Though Barbara Reimers grew up an hour’s drive from the Spoon River valley, she didn’t read the book that made Edgar Lee Masters and his fictional central Illinois town famous until college, when she tried out for a theatrical adaptation of Spoon River Anthology.
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“I read those epitaph poems–really character studies–that make up the anthology,” she says. “And I saw my family, neighbors, and Ottawa in them. They spoke to me. They rang true.” She didn’t get a part in the production, but this weekend, nearly three decades later, Reimers will read selections from Spoon River as part of the debut of the Masters Theater Ensemble, a group she founded with several friends from Illinois State University to revive works by famous Illinois writers through performance.
Thacker, who works for the Department of Cultural Affairs, hooked the group up with the city’s summerlong “Music and the Spoken Word” program, and they quickly got the nod to mount the show at Maxim’s, the former restaurant now used by the city for lecture programs. To heighten the intimacy of the performance, the performers will read and sing from different corners of the ornately furnished room.
