Joanie Schultz (Photo: Joe Mazza)

As previously reported in this blog, Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumna Joanie Schultz ’00, graduate of the Theatre Department’s theatre directing program, took over the position of Artistic Director of the WaterTower Theatre in Addison, Texas, just north of Dallas, on January 1, and she’s already making changes.

According to a report in the Dallas News: “Schultz . . . won’t announce the company’s new season until May, but she’s already making changes. After learning [WaterTower’s] former producing artistic director Terry Martin could no longer direct the company’s final show of the season, Sunday in the Park With George, [Schultz] swapped it for Ike Holter’s Hit the Wall, a play about the 1969 Stonewall riots that kicked off the gay rights movement. It will be the first show that Schultz directs at the theater.”

The decision to replace the 1984 Stephen Sondheim musical for a recent drama by Chicago playwright Ike Holter reflects Schultz’s Chicago pedigree and her connection to Columbia College Chicago. Hit the Wall premiered in 2012 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in a production by The Inconvenience, a multidisciplinary arts collective co-founded by alumni of Columbia College’s Theatre, Dance, and Music departments. Hit the Wall runs July 28-August 20 at WaterTower.