ORANGEVILLE - A community theater collaboration that is the first of its kind locally hit the stage Friday.

The musical comedy "Bosh and Moonshine" will be making the rounds in Orangeville, Stockton and Freeport in northwest Illinois. The production's cast includes members from a number of local theater groups, including Monroe's.

It also features a nationally recognized playwright.

Mike Craver wrote the show, and came from his hometown of Lexington, N.C., to star in it.

"John Buford (of the Mighty Richland Players theater group in Orangeville) possessed me to come. His producership got me out here." said Craver, who's also written "Smoke on the Mountain," "Radio Gals" and "Oil City Symphony."

"Bosh and Moonshine" is the story about Dodge City of the 1880s, or at least the ghosts who return from her past and plague the owner of a new bed and breakfast with their problems.

Craver was commissioned to write the play about 10 years ago for Dodge City, Kan. The play has had two previous productions before coming to Illinois.

Craver plays the ghost of an undertaker, a part he said he wrote for himself.

"I don't have many lines - I wrote it that way on purpose," he laughed.

Craver said undertakers had multiple functions in the 1880s, being also furniture makers and florists.

The play is "goulish and morbid, but with a humorous twist. I guess I have a twisted sense of humor," he said.

His character, along with a gunslinger, a Shakespearean actor, a dance hall girl and three Harvey girls who provided services for the workers on the railroad, show up on stage.

This is the first production in the area that has tapped multiple community theater assets. The director hand-picked some of the best known and best loved talent from the area for the cast and crew. All are veterans of the stage coming from The Bell Tower (Dubuque), Mainstreet Players (Galena), Plum River Playhouse (Stockton), and Backstreet Players (Hanover), as well as Freeport, Monroe, Lena, Mount Carroll and Orangeville. The show debuted Friday at the Orangeville Masonic Hall.

"The theater group is great, wonderful and dedicated," Craver said. "Some of them drove great distances for rehearsals."

Sheri Novak, Monroe, plays the piano, and Mary Soddy, also of Monroe, substitutes for her in one performance.

"It's folksy music, not theater music. In the tradition of, say, Gilbert and Sullivan - good time music, some serious, a little pop, with a period flavor," Craver said.

Craver wrote the songs, not a new endeavor for him. Craver was part of a band called the Red Clay Ramblers, who wrote many of their own songs in the 1970s and 80s.

"It was an old-time string band," Craver said. "We traveled all over the county, up to Minnesota and Chicago. Periodically, we did some theater projects. That's how I got into theater."

Even though he passed though the area while traveling with the band, Craver said they never got to stop and see this part of the county.

During the past few weeks he has made up for that, by traveling with Buford promoting the play.

"We put on a great many miles on the car, doing (public relations) at radio stations," Craver said.

An avid biker, he also has "seen the city," of Orangeville, and headed for the bike trails in the area.

His ghost though will be on stage each weekend, May 1 to 17.