Thoreau College

06/23/2026

Two days until we bring Verona to Viroqua. Join us June 25–28 for the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival’s Romeo and Juliet, evening shows at 7 pm (and a Sunday matinee at 2 pm), all outdoors, all free, donations welcome.

06/22/2026

06/22/2026

Three days until Shakespeare returns to PrairieWind Park! The Viroqua Shakespeare Festival opens this Thursday at 7 pm. Free admission, live music, food vendors, and plenty of room for picnics under the summer sky.

06/21/2026

This time, we’re shining a light on some of the characters who quietly keep the world of the play turning. Alex Chapes as Peter/Page/Ensemble, Evelyn Walbrun as Balthasar/Ensemble, Tanja Birke as Apothecary/Ensemble, Lissy Baird as Servant, and Margaret Canter as Watchman help carry messages, move crowds, and hold key moments of tension and humor, reminding us how much Romeo and Juliet depends on the choices of those at the edges of the story.

Alex is pleased to be making her debut with the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival this summer, and enthralled to be joining the cast of R&J once again. Her most recent credits include: Every Brilliant Thing, August: Osage County (staged reading), The Wizard of Oz, & Dog Sees God. As always, she sends gratitude to her friends and family for their unrelenting love and support.

Evelyn is absolutely thrilled (and a little nervous) to join the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Tempest. She is currently entering her freshman year of high school, and is looking forward to pursuing a career in film. In her spare time, she enjoys drawing and photography. Other acting credits include ‘Mother Goose’ in Mother Goosed, ‘Sir Charles’ in Places in Five!, ‘Principal Baxter’ in Hot Lunch, and ‘Baseball Player/Voice of the Dead’ in Our Town. She would like to thank all of her family, friends, and pets for always supporting her and never letting her give up.

Tanja is thrilled to be in her fourth Viroqua Shakespeare production and her first role as a lethal drug salesperson. She loves being a part of a cast that includes artists from all over the country and is dedicated to the wonderful mission of making Shakespeare accessible to all. In real life, she is a caregiver of elderly and disabled community members and a mother of 2 overly dramatic (but fully grown) daughters.

Lissy is a mom, an actress, and a natural disaster. She and her husband founded and operate Wisconsin Family Theater here in Viroqua. Some of her favorite recent roles include Brennan Jerry in Doctor Imposter and Toad in Frog and Toad Stories. She would like to thank her husband (Ian), her children (Moses and Baby-in-Progress), and everyone else for putting up with her very cranky pregnant self.

Margaret is a homeschooled junior from a dairy farm near Cashton, who was introduced to theater when she joined Viroqua Shakespeare Festival’s production of Henry V. Her recent roles include Scoop O’ Sherbet in Wisconsin Family Theater’s production of Doctor Imposter.

Viroqua Shakespeare

06/20/2026

Our next featured group turns our attention to the Montague household and one of Juliet’s would‑be matches. Jess Reed as Lord Montague and Molly Reese as Lady Montague embody the family at the heart of the feud, while Sophia Thomas as Friar John/Abram and Peter Simmons as Paris help weave the wider web of messengers, servants, and suitors whose choices shape the fate of Verona.

06/18/2026

Our next glimpse into Romeo and Juliet highlights four characters who hold the fragile balance of Verona in their hands. Peter Simon as Prince Escalus, Ryan Vu as Mercutio, Bella Andrews as the Nurse, and Colin Thelen as Friar Laurence together carry the play’s wit, wisdom, and warnings, those voices that try, each in their own way, to steer the young lovers and their city toward a different fate.

Peter is back for his second season of summer Shakespeare, ready to bring authority and heart to the stage this year as Prince Escalus. When he isn’t busy trying to keep the peace in Verona, Peter is a local creative professional and musician dedicated to fostering deep community roots.

Ryan is a Chicago-born and raised actor who graduated with his BFA in Acting at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Recent credits: Justin in The Invisible Boy (Children’s Theatre of Charlotte), US Sebastian in Twelfth Night (Oak Park Festival Theatre), Ernst in Spring Awakenings (Lazy Susan Theatre Co.), George Gibbs in Our Town (CCPA), Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night (Modern Archaic Theatre Co.), and Oliver in As You Like It (CCPA).

Bella is based in Chicago, where regional credits include Young Frankenstein (Inga) and Sister Act (Sister Mary Robert) at Mercury Theater Chicago, Avenue Q (Kate Monster) at Williams Street Repertory, and Bright Star (Alice Murphy) at Timber Lake Playhouse. Outside of Chicago, she has also performed in Beautiful (Carole King) at the Broadway Palm, and Anastasia at the Fulton Theatre.

Colin is a La Crosse based theatre Actor, Director, Designer, and Co-Founder of Grey Area Productions; a professional theater company working primarily in partnership with The Pump House Regional Arts Center in La Crosse. Recent credits include acting as Doug and set design for Gruesome Playground Injuries for Grey Area Productions, and Edgar in King Lear, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and various roles in MacBeth with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre in Alaska.
Viroqua Shakespeare

06/15/2026

Our journey into Romeo and Juliet continues with four actors who carry both the play’s mischief and its heart onto the stage, bringing Shakespeare’s Verona to life here in Viroqua.

Jacob Rowland (Sampson, Petruchio) is happy to join the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival's production of Romeo and Juliet. He is a writer and teacher. This is his first theatrical role. He would like to thank the director and the rest of the production crew for putting this show together.

Elijah was proudly born and raised in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood, and has lived in Viroqua for the past semester through a fellowship at Thoreau College. He is a graduate of The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee where he majored in environmental arts & humanities and minored in theatre. This is Elijah’s first time performing Shakespeare!
Owen is a Chicago-based actor/singer who could not be more excited to make his Shakespeare in the Park debut! He recently received his degree in musical theatre from Ball State University in Indiana and is beyond grateful to perform here in Wisconsin for the first time even though he is a die-hard Bears fan. Recent credits include Macbeth (Macbeth), A Funny Thing Happened (Protean), and Songs For A New World (King of the World Soloist). He would like to thank all of the talented cast and creative team who continue to inspire him endlessly and he would like to dedicate this show to his friend CeCe for teaching him how to be a great friend both on and off stage.
Antonio has recently received his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and is elated to be in his first production outside of college. By the grace of God, he has been studying acting for the past 4 years. Recent credits include Julius Caesar, ANON(YMOUS), Machinal, and student-decided works exploring music, identity, and community. He is looking to continue to enhance black soul in whatever God puts in front of him. And to push against marginalization as ‘colored folk’ have a light too good for suppression.
Shakespeare

06/12/2026

As we get ready for this year’s Viroqua Shakespeare Festival Shakespeare and the production of Romeo and Juliet, we’re excited to begin introducing the actors who are bringing this story to life at PrairieWind Park.

Today, we’re starting with four of our performers: Sara Tedeschi as Lady Capulet, Mason Pain as Lord Capulet, Chloe Irwin as Juliet, and Liam McGilligan as Tybalt.

Sara is a long time local resident and area theater enthusiast. Her love of Shakespeare has also meant many years of enjoying the works through community reading during the Bardathon. She encourages everyone to watch for that fun and immersive experience in Viroqua and La Crosse in January.

Mason studied Theatre Performance at the University of Central Oklahoma, where his role as Laurie in Little Women and the collaboratively-written Changed Forever earned recognition at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He went on to perform several seasons with Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park, with favorite roles including Pisanio in Cymbeline and Thurio in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, before relocating to Chicago in 2014, where he most recently played Paris in Romeo and Juliet and Sebastian in Twelfth Night.

Chloe is a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota’s BFA Acting program, where she performed as Rosalind in As You Like It, Agatha in The Moors, and Witch 1 in Macbeth in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She also spent four years with Nebraska’s Shakespeare on the Green, taking on a variety of roles, her favorite being Arthur in King John, which included a daring jump from a 16-foot parapet. Last summer in Viroqua, Chloe played Ariel in The Tempest.

Liam McGilligan, our Producing Artistic Director, is returning to the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival stage this year in the role of Tybalt. An actor and theater maker deeply committed to making Shakespeare accessible to everyone, Liam has helped shape the vision and community spirit of this festival from the beginning, and we’re thrilled to see him bring Tybalt’s fiery presence to life in Romeo and Juliet.

06/11/2026

Last week we had our graduation day at Thoreau College with the Metamorphosis Gap Semester students.

To our students: thank you for the courage, curiosity, and care you brought into this community. You have tended gardens and questions, shared meals and stories, and taken on the hard inner work of asking who you are and how you want to serve the world.

To our fellows and resident: we are deeply thankful for the many ways you have held, shaped, and enlivened this place. Through your teaching, mentorship, art, research, and everyday labors, you have helped make Thoreau College a living experiment in holistic, human‑scaled education.

As you each step into your next chapters, new studies, projects, farms, classrooms, studios, and homes, we wish you courage, companionship, and a sense of rootedness in the work that is yours to do. May the time you spent here continue to echo in your choices: in how you listen, how you make, and how you show up for your neighbors and for the land.

Thank you for walking this stretch of the path with us. We look forward to seeing how your lives unfold, and we trust that the seeds planted here will keep growing in many places and many forms.

06/10/2026

The Mexican Folk Art Collective, which our marketing and outreach coordinator, Gabriela Marván, is part of, is currently exhibiting at the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison.

In “Corazona: Art and Heritage of Mexican Women”, more than ten Mexican women artists from Mexico and the United States share work rooted in memory, resistance, and everyday life: pieces that speak of migration, of market vendors and curanderas, of inherited crafts and family stories, of protest against violence toward women, and of the lived experience of women from Indigenous communities.

For us at Thoreau College, this exhibition resonates deeply with our commitment to place based, human scaled education: it shows how art can carry biography, land, and community in ways that invite both grief and hope. We’re grateful that a member of our team is part of this collective work of honoring and making visible the voices of Mexican women artists. Congratulations Gabriela and all the Mexican Folk Art Collective artists!

Exhibition dates: June 2 – August 23, Playhouse Gallery, Overture Center for the Arts (Madison, WI).
Artist reception: June 25, 5:30–8:30 pm. Artist talk: 6:00 pm
Find out more: https://folkartcollective.com/