Talking seemingly without taking a breath, Lora Adams summarizes her schedule over the next few months.

There’s “Boston Marriage,” the play she’s directing for New Ground Theatre that opens next weekend, and “Closer,” for the new My Verona Productions, which starts its rehearsals shortly thereafter. She’s also hosting a gala for Illinois/Iowa Youth Ballet in early June, where she teaches acting for its companion, Illinois Ballet Theatre of the Quad-Cities.

That’s not to mention getting ready for the August pledge drive at Quad-Cities’ public TV station WQPT, where she’s been development director since October 2000.

She finally takes a breath.

“And when I’m not busy ...”

It’s rare for directors to tackle two productions within a year, and even more so to be doing two consecutive shows. But Adams’ resume of more than 30 years of experience on stage and behind the scenes proves she’s up to challenge.

“She’s very talented, and that’s the main reason,” said New Ground artistic director Chris Jansen. “She’s not only run a theater, so she can focus on the directing and the actor management, but also the producing of it. She’s looking at all aspects of it at once, which is great for a theater organization.”

“Boston Marriage” is a David Mamet comedy written in an Oscar Wilde style, Adams said. Set in the turn of the century, it has a three-woman cast: Susan Dragon McDonald, Tracy Timm and Emily Burr. Adams calls it a smart comedy.

“It’s not over-the-top, beat-you-over-the-head funny,” she said.

“Closer,” which was turned into a movie with Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Natalie Portman last year, has a cast of Tristan Layne Tapscott (who is co-producer of My Verona with Sean Leary), Greg Ball, Kasandra Merrill and Burr.

“I was extremely impressed with her talent as both an actress and a director,” Leary said. “She’s got a lot of terrific ideas, and I think it’s going to be a fantastic show.”

Adams said that when she directs, casting is the most important part of a show.

“It all starts with the casting,” she said. “ I can envision a lot of things in my head, but the bottom line is you’ve got to deal with the hand you’re dealt with the people who show up for auditions and what skills that they bring.”

Casting “Boston Marriage” was difficult, she said, because she knew many of the actresses from the close-knit Quad-City theater community who were auditioning.

“There aren’t that many roles for 30-something, 40-something year-old women to play that are really meaty and great,” said Adams, who recently turned 50. “To turn people who I consider friends, or at the very least friendly acquaintances, was very uncomfortable. Extrarodinarly uncomfortable.”

If she had her druthers, she said, “Closer” — a drama about marital infidelity — would have an older cast than those whom she chose.

“I think what it says about couples comes from having been in relationships, as opposed to just being out of high school,” she said.

A Chicago native, Adams entered professional theater in her late teens. She worked at theaters in Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Illinois before getting a call to make a second appearance at Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse in Rock Island in February 1981, in Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap.” She met her husband — Michael Kopriva, now a coach and driver’s ed teacher at Riverdale High School in Port Byron, Ill. — at a Valentine’s Day dance and married him that October.

She stayed in the Quad-Cities for about seven years, getting an associate degree in radio-TV at Black Hawk College and then moving to Missouri with her husband, who was dealt a double setback when an explosion destroyed his three-week-old business, and he was diagnosed with cancer.

Adams and her husband moved to Milwaukee, where she became general manager of the Belfry Theatre, the oldest summer-stock house in Wisconsin. After a stint as director of entertainment for the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wis., she started her own theater, the 200-set Evergreen Theatre.

In 2000, she returned to visit friends in the Quad-Cities, and was informed that the development director post at WQPT was vacant. She was hired and returned, but didn’t start back on stage for a few years. Since then, she’s been back on stage at Circa ’21, as well as directing for New Ground.

Adams said it helps her as a director to have an acting background, but says she’s more nervous as a director of an upcoming show than a performer.

“The difference is I’m nervous for all of them. It’s more encompassing,” she said. “I’m much more nervous as a director than I am an actor. I feel responsible for the whole thing.”

She’s directed and worked with the likes of Tom Wopat (whom she recruited to narrate WQPT’s documentary on river preservationist Chad Pregracke, which recently received national distribution), Jane Kaczmarek (“Malcolm in the Middle”), Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”), Marsha Mason and Jack Gilford. When she does have a few days break this summer, she said, she wants to hit Broadway to see Wopat in “Glengarry Glenn Ross” and Mason in “Steel Magnolias.”

Adams said the only difference between working with talented professionals and talented amateurs is career ambitions. 

“When it’s your livelihood, you’re always looking for the next job,” she said. “You go where the work takes you.”

Adams said she’s happy with her place in the Quad-Cities’ theatrical community.

“I consider myself lucky to do what it is I do,” she said. “I suppose it would be nice to be paid oodles and oodles and oodles of money to do it, but it’s not why I ever chose to do it.”

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.