By Lisa Bornstein

It was only a year ago that area performers Barbara Gehring and Linda Klein were filling houses at the petite Avenue Theater with their comic tribute to adolescence, Girls Only. Now the show is hitting the road, opening March 21 in Des Moines at the Temple Theater. Gehring and Klein, however, are staying put.

Why wouldn’t they? They can’t be everywhere, and the show is averaging 90 percent capacity in an open run at the Garner Galleria Theatre at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Rather, their script has been shaped into a replicable entity, and three actresses have been hired out of New York and Los Angeles to play the parts of, well, Barbara and Linda in Des Moines. The Iowa version is a co-production between Denver Center Attractions and Civic Center of Des Moines. It’s the first of what may be many more to come: In negotiations are productions in Chicago, Cleveland, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Dallas, Sacramento and Seattle.

“There’s somebody in Australia (interested), but that’s a bit premature,” says DCPA President Randy Weeks.

For the creators, it’s an opportunity to see the show move beyond their wildest dreams. The set and props, created by DCPA, were made in duplicate for the Des Moines production. There are now multiple versions of the many props used in the show, a little surreal since most of them were originally childhood treasures of Gehring and Klein.

“I took on the task of recreating my diary, just because I thought it would be fun,” Klein says. “I actually copied pages out of my real diary and put them in the new one.”

Denver Center Attractions has taken lessons about selling the show as the run has extended, receiving repeat visits along with bachelorette parties and Red Hat ladies.

“The whole thing that is so funny about this is, I can’t go” (to the show), Weeks says.

In fact, men can go, but why would they want to?

“We’ve had men,” Weeks says. “There was a Saturday night that somebody counted about eight guys. It’s not ‘we’re bashing men,’ but guys don’t find it as funny as women do.”

The three new actresses arrived last week in Denver to see the show and begin rehearsals. They are scheduled for an eight-week run with potential to extend.

“It’s so thrilling,” says Klein. “It’s all becoming so real. Here are people who are willing to uproot their lives and go move to Des Moines, and they’re excited to do it and thrilled with the opportunity.”

lisa.bornstein@gmail.com