Cameron Ulrich is thrilled to be making his Quad Cities theater debut, in Genesius Guild’s first 2026 show, for many reasons.
The 59-year-old eastern Iowa native moved from St. Louis with his wife Patty last summer, when she took a new job as principal of Rock Island High School, and he teaches theater at Davenport Central High School.
“She really enjoyed it,” Cameron said Wednesday. “My wife is a St. Louis native. I grew up in eastern Iowa (Marion, near Cedar Rapids), but I had moved to the St. Louis area to teach at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville and that's where we met. We met through theater actually. We met at a Shakespeare company opening night kind of thing.
“I've been in St. Louis for the last 20-plus years and my wife made a job move and I was like, well, which job did you accept? And she said the one in Rock Island. And I was like, I'm moving home,” Ulrich said.
He earned his B.A. at the University of Iowa in 1990 and an MFA in theatre directing at University of South Dakota. Ulrich said he is “a storyteller who believes that theater is a deeply collaborative act. I love theater and what it offers audiences and me personally as an artist. It is a gift to be able to work with a group of like-minded individuals to produce works that are hundreds of years old for modern audiences in a park on a summer evening. It is simply magical.”
Cameron and Patty (who have four grown children and two grandkids) co-founded Muddy Waters Theatre Company in St. Louis in 2004. “We wanted to build a space where we could take big, challenging texts and make them feel urgent, raw, and accessible for modern audiences,” he said. “Each season, we featured a single playwright through three distinct productions. This showcased the depth, diversity, and unique voice of their work, which is often missed when viewing just a single play.”
Now directing Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” at Genesius Guild (1120 40th St., Rock Island), in Lincoln Park, Ulrich has extensive experience with Shakespeare, as an actor, fight director and stage director.
“When I direct Shakespeare, I don't just focus on the poetry of the language; I look at the physical stakes,” he said. “I teach actors to use their whole bodies to tell the story, ensuring that every sword fight, confrontation, or intimate moment carries genuine dramatic weight. My background in acting deeply informs my directorial vision, fostering a collaborative, performance-driven environment.”
For the past two decades, he has balanced raising a family and working as a director with work as an educator.
“I’ve had the privilege of working with all levels of theater from the high school stage, college classrooms and theater spaces, community theater, small professional to larger productions,” Ulrich said. “I’ve had opportunities to explore theater from its classical roots to the contemporary world we live in as a director, actor, and educator. I have a passion for stage combat and trained with the Society of American Fight Directors in armed and unarmed combat.
“Whether I am working with professional actors or mentoring high school students, my goal is always the same: to foster a culturally responsive, high-energy environment where everyone feels empowered to take big risks, honor the text, and create something unforgettable,” he said.
A relatively rare comedy
This weekend’s opening of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” is the first time the work has been seen in the Quad Cities for a decade, since Prenzie Players did it in 2016, directed by Cait Bodenbender. The last time Genesius staged it was in 1996.
The new show dates are June 6, 7, 13, and 14 with performances starting at 7 p.m. at Lincoln Park's Don Wooten stage. Admission for the show is free.
One of Shakespeare's early comedies (first published in 1598), the play follows four men who have sworn to study together for three years while avoiding all contact with women. Their pledge turns out to be short-lived, as the Princess of France arrives on a state visit and all four of the men fall in love with the princess and her ladies. Of course, nothing goes as planned, with unexpected twists and turns in the show.
Director Ulrich has a passion for William Shakespeare’s works.
He has copious experience with Shakespeare (including last directing “Henry V” in 2011, and serving as fight director for many of the Bard’s works.
“My love for stage combat came from my undergrad with James Finney at the University of Iowa, who was a major part of the Society of American Fight Directors before he passed,” Ulrich said. However, he’s never done a production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost.”
“This was so exciting to be able to work on this production,” Ulrich said Wednesday. “I just think that it was not as popular as some of his other later works and such that, so when people look to put those things together, this is not the one that is tops the list.”
The Genesius Guild is a community theatre organization specializing in free classical drama. Founded in 1956, the group performs Greek drama, Greek comedy, the works of Shakespeare, and other classical authors for eight weekends each summer.
“I don't think people realize how special it is to have a company that's dedicated to Shakespeare,” Ulrich said. “And this company has been around, this is their 70th season, and being able to produce that in a park for 70 seasons is, is special. It's just something that you can't find everywhere.”
“To have these public performances that have beautiful quality productions and that they've been offered for 70 years to your public, it's just amazing,” he said, also impressed with the amount of theater happening in the QC.
“It was nice to come to a community that valued the arts in general,” Ulrich said. “And you could tell that by the number of theater companies that it has in the area and the dance studios and their music programs. And when I got to the high school, before I ever even stepped into the classroom, went and saw an all-district production of ‘Les Miserables’” at Central last August.
“I can't believe this. Like, you don't get this quality of theater just anywhere,” he said of the partnership of all Davenport high schools for that show. “Like, these kids are talented. Like, these are professional voices that we're hearing. That production was full of talent. So I was super excited. These are the kids I'm going to get to work with.”
Theater company spanning generations
Genesius Guild is especially valuable since it has spanned generations of performers and patrons, Ulrich noted.
“The people behind this theater company are people that love Shakespeare, which is special in itself because this is work that was created hundreds of years ago, but it still speaks to people,” he said.
"They may or may not have a theater background, or they got their theater background by becoming involved with this company and then developed a love for Shakespeare and performance and theater and the spawning of actors and their passion to go on and do this in other places.
“And this kind of work requires a skill set. It requires a dedication to language that's difficult and to vocabulary that's sometimes unfamiliar or archaic in a lot of ways, and that people just throw themselves into it without even knowing what the work is going to be,” Ulrich said. “And boom, here you are. And now you get all of these skills to cut your teeth on. And it's fun to watch those actors grow and come into their own, as they tackle really challenging stuff.”
Doing Shakespeare outdoors for free in a park also is special, he said.
“It's being able to come together as a community. You do it in a much more casual way. So you're outdoors and you're in your lawn chairs and you can bring food and children can be up running around and playing,” Ulrich said. “And it has much more of the feeling of what Shakespeare was like. Like those audiences that went and saw Shakespeare were not static audiences that sat in chairs and in dark rooms and watched these productions.
“They happened in the middle of the day and people came and they talked and they ate and they conversed with the actors on stage,” he said. “That is something that binds a community together. And that ability to enjoy theater, which is special for that, is that performance art as a community is where the magic is created.
"When you're sitting there under the night sky watching a production with people surrounding your community with you there in a very casual place where you have the sounds of the train and the sounds of the Arsenal and kids playing in the background, that's special.”
In this story, the King of Navarre has dedicated his court and the men to pursuing education, and swearing off all vices, which include women and drinking and excessive eating.
“All they're going to do is dedicate their lives to do this,” Ulrich said. “The princess of France shows up on behalf of her father to settle a debt issue that they have with Navarre. And in her and her court, all of those men, including the king, fall head over heels for these women. And these women are just kind of cute, and this could be fun.
"But these men are continued to be tormented by these women who may not have as strong as feelings as the men do towards them. And these men tried to win them with affections and sonnets and gifts, and the women continue to torture them through different events.”
For “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” Ulrich’s metaphor is that of a broken cuckoo clock.
“The character of Moth will symbolically represent the cuckoo bird being present throughout the production carrying a staff with a clock and cuckoo bird,” he said. “The set and costumes embody the pieces of clock incorporating traditional elements of Shakespeare and the metaphor. Actors will walk on top of cogs and wheels while being surrounded by walls that reflect the same, welcoming all to the gardens of Navarre."
The character of Moth the cuckoo bird represents the everyman voice in the play, the director said.
“It helps to emphasize this cuckolding that happens of these men at different moments when they make bad decisions,” Ulrich said. “We actually see him throughout the play. He actually observes and reacts throughout the entire production. So we don't just see him where he was written in, we see him throughout the play in a kind of non-verbal commentary for us.”
Patty actually is playing the princess in this production.
“She trusts me as a director,” Cameron said. “We started our theater company together out of a desire to be able to work together. We met in the theater and instead of always being a part working on separate productions we find time to collaborate together when possible. Sometimes that is director-actor and sometimes on stage together.
"Last year, we both returned to the stage (outside of the educational work that we do) did a production of A Christmas Carol’ at the Alton Little Theater. That was the first time in almost 10 years that the two of us had acted together onstage.”
Other actors in the Genesius production include Brian Wellner, Michael Kintigh, Wiz Woolley, David Wellner, Kitty and Mischa Hooker, Alaina Paiscarello, Anna Schneider, Christian Wellner, Patrick Query, Rodrigo Guevara, Noah Query, Jonah Higinbotham, Pam Cantrell, Storm Marie Baca and Inara Wiegand.
For more information about the Guild, visit www.genesius.org.
This story was produced by WVIK, Quad Cities NPR. We rely on financial support from our listeners and readers to provide coverage of the issues that matter to the Quad Cities region and beyond. As someone who values the content created by WVIK's news department, please consider making a financial contribution to support our work.
