Genesius Guild has set its summer 2024 season, and also approved a new leadership team.
The free outdoor theater — at Lincoln Park, 1120 40th St., Rock Island — will produce the following shows, all starting at 7 p.m.:
- Euripides: Medea — June 8, 9, 15, 16
- Shakespeare: Julius Caesar — June 22, 23, 29, 30
- Shakespeare: Sounds and Sweet Airs (High School production) — July 6, 7, 13, 14
- Aristophanes: Plutus — July 20, 21, 27, 28
Founded in 1956, Genesius Guild performs Greek drama, Greek comedy, the works of Shakespeare, and other classical authors every weekend throughout the summer in Lincoln Park, Rock Island. All performances are staged free of charge, keeping the classics alive and accessible to everyone.
Genesius started offering one high school production each summer in 2018, and didn’t have them in 2020 and 2021 (due to COVID), said Andy Shearouse, board president of the Genesius Theatre Foundation.
This year’s “Sounds and Sweet Airs” (taken from a line in William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”) is a special production the nonprofit does every now and then — it’s a performance that Genesius founder Don Wooten put together for the Guild’s 10th season. It takes scenes and songs from a number of Shakespeare’s plays (and usually one or two of the sonnets) to show how Shakespeare explores some specific themes across all of his works, Shearouse said.
“It’s a really interesting piece that is hard to categorize — I think the best way to describe it is that it is a supercut of Shakespeare’s best writing,” he said.
2024 leadership changes
Instead of having one executive director overseeing everything, the Genesius board divided the work into two roles: an executive director and a producer, Shearouse said.
After two years, the previous executive director Isabel Dawson left this past year to become head of the Puppet Co. Playhouse in Maryland, outside Washington, D.C.
The new Genesius executive director role will handle fundraising and the areas that are more like business management (maintaining federal and state nonprofit filings, working with the city of Rock Island, etc.), along with being the spokesperson for Genesius Guild in the community; Doug Tschopp will take on that role.
He is a very familiar face to Genesius. Tschopp — director of Augustana College’s Entrepreneurial Center — was Genesius executive director for 15 years (2006-2021), has been involved in the nonprofit for over 27 years, and worked closely with Dawson at Augie, where she majored in theater and business management, graduating in 2020.
The producer role is new, and handles the artistic side: working with directors and the Artistic Committee, managing the audition and rehearsal process, overseeing the whole artistic and creative team, and generally making sure that they put high quality productions on stage, Shearouse said. “We are very excited to have Marc Nelson fill the producer role.
“Marc has been active with the Genesius Guild for a number of years now, and has extensive theater experience — he is a member of the Actors Equity Association, and was a professional actor for many years before returning to the Quad Cities,” he said. Nelson also grew up in the Quad Cities attending Genesius Guild productions, “so we are thrilled to bring him into the Guild’s leadership,” Shearouse added.
“Overall, there are some pretty big organizational changes happening right now. I’ve also stepped back as Technical Director — we have a replacement all but in place, but we are still getting everything finalized,” he said, noting while he is now board president, Genesius veteran Kai Swanson is serving as board vice president.
For more information, visit the Guild website HERE.
