Dear Audience Members,

Thank you for attending this 2024–25 performing arts season production. The outstanding show you are about to enjoy is part of a thoughtful and carefully selected lineup designed to provide a wide array of entertainment experiences. I would like to acknowledge Dillon McArdle, director of the Viterbo Fine Arts Center, and his incredible staff for their hard work in making this season possible.

Allow me to also extend my gratitude to you—our patrons, benefactors, sponsors, volunteers, and students—for your continued support in bringing the best of the arts to the region. We are fortunate to live in a place with so many cultural and artistic opportunities, just as the members of the Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration envisioned when they built this wonderful facility.

We are very happy to have you join us. On with the show!

“Pace e Bene”
Peace and all good

Rick Trietley
Viterbo University President

As the producer and lead singer/actress of The Beat Goes On celebrating the extraordinary life and music of CHER, I am proud to portray a woman who empowers other women. Like CHER who brilliantly played the real lives of strong women in movies Silkwood and Mask, I am blessed with the opportunity to portray the real life of CHER-the singing voice, the look, the walk, the talk, a living breathing powerful and vulnerable human being. Who can forget CHER’s performance in the critically hailed drama Silkwood where she portrays the real life of activist Dusty Ellis aka Dolly Pelliker. Brilliant! She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the motion picture Mask, CHER portrays the real life of Rusty Dennis, the mother of a boy with a facial deformity. She won the Cannes Film Festival Award as Best Actress. She deserved an Oscar as well. I remember watching and reading interviews where CHER talked about the preparation and research it took to play the roles of these woman. She described the work as important to her and an intense responsibility to be good. She was so proud and understandably so. So thank you, CHER, for your outstanding career and for empowering woman to take chances, let go, and say exactly what is on their minds. You lead by example. As a female producer, singer and actress in the business and for The Beat Goes On Cher show, playing CHER has brought my inner strength out to the surface. Playing her larger than life qualities while keeping it real with vulnerability. I hope to meet her someday.

–Lisa McClowry, CHER/Producer of The Beat Goes On