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Our Mission
Giving a voice to the stories and people of the past and echoing them with communities of the present
A message from the Artistic Director:
Susan Thetard
I am delighted to introduce you to Illinois Voices Theatre--Echoes! You might ask yourself just what do Echoes have to do with theatre? You know when you're in a canyon or a cave and you call out? A voice something like yours comes back at you? Well, that is how Illinois Voices-Echoes works. The voices of people from the past, portrayed by professional actors, with original scripts written by professional playwrights, and based on solid research into their lives and times, come back to us. These stories inform us not only of lives lived in the past but also help us understand our present. The subject can be the history of people, organizations, or communities -- all told through the prism of our diverse communities and the way individuals contributed to the larger story.
Illinois Voices Theatre-Echoes has collaborated, since 1992, with many local organizations and institutions, including the annual, award-winning Evergreen Cemetery Walk in collaboration with the McLean County Museum of History, in telling the stories that reveal the state's rich cultural history through theatre.
These stories inform us not only of lives lived in the past but also help us understand our present.
Why is Illinois Voices-Echoes important to the community? Mike Bailey of the Peoria Journal Star summed it up saying: “Each year you get a glimpse of the famous and the not-so, of the social elite and the socially downtrodden, of the well-regarded and woefully despised. All help you understand and appreciate central Illinois. More than that, they reveal a community not ashamed of its past, not interested in rewriting history to suit present sensibilities and agendas, proud of what it is and where it’s going. . . . It teaches you that good, smart, courageous people traversed this same silty loam, made a difference, cultivated a rich history, and that it’s possible to grow wherever you’re planted. We need that reassurance. Central Illinois’ history is reassuring.”
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