Liars Theatre

Mission

Liars Theatre is dedicated to fostering the best performing talent in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City Corridor. Liars gives local artists opportunities to create original work, to collaborate with each other, and to have their work produced with professional standards. Liars is also committed to building local audiences. Our mission is to enrich Corridor area cultural life by bringing patrons innovative performances of the highest quality.

History

Liars Theatre was started in 1991 during a poorly considered and naive fit of creative abandonment by Scott Schulte, Nina Swanson, and Cruz Steele. The three had just recently returned to Iowa after enjoying qualified success in Eastern Europe, touring their provocative one woman show about the life of Herber Hoover's wife, entitled First Lady Lou and Her Best Friend Vicki. After returning home to their roots in Iowa, the trio decided to secure a post office box in New York City and attempt to parlay that into getting work around Iowa using the highly marketable slogan in their resumes which states that they were "New York based". This ruse proved successful and after singing Broadway tributes with most of the regional symphony orchestras, Scott, Nina, and Cruz made the pivotal and life-threatening decision to start their own theatre company. After receiving two favorable reviews and several death threats, following their presentation of S & M Butterfly, they went on to garner the respect of the arts community and con artists throughout the Midwest. But, as so often happens with "too good to be true" fairy tales, times grew difficult for the troupe when Nina made the agonizing decision to take a little time off to look for her keys and Scott thought he would do some volunteer work at the prison in Anamosa, since he was going to be there for for the next 6 months anyway. But in his infinite wisdom, instead of seeing his turn of events as some kind of setback, Cruz thought it best to make the most of his time alone and to take the opportunity to go back and finish school. Alas, even this resulted in a precipitous end, when he realized his legs had grown far too long to fit comfortably under those 4th grade desks. Well, there it is. That's where we were, a little but about how we got there, and good background for explaining where we are today. And honestly, after all these years, all we can really say is...we're sorry, we're so very sorry.