
I'M GONNA MARRY YOU
TOBEY MAGUIRE
JUNE 5-14, 2026
Written by Samantha Hurley
About the show
Run Time: 1.5 hrs
Intermission: 15 mins
Cast: 2w, 1m
Genre: Dark Comedy
Setting: A suburban basement in South Dakota 2004.
Themes: Love, Family, Adolescence
It’s 2004, and 14-year-old Shelby Hinkley has kidnapped Tobey Maguire, at the height of his career, to force him into marrying her. Samantha Hurley’s laugh-out-loud dark comedy, steeped in Y2K nostalgia, explodes our para-social relationships and the obsessions that detonate them.
To cope with the absence of her father, neglect from her mother, and ridicule by her classmates, eighth grader Shelby Hinkley has put all of her time and energy into the only thing that matters in 2004: Spiderman. When leading a devout online fan club proves insufficient to her needs, Shelby decides to risk it all for love, kidnap famous actor Tobey Maguire, and marry him in her basement. Her fantasies of happily ever after start to crumble as she realizes Tobey may not be the charismatic heartthrob she thinks she knows.
Author Samantha Hurley writes: “This is for the girlies who were writing One Direction fan fiction and also for One Direction, hiding in the back of restaurants, sprinting to the car to avoid the aforementioned girlies. This is for anyone who has ever kissed a glossy Tiger Beat poster in their room – and also for Zac Efron, who undoubtedly has to put up with many people saying that they used to kiss posters of him.”
content
advisory
Due to the high volume and wide breadth of work we present, we are often not able to proactively offer content advisories for individual performances. However, if you have specific concerns about stage effects (such as strobe lights or fog/haze) that might have a bearing on comfort or well-being, or if you would like to know more about the age appropriateness of the performance, please contact us at (515) 309-0251 or business@iowastage.org
ACcessible
performances
Audio Described and ASL- interpreted Public Performance :
Sunday, June 7, 2026 at 2:00 PM
MEDIA
“Uproarious... imaginative and original, cutting-edge hilarious and thoughtfully provocative.”
– DC Theater Arts
“Sharp and funny... Samantha Hurley’s witty and unexpectedly moving play imagines more beyond a simple lunatic psycho torture tale – although it definitely has fun flirting with that too, and tweaking our nerves accordingly.” – Daily Beast
“It’s a wild and wonderful ride! A delightful modern-day farce about movie-star worship, kidnapping, fandom, the anxiety of teens, the horror of school, parents and desperately searching for self, sure to put a smile on your face.” – Front Row Center
COMING SOON
Cast & artists
THE ARTISTS
featured company
members

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