It’s fitting that Countryside Community Theatre (celebrating its 40th anniversary this year) is based at North Scott High School, Eldridge.
The first 2023 production is the high-school-themed “Footloose,” based on the classic 1984 film. Seventy percent of the 40-member cast are high school students, which also features college students and about eight adults. The CCT musical runs June 30 to July 9, 2023.
“Footloose” first burst onto the silver screen in 1984 and proved to be one of the year’s most successful movies. The soundtrack recording reached #1 on the Billboard charts, and went on to sell over 17 million copies worldwide, generating such Top 40 hits as its Kenny Loggins title song and “Let’s Hear It For The Boy” (both of which received Academy Award nominations), plus “Almost Paradise,” “Holding Out For A Hero,” and “I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man).”
With a screenplay and lyrics by Oscar winner Dean Pitchford, the story focused on young people, much like his previous, and successful movie musical “Fame.”
The stage version of “Footloose” opened on Broadway in October 1998. The next day, the show broke the box office record for the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it continued to through July 2000.
In the story, Ren (played by Kevin Bacon in the film) and his mother move from Chicago to a small farming town, he is prepared for the inevitable adjustment period at his new high school. But he’s not prepared for the rigorous local edicts, including a ban on dancing instituted by the local preacher, who is determined to exercise control over the town’s youth.
When the reverend’s rebellious daughter sets her sights on Ren, her roughneck boyfriend tries to sabotage Ren’s reputation, with many of the locals eager to believe the worst about the new kid.
The movie was partially based on a true story of Elmore City, Okla., that occurred in 1979, only five years before the film’s release. From its very founding in 1898, the town outlawed dancing in order to reduce alcohol consumption.
At Countryside, the minister is played by CCT board treasurer, Phil Hart.
“It’s been a lot of fun. People are gonna be amazed with the dance capabilities of this cast,” director Cindy Ramos said this week. “It’s truly a dancing chorus. They don’t just grapevine or jazz square. They’re out there spinning and spinning.”
A longtime QC musical theater veteran, Ramos last directed “The Game’s Afoot” at Playcrafters in 2015. She has music directed several shows at Music Guild and has music directed North Scott school shows.
“Footloose” is dedicated to the memory of Brian Nelson (a singer and theater veteran who died in 2012), who encouraged her to get involved in Countryside. Ramos played Bloody Mary in the CCT “South Pacific” he directed.
“This show came up and I was like, ‘That’s the one’,” she said of “Footloose.” “I can still hear his booming voice in my head saying, ‘This is the show you should be directing.’”
Ramos (who works from home in her own embroidery design business, after working as a jewelry designer) was a music education major at St. Ambrose.
Education majors are leads
Ren here is played by Jack Bevans, who just finished junior year at Wartburg College in waverly, Iowa. He’s an elementary education major and will do his student teaching this fall in Denver, Colo., graduating in December.
This is third CCT show – after being in a brother in “Joseph” in 2022 and Marcellus in “Music Man” in 2021. Bevans is a graduate of Davenport Central, where he was in several shows.
He competed in the Iowa Thespian Festival his senior year and won the monologue division. Both Bevans and Reese were featured in Central’s “Heathers” in 2019, and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”
Ren in “Footloose” has been “a dream role for years,” Bevans said. “I’ve seen the stage version, I’ve seen the movie, just a massive fan.”
“I listened to the soundtrack for years before I knew we were doing this,” he said. “It was fun because I actually got to come into show, and like, I know 80 percent of these words already.”
Bevans was in Central’s junior varsity and varsity show choirs all through high school. For “Footloose,” the bountiful dancing has been a challenge, he said.
“It’s a struggle, especially with large group numbers, to all get together, but it’s been a blast,” Bevans said, noting Lisa Tanner is the choreographer. “It’s so much fun.”
Peyton Reese is the female lead of Ariel, and just graduated from St. Ambrose with an elementary education degree. She’s starting a new job this fall as a 1st-grade teacher at Whittier Elementary in Clinton.
“I’m a big Countryside fan, first and foremost,” she said. This one also is her third CCT show – after playing Marian in “The Music Man,” and in “The Wizard of Oz” in 2011, as a munchkin.
In summer 2022, Reese made her professional debut at Paul Bunyan Playhouse in Bemidji, Minn., in “All Shook Up.” She also was at a theater several weeks last summer in Minot, N.D., where she was in the comedy “Moon Over Buffalo.”
Reese’s Ambrose highlight was the musical “Little Women,” in spring 2022.
In “Footloose,” Ren and Ariel have a lot of chemistry, and sing the famous love ballad, “Almost Paradise.”
“I do think she finds safety and security in him, as opposed to Chuck,” Reese said of Ariel.
“The show has been a blast; we’ve had a lot of fun with it,” she said. Having a bigger cast with a lot of people close to her age is great, with a lot of energy, Reese said.
Performing at Mercado
CCT has joined the Greater Quad Cities Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and will be the first theater group to perform at Moline’s Mercado on Fifth, this Friday (June 16) at 6 p.m. They’ll do a 30-minute set of hits from the show.
“We’re all excited,” Ramos said, noting it will include “Almost Paradise.”
Next season, CCT also plans to do the smash hit musical “In the Heights” (2008), with music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. That story takes place in the Dominican-American neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City.
Ramos is also on the Countryside board of directors, with a goal of increasing diversity. Being part of the Hispanic Chamber helps promote the theater group and gain new audiences, she said. In 2024, they also will do Disney’s “Little Mermaid.”
“I’m one of the few minorities directing, let alone a Latina,” Ramos said, noting the part of “Abuela” for “In the Heights” is on her bucket list. Among her favorite acting roles was Christmas Eve in “Avenue Q,” which she’s done several times.
Ramos has put a lot of 1980s visual references all throughout “Footloose.”
She put the eight-piece band on the stage, instead of the orchestra pit, to get the dancers as close to the audience as possible. The pit is covered, so the stage is extended.
Music director Mitch Carter (who most recently served in that role in this spring’s “Rent” at QC Music Guild), is music directing his first show at CCT.
Performances of “Footloose” will be at 7 p.m. June 30, July 1, 7 and 8, and at 2 p.m. Sundays July 2 and 9., at North Scott, 200 S. 1st St., Eldridge. Tickets are $16 each, available HERE.
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