Past Events

The Opera House Gallery will be filled with an eclectic collection of pieces from grades K-12. These talented youngsters will be showing off their skills in various mediums including acrylic  and oil paints, ceramics, sculpture, crayon, colored pencil, and mixed media. 

Missoula Children's Theatre will take place August 1-5. Auditions for Rapunzel will be Monday, August 1, at 10:00 a.m. and rehearsals throughout the week will be at 10:00 a.m. Rehearsals will be 4 and half hours; students will need to bring sack lunches to rehearsals. This year both performances will be on Friday, August 5, at 3:00 and 7:00 p.m. There will not be a Saturday performance.

Middletown is a deeply moving and humorous play that explores the universe of a small American town. As a friendship develops between longtime resident John Dodge and new arrival Mary Swanson, the lives of the inhabitants of Middletown intersect in strange and poignant ways in a journey that takes them from the local library to outer space and points between. Mark your calendars for July 7-9 at 7:00 p.m. and July 10 at 3:00 p.m., when the Red Cloud Opera House will host local talent, taking the stage as the Republican Valley Community Theatre.

Join us five miles south of Red Cloud at the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie beginning at 9:30 AM as photographer, Shane Booth, and WCF education director, Tracy Tucker, lead a morning hike. Participants are encouraged to bring their cameras to capture the prairie in its spring splendor. Saturday's events will continue with an artist reception for Shane Booth and a book talk with Alan Wilkinson. Beginning at 4:00 PM, attendees will meet and hear about the work of photographer Shane Booth, who uses an 1867 studio camera and Voightlander lens to make his photographs.

Keep the Home Fires Burning: Music from the Great War will be performed by Sarah Young in the Red Cloud Opera House. The program features WWI-era music and is sure to delight music enthusiasts. 

The public is invited to attend an artist reception for Christi Lewis, Deb Kubik, Jeremy Daniels, Gwen Lewis, Jane Marie, Patricia Scarborough, Jorn Olsen, Gregory Summers, Jenine Wilhelms, Susan Drey, David McCleery, Mike and Mary Dixon, Amy Springer, Linda Woodward, and Barb Kudrna. This event is free and open to the public on Friday, June 3rd, at 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

The 61st annual Willa Cather Spring Conference
June 2-4, 2016

Though the focus of the 61st annual Willa Cather Spring Conference was the literature of Willa Cather and her contemporaries as it reflects the First World War, literature is only one response. “Telling War Stories” highlights other rhetorical tactics from the period—persuasive and inspirational words and images that affected not only Cather and other writers, but the reading public as a whole, the politicians who decided the course of the war, the soldiers themselves and their loved ones.

Many people consider opera to be an elitist art form catering to patrons wearing diamonds and furs, walking sticks and monocles. While all that can be great fun, UNL Opera is taking another approach with an intimate, up-close, and engaging performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. This minimal, yet slick production will be immediately accessible to both new and seasoned audiences alike.

On May 19 the Willa Cather Book Club will meet to discuss a selection of short stories including:

"Roll Call on the Prairies," by Willa Cather

"The Marne," by Edith Wharton

"The Square," "The Beach," and "In the Operating Room," by Mary Borden

There are two meeting times available; 4:00 p.m. at Cherry Corner Estates and 6:00 at the Auld Public Library.