Dogfight Makes Quite an Impression

by Matthew Falduto
Photos by Charles "Rain" Black (eyeguessphotography.com)

Shane Nielsen, Logan Adam Schultz, Jackson Bartelme

Cedar Rapids - Electricity flowed through the opening night crowd of Dogfight, the second production by new kid on the block theatre company Revival. The raucous audience drank and kibitzed while waiting for the show to begin. The ushers added chairs to accommodate the crowd. During the opening remarks, every announcement was greeted with thunderous applause, from thanking sponsors to just mentioning the fact that it was opening night. This was an excited, motivated crowd ready to be entertained. Fortunately, the cast and crew of Dogfight delivered, from the opening song to the final emotional moments.

An In Depth Look at Revival Theatre Company

Cedar Rapids - There's a new theatre in town! Revival Theatre Company presented its first show, Children of Eden, last month at Brucemore's Outdoor Stage. Dedicated to producing musicals, Revival has two more shows coming in 2014-15: Dogfight opening this month and Pippin in June. We had the chance to talk to Brian J. Glick, artistic director, about the company.


Why did you choose the name Revival? 

The whole idea of bringing musicals back to the forefront and showing audiences musical theatre that they maybe haven't ever seen or haven't seen in years, led to the name “Revival.” We are reviving shows, we are bringing back the classics and the rare gems and giving them new light in a corridor that maybe hasn't seen one of our productions.


Can you give us a little history on the theatre? Whose idea was it and how did it come about? Who is involved in the theatre? Do you have executive director, artistic director, board of directors etc? 

Cameron Sullenberger and I created Revival Theatre Company. I was living in New York at the time and through many phone conversations we kept talking about the shows we wanted to produce, knowing that whatever shows we did, they would be musicals. The idea to start a theatre company didn't come up in the initial conversations, but after many discussions about the things we wanted to do and how we wanted to go about doing them, we realized that it really is something of its own.