(Arnolds Park)– The schedule of performances for the upcoming season of the Okoboji Summer Theatre was announced Saturday as part of Winter Games festivities.
Ruth Ann Burke, General Manager of OST, says the 63rd season will be highlighted again by several musicals, farces and more light-hearted productions, some of which will be performed for the first time on the Okoboji stage. She says the curtain will go up on the season June 16th with the “Marvelous Wonderettes Dream On”…
“And it is a musical review that hits on exciting things that were happening in the late ’60’s. Non-stop hits and I think it’s going to be crowd pleaser for everybody, so a great way to start off our season. Following that, June 23rd, we open our first comedy of the season, “Clue On Stage”. It’s based on the board game and parts of the movie. It is a fast-paced, nonstop comedy and Steven Brodebeck is returning as our Artistic Director for his third summer in that role and he will be directing that one. For the 4th of July, we are going all out and doing “Grease”, the musical. That will open June 30th and wrap us right into the 4th of July weekend, and we’re really excited about that. We’ve done that show before but it’s been a long time and we know it’s going to be a crowd favorite. Right after the 4th of July, opening on July 7th, a little bit lighter fare, Ken Ludwig who’s always a popular comedy play write for us, “The Comedy of Tenors” is a follow up to “Lend Me A Tenor”, full of mistaken identities and mad cap high jinx. So we know that will be crowd pleaser and fun for us to do right after the 4th of July. We’re going to follow that up July 14th with our classic, a more poignant piece about mother-daughter relationships based on the movie “Terms of Endearment”.
Burke says that will be followed up by a farce…
“We’re following that up July 21st with “Noises Off”, also new to Okoboji. It’s a really fast moving piece. It’s known as one of the funniest farces ever written. We have never tackled that up at the Okoboji Summer Theatre so we are interested to take off and run with a really fast-moving piece to follow up our classic. The third musical of the season opens July 28th, a wonderful musical review called “The All Night Strut based on the 1930’s and ’40’s classics “Timeless Tunes” with Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern, Frank Lester, and the Gershwins, of course. We think it will be quite popular, just really lovely American songbook standards for everyone to enjoy. Our eighth show of the season, a smart new comedy by Blade Smith who wrote “Unnecessary Farce”, we’re going to be doing “The Outsider”, and that opens August 4th. And basically it celebrates the best part of politics. We think that will be a fun one and very timely. And we close out our season with “The Music Man” opening on August 11th and running through August 16th. We hope to feature local participants and local musicians and go out with a crowd favorite.”
In addition, Burke says the Boji Bantam Children’s Theatre will also be back in operation this coming season with four productions.
Listen to the full interview with Ruth Ann Burke:
For more on the OST click here.
