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Riverside Theatre’s 2026/27 season opens with the world premiere of I, Will: A Late Romance, running September 10–27 in downtown Iowa City. Read arts journalist Diana Nollen’s conversation with playwright Scott Carter, director Adam Knight, and actor Tim Budd about Shakespeare’s later years, the inspiration behind the play, and bringing this imagined chapter of Shakespeare’s life to the stage.
Will Power Afoot: Riverside Theatre staging world premiere play
By Diana Nollen, for Riverside Theatre
Riverside Theatre is embarking on a magical history tour, from Shakespeare’s musings to L.A. playwright Scott Carter’s ear.
The Bard of Avon is having a midlife crisis. But in 1608, he can’t just buy a Jaguar and tool around London. He’s already written what would become the world’s best dramas, and can’t afford to rest on his laurels.
The cool kids are so over having history and tragedy crammed down their throats. Audiences are drying up. Plague and pestilence are claiming too many lives, so theaters shut down for a year. King James I is a tyrant, leading an administration “that’s often quite erratic,” director Adam Knight noted.
It’s a time when everyone just needs permission to laugh. But Shakespeare needs prodding to make that happen.
“I, Will: A Late Romance” imagines how that possibly came to be. The play, filled with humor and Shakespearean inner conflict in modern vernacular, runs from Sept. 10 to 27 on the Riverside Theatre stage in downtown Iowa City.
It’s a romance in progress, marrying what Iowa City audiences have come to embrace: Shakespeare in the Park and Riverside Theatre’s penchant for mounting world premieres, now at 40 and counting.
“A play is not done until it’s published, and this is draft 23,” Carter, 74, said during a Sept. 5 roundtable interview with Knight, 47, and actor Tim Budd, 65, tackling the title role. Both Knight and Budd live in Iowa City, and have collaborated on many previous productions, including Shakespearean works indoors and out. Eight other actors playing various roles round out the cast.
Carter is a veteran of the improv creative style and standup comedy. An Emmy-nominated writer and producer, his credits include writing and producing “Real Time with Bill Maher” and “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher,” among many others. He’s currently serving as creator and host of the “Ye Gods! With Scott Carter” podcast on NPR.
Carter came to Iowa City on Sept. 2, and his wife will join him in time to see the play onstage. It’s the first of three in a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, which later will be produced by theatre companies with their own casts, crews and design teams in Fort Worth, Texas, and Tucson, Ariz. This “rolling” process gives the playwright the chance to see how other theatres in other regions interpret his work.
Riverside connection
Carter isn’t new to Riverside Theatre. The Iowa City professional troupe staged his previous work, “The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord,” to rave reviews in 2019.
He was so taken by Knight and company’s interpretation that he and Knight kept in touch, and when “I, Will” was ready to workshop and produce, bringing it to Riverside Theatre became the natural launching pad.
Having Carter in the room where it happens “is a joy and a gift to the actors,” Knight said, as well as for the playwright and director.
“I can help guide him on his journey, and Scott can help guide me on our journey,” Knight noted. Their styles complement each other.
“Adam and I have a really good working relationship,” Carter said. “I note everything.”
And even if a few of his comments are blunt, Carter knows that Knight will “deliver them to the actors in the most gentle way possible, and often as a suggestion, not a commandment. That gives me the freedom to feel like I can be open with my misgivings — and often my misgivings are about my own work — and I know that he will validate what I’m feeling and then translate into practice the maximum possibility.”
Budd said that “having the writer in the room” helps him see what he might be missing, adding it’s infinitely better than running to a library or going online to see whatever he might find out about Shakespeare.
And therein lies the rub. Not much is written about Shakespeare’s later years, in which he wrote his comedies.
History and mystery
Two popular films, “Hamnet” in 2025 and “Shakespeare in Love” in 1998, have given modern audiences glimpses at the early life and losses Shakespeare endured, as well as his creative process.
“He’s already written monumental works,” Knight said.
“I, Will,” imagines the new direction society has pretty much forced him to take, and begins with two friends urging him to collaborate with one of London’s biggest scoundrels, George Wilkins – a writer and brothel innkeeper who often is in trouble with the law. It’s the nudge the stuck writer needs to shake off his uptown funky walk.
Shakespeare still is grieving the recent death of his mother, and that of his only son, Hamnet, who died at age 11 in 1596. He wasn’t exactly in a humorous frame of mind.
He’s at a crossroads, and his ensuing romances find an enduring, endearing mix of comedy and tragedy.
Carter has wrapped those elements in humor, creating something shaken and stirred, which speaks across the centuries.
“It isn’t only a play about the greatest writer,” Knight said. “It shows real people with real struggles they have to resolve.”
What does Carter and Emmy-winning writer, producer and standup comedian want the actors to learn from this experience?
“Their lines.”