The play with music about traveling the Midwest — and memories of family road trips — offers an original score by Chicago folk artists Sons of the Never Wrong. Clue and Manton's Chicago Sitcom Production Company created and is producing the piece, billed as an "hilarious, sentimental and sometimes irreverent journey through the heartland."

A writer returns to his childhood home in Des Moines, Iowa, and decides to take his recently-deceased father's ashes to the geographical center of the heartland. Along the way he endeavors to re-visit many of the distinctive destinations featured in his father's family trips and vacations. The "kind, weird, charming, funny, irritating and dangerous people he meets along the way help him to relive, regret and rejoice the childhood he spent trapped in the back seat of a station wagon somewhere off Interstate 80," according to production notes.

Tim Clue directs. Kathryn Lake musical directs. The cast includes Dana Black, Brad Mott, Jeremy Seymour, Jeff Solberg and Barb Weingard.

There is hope that this Equity waiver run will eventually find a larger life in Chicago, Manton told Playbill On-Line.

Shadowfax productions and guest productions like Leaving Iowa are presented in the Little Theatre, an annex at the northeast corner of Naperville Central High School, 440 W. Aurora Avenue, in Naperville, IL. Performances play Friday-Saturday April 25-26; Friday Sunday May 2-4; Friday-Sunday May 9-11; Friday-Sunday May 16-18. Friday and Saturday night performances are at 8 PM, Sundays at 3 PM.

General admission tickets range $20-$30. For ticket information, call (630) 548-4390.