Lora Adams emerged from a lengthy treatment for thyroid cancer with one goal in mind.

"I wanted to be creative," said Adams, a longtime Quad-City performer and development director of WQPT-TV. "Not just creative at work ... but it's a collaborative kind of thing."

So she decided to celebrate by producing and directing a play, which will be onstage for two weekends next month.

"Directing is something where I'll always feel attached," she said. "There's an emotional connection."

She picked "The Boys Next Door," a comedy-drama about four mentally challenged men in a group home and their burned-out caretaker.

"I'm feeling really good about doing a positive show," Adams, 54, said.

By Halloween, Adams said she knew something was wrong with herself. She spent the next several months undergoing tests and biopsies until having surgery in February that left a self-described "Anne Boleyn scar" about 6 inches long at her collarbone.

But the pre-surgery treatment was lengthy, including four weeks of a diet minus iodine - meaning no salt or fish - to deplete her body of nutrients. She found herself stuttering, unable to form sentences and losing her memory.

After swallowing a radioactive pill, she had to be put in isolation for four days, spending the time in the basement den of the Hampton, Ill., home she shares with her husband, Michael Kopriva.

"I didn't know what to do with myself," Adams said of the time alone.

Despite a high success rate with the treatment, Adams said she is concerned about it returning, but at the same time, she wanted to do something life affirming.

"As much as I'm very positive about things, there's still that a part that goes, 'Wow, life is unfair,' " she added.

"Boys" is being staged at the Village Theatre in the Village of East Davenport, which includes the New Ground Theatre, of which Adams serves as a board member.

"I feel so passionately about this space and the pieces that are being performed here," she said.

After she chose "Boys Next Door," Adams recruited a cast that includes area theater mainstays Eddie Staver III, Jason Platt, Denise Yoder, Jerry Wolking and Patti Flaherty, among others.

Adams said she liked the message of the four main characters always saying what they think.

"There is no filter," she said. "We filter what we say all the time, but there's nothing politically correct about any of them."

It is, she said, life-affirming.

"The show has something to say about all of us," Adams added. The audience, she hopes, will "walk out with a smile on their face and an appreciation of 'There but for the grace of God ...' "