Come from Away Returns to Moline’s Black Box Theatre for 25th-Anniversary Tribute

The Black Box Theatre in Moline, Illinois, will stage the Tony-award-winning musical Come from Away from August 28 through September 12, 2026. Performances are scheduled for Fridays, Saturdays, and a Thursday night on September 10 at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday shows at 2 p.m. Admission is $25, according to the theatre’s announcement. The production honors the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks by recounting how the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, hosted nearly 7,000 stranded airline passengers when U.S. airspace was closed.

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Created by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, *Come from Away* premiered on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on March 12, 2017 and ran for 25 previews and 1,669 regular performances before closing on October 2, 2022. The show has toured internationally, including 1,048 performances in London’s West End, and earned multiple Tony and Olivier nominations, winning Best Direction for Christopher Ashley. Its blend of Celtic-inspired music and true-story storytelling has been praised as a “big bearhug of a musical” by the New York Times.

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• Lora Adams – Artistic Director and co-founder of the Black Box Theatre, also directing and designing this production.

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• Amy Trimble – Music director.

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• Madeleine Rhode – Choreographer.

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• Alexander Richardson – Lighting designer.

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• Cast includes local talent such as Doug Kutzli, Shana Kulhavy, Morris Nunn, Joe Urbanitis, Abby Bastian, Noah Hill, Becca Johnson, Karen LeFebvre, Abigail Trabue, Thayne Lamb, Tommy Ratkiewicz, Emily Schwartz, Krystle Gascoigne, Kirsten Myers, and Paul Holland.

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• The production receives partial sponsorship from the Victor and Doris Day Foundation.

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The theatre’s programming team highlighted the minimalist staging—using a handful of tables and chairs to represent airplanes and buses—as a way to focus attention on the human stories behind the 9/11 air-space shutdown.

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• “I first saw Come from Away in London and ever since I have wanted to put it on the Black Box stage. As the 25th anniversary approached, I just felt we were the right venue at the right time to honor those we lost and to celebrate the gift of human goodness in the worst of times,” — Lora Adams Artistic Director, box theatre's co-founder

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