of the creative team behind About Time Theatre, echoed Knight. When deciding on their first production, the company asked (among inquiries about budget and experience), “What fits our current time in America?” That brought them to Squeamish, a horror-adjacent one-woman show by Aaron Mark and performed by Haymes. The play touches on, among other things, addiction, medication and grief over the death of a young loved one. It was unsettling enough LV’s reviewer had to step out of the venue — The Haunt speakeasy, playing host to its first theater event — for a breather.
“We had been mulling over shows to perform of all types for a long time,” Harris said about kicking off with a bang like Squeamish. “Our board is made up of middle-aged parents, so we have experiences, unfortunately, with the themes of this show. And with the adult content, we knew that no other theater in town could even approach it. Squeamish rang out to us as ‘our show.’”
“We want to do campy fun shows, musicals, more solo shows, dramas, the whole gambit,” Harris added, “but all through the perspective of ‘why this show now?’”
Iowa Stage Theatre Company artistic producers Alex Wendel and Davida D. Williams find their answer by developing a season gradually through conversations with their company.
“We find ourselves drawn to shows and that pulls other shows into the conversation that have a common thread,” Wendel said. “This season started with a conversation based on what connects Grand Horizons and Torch Song.”
The inclusion of those two shows, he said, came from support from their Resident Artist Company, which is composed of a broad spectrum of theater professionals. Rac helps Iowa Stage Theatre stay tapped into the broader professional theater world. Take last season’s run of Witch, a modern retelling of a 17th century Jacobean play by Jen Silverman, who received their MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa.
Their next upcoming production, Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, seems to parallel Silverman’s drama. I asked Wendel if this was intentional.
“Absolutely Buried Child is meant to build on what Witch did for us,” he confirmed. “Davida and I wanted something a little sinister in October of 2024, to see if the marketing could sync up with the season. We wanted to see if Halloween and brisk fall nights drive folks to seek out darker entertainment. We want to build on that dark October momentum with Buried Child.”
The play, a classic surrealist drama first presented in the late ’70s, is a deconstruction of the American nuclear family. Though almost 50 years old, Iowa Stage Theatre bets it will resonate with a modern audience.
“Everyone has family trauma that they have had to process. We have this innate draw towards those we share blood with, or shared a home with. That opens us up to being hurt by them the most,” Wendel said. “Why are these people still near each other after all they have put each other through? That’s something worth pondering over with this show. Maybe you can’t just bury it all in the backyard?”
I’m reminded of recent family gatherings — a devil’s advocate launching political footballs to kick around the dinner table. The safety of vaccines, maybe. Which brings us to Eureka Day, another prescient production by Riverside Theatre. The Jonathan Spector play sees an outbreak of mumps hit students at a California school.
Since May 2025, Iowa has had eight confirmed cases of measles, the majority of those from unvaccinated individuals. I asked Adam Knight if the decision to present Eureka Day came before or after the confirmed cases.
“It was made before,” he said. “The play’s been on my radar for a couple of years now. We’re doing a world premiere in the spring by Emily Bohannon. She’s the one who, a few years ago said, ‘You’ve got to do this. It’s brilliant.’ It was on the short list. Then all these things kept happening that kept saying, ‘OK, this is a play for the now.’ And maybe this play would have hit very differently three or four years ago.”
Knight pointed out that the majority of a normal Riverside season subsists on contributed income. Theaters have historically relied on foundation and government support via grants, sponsorships and contributions from donors. The National Endowment for the Arts under the Trump administration has canceled millions of dollars worth of grants to arts orgs, many of them theater and live performance groups.
Whether directly impacted or not, theaters across the country will feel that strain, Knight said, “Not only because foundation and government support [is] more uncertain but because a lot of donors are having to fill those gaps in a lot of different sectors, not only arts and culture.”
This has Riverside Theatre actively seeking out long-range funding options, such as a reserve fund. “The operational support has to be able to weather the ebbs and flows of politics and the economy in a way where we’re not being constantly whipsawed … but are able to make the best long-term benefit for us and the community.”
Alex Wendel with Iowa Stage Theatre is also thinking about the long term. “Right now, we compensate all artists for their work with us, and one of our goals is to grow enough to have that compensation meet the wider industry standard of professional theater companies,” he said. “This and a permanent home would go a long way to having regional recognition. I’d love for Des Moines to someday become a destination for theater lovers from around the state.”
Whatever loops and hills the roller coaster approaches next, Iowa’s theater pros are strapped in and ready. You can expect the next season of productions to keep confronting the current moment — and, perhaps, the next one.
“We hope to continue to push our ability to make engaging, thought-provoking and fun theater,” said Michael LaDell Harris of About Time. “Our next show will be remarkably different from Squeamish, but we will never not push for the pursuit of the truth in a performance.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2025 issue.
