Welcome Back to our Fifth Anniversary!

Welcome, Friends! Thank you for supporting us as we bring live theatre back to Oro Valley, Marana, and the surrounding communities! And welcome back to help celebrate the Fifth Anniversary of the Oro Valley Theatre Company!

In this landmark year, we are excited to open our season by presenting the beautiful, heartwarming play, Steel Magnolias. This show, which reminds us about the importance of connection, bonding, and friendship, is a wonderful story that couldn’t be more timely.

This September marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and we will always honor our fallen heroes. Currently, we have been living through a worldwide pandemic and experiencing the loss of hundreds of thousands of loved ones.

“Believe it or not”, Steel Magnolias is a microcosm of the giant challenges Americans, as well as people throughout the world, are facing, and are miraculously finding ways to conquer.

The women you are about to see on stage, are models for us, for they have learned, and are living, the message we were all taught in kindergarten. (According to Robert Fulghum, author of, "All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"), "And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together."

Steel Magnolias is an autobiographical play by Robert Harling, who lost his younger sister, Susan, when she died of diabetes in 1985. This became the subject of a short story, which Harling wrote and then developed into the play, Steel Magnolias. When it was produced off Broadway in 1987, Steel Magnolias became a great success. The film version of the play, which was also extremely well received, was produced in 1989.

Harling’s other well-known screenplays include: Soapdish (1991); First Wives Club (1996); and Laws of Attraction

(2004). Harling currently works in New York and Hollywood as a writer, producer, director and "script doctor".

I am extremely grateful to be part of a theatre company which strives to enrich humanity, through a discipline which has connected people throughout the world, through words, music, painted images, and universal themes forever. I think I can speak for every member of the Board of Directors of the Oro Valley Theatre Company, when I say that we love what we are doing; we love to bring joy and enrich the lives of our audiences, to know that they come to the theatre, not to escape life, but to find new paths of communication and to interpret life experiences through Theatre Arts.

We have lived through a "crazy" time this year and a half, but, by choosing to be positive, by looking forward, to enjoying life by "breaking bread" again with family and friends, and sharing cultural experiences; we will remain strong, bonded, and attached to thoughts of a promising future together.

Artistic Director

Dr. Judi Rodman