Northern Illinois Community Calendar

Eight Fifteen Capital and the West Side Show Room present Nat Turner in Jerusalem by award-winning playwright Nathan Alan Davis.

In August 1831, Nat Turner led a slave uprising that shook the conscience of the nation.

Nathan Alan Davis’s timely new play imagines Turner’s final night in a jail cell in Jerusalem, Virginia, as he is visited by attorney Thomas R. Gray and they reckon with what has passed, and what the dawn will bring.

Woven with vivid imagery and indelible lyricism, Nat Turner in Jerusalem examines the power of an individual’s resolute convictions and their seismic reverberations through time.

Nat Turner in Jerusalem is the third play of Rockford native Nathan Alan Davis to be presented in partnership between Eight Fifteen Capital and West Side Show Room.

A deviously delicious Broadway and Hollywood sci-fi smash musical, Little Shop of Horrors has devoured the hearts of theatergoers for over 30 years.

The meek floral assistant Seymour Krelborn stumbles across a strange new plant he names Audrey II after his coworker crush. This foul-mouthed, R&B-singing carnivore promises fame and fortune to the down-and-out Seymour—as long as he keeps feeding it blood.

As Audrey II grows, so do Seymour’s dreams, but he soon discovers the plant’s shocking origins and its terrifying plans for world domination. Packed with unforgettable songs, outrageous comedy, and larger-than-life characters, Little Shop of Horrors is a wildly entertaining musical with a bite.

A century ago, these stories were read aloud for family entertainment. Today they come alive in performance.

Michèle LaRue tells a tale of sudden death, family secrets, and things that go bump in the night as she presents Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “The Shadows on the Wall” (1903). Next she speaks of strange sightings on the prairie in Elia W. Peattie’s “The House That Was Not” (1898).

Freeman (1852 – 1930), a popular and prolific short-story writer, was born and lived most of her life in Massachusetts, continuing her work after marrying and moving to Metuchen, New Jersey. She wrote insightfully and with sympathetic humor about her fellow small-town New Englanders—and she penned many ghost stories.

Peattie (1862 – 1935) grew up in her native Michigan. With her husband, a fellow journalist, she made her home, first in Chicago, then in Omaha. She was the Chicago Tribune’s first woman reporter and wrote fiction, as well as observant editorials and reviews, for major papers in both cities.

Michèle is a professional actress who has toured nationally for 24 years with dramatizations of stories by America’s Gilded Age authors. Her one-woman performances are sure to leave you wanting more.

“You transported us totally to another time, another place, and filled our lives with new friends.” - Livingston Public Library, NJ

This show is intended for ages 12 and up. No registration is required.

For more information, please contact Samantha at samanthah@dkpl.org or at (815) 756-9568 ext. 1701.

A deviously delicious Broadway and Hollywood sci-fi smash musical, Little Shop of Horrors has devoured the hearts of theatergoers for over 30 years.

The meek floral assistant Seymour Krelborn stumbles across a strange new plant he names Audrey II after his coworker crush. This foul-mouthed, R&B-singing carnivore promises fame and fortune to the down-and-out Seymour—as long as he keeps feeding it blood.

As Audrey II grows, so do Seymour’s dreams, but he soon discovers the plant’s shocking origins and its terrifying plans for world domination. Packed with unforgettable songs, outrageous comedy, and larger-than-life characters, Little Shop of Horrors is a wildly entertaining musical with a bite.

Eight Fifteen Capital and the West Side Show Room present Nat Turner in Jerusalem by award-winning playwright Nathan Alan Davis.

In August 1831, Nat Turner led a slave uprising that shook the conscience of the nation.

Nathan Alan Davis’s timely new play imagines Turner’s final night in a jail cell in Jerusalem, Virginia, as he is visited by attorney Thomas R. Gray and they reckon with what has passed, and what the dawn will bring.

Woven with vivid imagery and indelible lyricism, Nat Turner in Jerusalem examines the power of an individual’s resolute convictions and their seismic reverberations through time.

Nat Turner in Jerusalem is the third play of Rockford native Nathan Alan Davis to be presented in partnership between Eight Fifteen Capital and West Side Show Room.