Festival 56 gears up for its fifth season

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PRINCETON - The beginning of this summer marks the fifth season of Festival 56 theater performances. In the past month, actors, artists, musicians and designers have been arriving and beginning work for the annual summer theater festival in Princeton.

This season, the new festival center, recently named the Grace Per-forming Arts Center, will make its debut. A 220-seat theater inside of the remodeled building will host four of the main stage productions, as well as the late night cab-arets. Grace Performing Arts Center is located in downtown Princeton in the former Bureau County Republican building adjacent to the Princeton Post Office.

This year’s festival includes a variety of performances featuring several classics in comedy and drama from Neil Simon to Shakespeare.

Dexter Brigham, the Festival 56 executive artistic director, commented that preparations for the fifth festival are continuing to run smoothly.

“Things are coming on really well,” Brigham said. “The crew just came in on Sunday, and we’re finalizing show designs. We have great creative teams, and we’re making a very large, modern set for Hamlet in the park. I think it’s the largest set we’ve ever had in the park. We’re excited about our new theater, which is a three-quarter thrust theater. The theater is set up so that the audience is actually sitting on three sides of the stage.”

The 2008 season of Festival 56 will be comprised of seven musicals and plays, including “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” a musical comedy examining the joys of dating, romance, marriage, lovers, husbands, wives and in-laws. The show runs from June 26 to July 5 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grace Performing Arts Center.

The free Shakespeare play in Soldiers and Sailors Park this year will be Shakespeare’s classic tale “Hamlet,” which charts the course of real and feigned madness, from overwhelming grief to seething rage, exploring themes of treachery and revenge. “Hamlet” will run from July 6 to Aug. 10 on Sundays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m.

“Vanities” is a comedy about the growth in friendship among three small town women coming of age in the 1960s and ’70s. It will run from July 8 to July 18 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grace Performing Arts Center.

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” will run between July 10 and July 19 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Princeton High School Council Auditorium. The musical explores the political and interpersonal struggles of Judas Iscariot and Jesus.

Big band jazz musical “City of Angels” is two stories in one — the detective story of Stone, a 1940s streetwise private investigator, and the story of Stine, his rather more naive novelist/creator, who is adapting one of his Stone novels for the screen. “City of Angels” runs from July 24 to Aug. 2 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grace Performing Arts Center.

“The Odd Couple” tells the story of two men — one divorced and one estranged — who are both not quite sure why their marriages fell apart. They move in together to save money for alimony and hilariously discover they’re having the same conflicts and fights they had in their marriages. This Neil Simon comedy will run from July 29 to Aug. 9 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the PHS Council Auditorium.

In “A Doll’s House,” Henrik Ibsen employs the themes and structures of classical tragedy while writing in prose about everyday, unexceptional people. “A Doll’s House” also shows Ibsen’s concern for women’s rights, and for human rights in general. It runs from Aug. 5 to Aug. 9 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Grace Performing Arts Center.

On June 27, the annual Festival 56 benefit gala will be held as a Red Carpet Hollywood Premier event. Tickets are available at $35 per person at the box office. Workshops will again be offered this season, including backstage tours, late night cabarets, the Basic Bill (Shakespeare) workshop, Beginning Stages, the theater camp showcase, and opening night (after the show) discussions.

A full schedule of this summer’s performances and biographies of the actors can be found on the festival Web site at www.festival56.com. For more information about the 2008 season of Festival 56 or to purchase tickets, visit the box office at 316 S. Main St., open on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The phone number is (815) 879-5656.

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