Light Opera Works

Music Theater Works (formerly Light Opera Works) is a resident professional not-for-profit musical theatre company in Evanston, Illinois. It was founded in 1980 by Philip Kraus, Bridget McDonough (still its managing director), and Ellen Dubinsky.

Music Theater Works has presented over 75 productions of operetta and musical theatre at Northwestern University's 1,000-seat Cahn Auditorium. Since 1998, in addition to its three annual productions in this theatre, Music Theater Works also produces a fourth, more intimate show, in the 250-seat Second Stage theater. The company performs all of its productions in English with orchestra.

Kraus was the first Artistic Director of the company, serving from 1981 through 1999. The first production of the company occurred in 1981 with a staging of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. Under Kraus' leadership, the company's main emphasis in programming centered on American, French and Viennese operetta, and Gilbert and Sullivan.

Lara Teeter succeeded Kraus and served as Artistic Director until 2004. He continued to program operettas but added more musical theatre pieces from later in the 20th century. The current artistic director, Rudy Hogenmiller, took over in 2005 and continues that trend. In 2017, the company changed its name from Light Opera Works to Music Theater Works.

In its early years, the company staged all twelve of the full-length extant Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including an Elizabethan concept Mikado (1986) and an Edward Gorey/Tim Burton-inspired Ruddigore (1996), as well as the less frequently produced Utopia Limited (1984) and The Grand Duke (1992).

...
Wikipedia