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QHS Alumni Spotlight: Brooke Trantor ’07

By: Katie Rodemich ’02

When Brooke Trantor returned to her hometown of Quincy, she brought more than ambition—she carried a story only this community could inspire. From her early days on the Quincy Community Theatre stage to nearly fifteen years in Los Angeles filmmaking, her journey has come full circle. Now back in the place that first nurtured her voice, she’s shaping a project born from adulthood, loss, growth, and new perspective—one that reflects Quincy’s spirit, its resilience, and the renewal found in coming home. Her vision is bold and deeply personal: a feature film set entirely in Quincy, rooted in grief and humor, belonging and transformation—a story about how the places that shape us become the places we learn to see anew.

“It’s funny—since I’ve been back home, I’ve been looking through things from my younger days and thinking, Wow… I did a lot. How? When did I do all this? Did we not sleep? We were constantly on the go. I was involved in every corner of the arts. And it wasn’t just Quincy High School; I grew up at Quincy Community Theatre. I started there at three years old. Theater has always been part of my life, and back then I was dividing my time between both places.”

Brooke’s connection to the stage began long before high school. Some of her earliest memories were shaped inside the old Quincy Community Little Theatre, where she joined QCLT’s children’s program, “Stage Kids.” While most toddlers were learning shapes and colors, Brooke was learning stage directions, light cues, and how to step into character.

“I was three years old when I started — I was in my first children’s theater show. I was just very theatrical right out of the gate. It was Peter Pan, and I played Tinker Bell. It was so much fun! I literally never stopped. You cannot look at the next seventeen years of my life when I was not in a show. It’s really wild to look back on, but I think it was just like finding this community, as all of Quincy is, as a kind of home away from home, and that was QCT.”

Those early experiences didn’t just introduce her to performance—they imprinted on her senses, shaping how she remembers space, story, and connection.

“My first adult show was Cinderella, and I would have been seven. I was one of the mice with Libby (Ruth) Campbell ‘07. Elizabeth Stanley was Cinderella, and Tad Hilgenbrinck ’99 was the prince.”

Those names—Stanley, Hilgenbrinck —would later become recognized beyond Quincy. But in the beginning, they were just fellow young artists sharing small stages with big dreams. That early ecosystem of talent helped shape Brooke’s sense of what was possible.

Brooke’s reflections on Quincy’s educators and mentors are warm, vivid, and filled with gratitude. They weren’t just teachers—they were steady forces who grounded her and helped her understand who she was becoming.

Her respect for educators began at home. Her mother, Dana Trantor, spent more than three decades teaching Health Occupations at the Quincy Area Vocational Technical Center, blending her nursing background with a gentle, student-centered approach that earned her the WGEM Golden Apple Award. Growing up with a teacher who shaped future healthcare workers gave Brooke an early appreciation for the dedication behind the profession.

“My mom, Dana Trantor was a teacher. So, I think my appreciation and respect for teachers had a different perspective, because I was coming home with a teacher every day and understood how hard that job is. From a very young age, there was not just one teacher. I feel like all my teachers were very supportive, not only just of my education, but of my love of arts.”

“Definitely in high school, Kathi Dooley was always a huge influence in our lives. And Tom Burnett was very fun to work with and he was very, very chill. I remember I was always so type A and stressed out—stressing about something, I don’t know, not knowing my lines, not knowing something. And he was just, It’s just a play, or It’s just a boy, or It’s just a grade. He really grounded me. Tom grounded me to the earth, which was needed. I was in choir with Mr. Sherman. Between Mr. Sherman, Kathi, Tom… and Mr. Bassett was a huge part of my life because he taught me how to play violin. Losing Mr. Bassett was really hard for all of us. He was amazing!”

Inside A-Building, she felt both challenged and held—pushed to grow yet supported as a young artist finding her place. What began with Hello, Dolly! her sophomore year, where she performed as part of the ensemble, quickly evolved; by junior year she had advanced to a principal role as Bloody Mary in South Pacific, and by senior year, Seussical the Musical offered her a chance to grow even more—creatively, confidently, and within the community that had shaped her.

“Junior year was South Pacific, and I was Bloody Mary. That one was so fun. Almost all my scenes were with the guys—the soldiers—it was basically me being one of the guys. The dance numbers were me and all of them. We were always together.”

Then came senior year—and with it, a shift in tradition. Instead of a classic Golden Age musical, QHS took a chance on something bold and contemporary. Seussical the Musical burst onto the QHS stage in a whirlwind of color, rhythm, and imagination. Stepping into the mischievous, quick-witted Cat in the Hat became one of Brooke’s most defining performance experiences.

By 2007, Brooke graduated from QHS with her artistic foundation in place. Another mentor encouraged her to pursue further training at Illinois Wesleyan University.

“Dominic Cattero, who served as Director of Student Theatre and Head of Education and later became Managing Artistic Director at QCT was a huge inspiration in my artistic life as well. He had gone to Wesleyan and really pushed me to go there. It’s an incredible school, incredible theater program, and I got to go live in London for a year at the Shakespeare Conservatory. It was just a continuation of my story, and there was just so much opportunity to really explore and find myself, not only as an artist, but as a person. It was just like community.”

From there, she headed to Los Angeles, carrying her Midwest grit straight into the heart of the industry she’d spent her life preparing for.

“I’ve been in LA since 2011—fourteen years now—which is wild.”

Those early years were fueled by improv—Groundlings, iO, Nerdist, Second City. Each place gave her community, momentum, and a clearer sense of who she was becoming as an artist. Eventually, she landed on the Second City main stage, but even then she realized the industry required far more than talent. It demanded resilience, clarity, and a willingness to continually reinvent herself.

Improv became her training ground. It taught her how to direct actors, understand beats, collaborate across creative disciplines, and trust the instincts that would later guide her as a filmmaker. Those skills naturally carried her into writing and directing short films.

“When I first moved to LA, about ten years ago improv was my whole world. The hustle is constant for any artist, and the days of waiting by the phone for auditions are long gone—we’re all too connected for that now. I’d been to a few acting schools, and one of them, John Rosenfeld Studios, hosted a small film festival that really opened my eyes. John encouraged actors to take charge of their careers: write the roles you want, learn to direct, learn to use a camera—because no one is going to hand you those skills. That festival sparked something, and I started getting together with friends to write and create. Looking back, I already had so many of the tools from acting and from Second City—directing, producing, writing—I was just applying them to film. What hooked me was how tangible film is; it’s something I can share years later. It doesn’t replace theater, but it gave me a new sense of empowerment, especially as I started writing for my friends and creating work that truly fit who they were.”

Film offered something she hadn’t experienced before—a permanent artifact of her artistry, something she could revisit and share long after the moment had passed. One short film became two, then five, then more. Today, the count stands at fourteen.

And with that momentum, the next step became clear: it was time to make a feature.

Brooke never imagined that step would lead her back to Quincy for months at a time—or that the story she needed to tell was rooted so deeply in the place that shaped her, but intuition, memory, and loss had been tugging her home for years.

“This idea had been bubbling for a few years. I’d come back to Quincy for the holidays with my film camera, taking photos and seeing the town in this different way I didn’t remember—something was calling me, almost otherworldly or spiritual.”

When she finally shared the idea with her producers, they didn’t hesitate.

“I don’t force things artistically, so I trusted it would come, and when it did, I pitched it to producers and mentors in LA, and they immediately said yes. They told me I had to go write it in Quincy—be where the story lives, sit in the coffee shops I’ll shoot in, walk to the river for that romantic scene, go back to the high school.”

So, she returned home to Quincy and almost immediately, the story began revealing itself.

“It was the best advice. The film has unfolded through my fingers as I’ve lived here. It’s a privilege because life moves fast and the hustle is real, but I’m staying with my parents, and having that support is amazing.”

What emerged is Maine Street—anchored in a simple but powerful premise:

“When a screenwriter is faced with a series of life’s hard knocks and untimely loss, she hauls it out of Hollywood to her small-town, Midwest roots in Quincy, Illinois. With fresh perspective she is reignited by a community of creative characters, lively memories, and new understanding of life purpose.”

Maine Street is ultimately about returning to ourselves—searching the past for answers and allowing grief to shape who we are becoming. It’s a deliberate unmaking, a surrender to art itself: art that steadies our pain, carries our questions, and guides us through transformation.

As Brooke describes it:

“It is my love letter to Quincy, with my own proper dose of humor: Garden State (2004) meets Cinema Paradiso (1988), a timely coming-of-age story of a woman in her 30’s trying to ‘do it all.’”

To share that love letter from the beginning, Brooke is inviting the community into the process.

On December 20, 2025, and January 3, 2026, she will return to State Street Theater for a special film retrospective co-hosted with Arts Quincy: America’s First Arts Council. The evening is designed as both a homecoming and a look ahead, celebrating where she began and where she’s going next.

VIP guests will gather at 6:00 PM in the historic green room for champagne, charcuterie, rooftop photos, Old Hollywood charm, and an exclusive first-look pitch of Maine Street, her upcoming feature set in Quincy. At 7:00 PM, the doors open for themed cocktails and popcorn, and at 7:30 PM the house lights lower for a showcase of six award-winning short films. A candid Q&A will follow, offering insight into the films, her journey from Quincy to Los Angeles, and the vision behind Maine Street.

When the conversation turned to advice for students—or anyone navigating life or a creative path—Brooke spoke from hard-earned clarity. The most transformative shift in her adulthood, she said, has been learning to look outward rather than inward.

“No matter what you’re doing—even in high school—being of service frees so much of the anxiety we carry. Art is meant to serve; it’s not about the individual. My focus now is doing what I love in service to the world and this community. You take that energy—anxiety, worry—and ask, ‘How can this make a positive impact?’ This community is tangible—people who need to be heard, stories that need telling. And if I reach a certain place in my career, I’ll have the access to pass the baton and help other voices rise. That’s what excites me.”

For Brooke, art becomes meaningful when it shifts from self to service. That mindset has steadied her—creatively and personally—and continues to guide her as she moves between LA and Quincy. Her deepest joy comes from supporting others, and this showcase is her way of offering that joy back to the community that raised her.

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