Season

Footlight Players, Inc.

Northwest Indiana’s Award Winning Community Theatre

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On Golden Pond

Book by Ernest Thompson

AUGUST 3-5 & 9-12, 2012

This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory—but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched and continue to enrich their long life together. They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiancé, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. The boy quickly becomes the "grandchild" the elderly couple have longed for, and as Norman revels in taking his ward fishing and thrusting good books at him, he also learns some lessons about modern teenage awareness—and slang—in return. In the end, as the summer wanes, so does their brief idyll, and in the final, deeply moving moments of the play, Norman and Ethel are brought even closer together by the incidence of a mild heart attack. Time, they know, is now against them, but the years have been good and, perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits.

VINTAGE HITCHCOCK: A Live Radio Play

By Joe Landry

OCTOBER 5-7 & 11-14, 2012

Spies, murder, love, and other trademarks of Alfred Hitchcock come to life in the style of a 1940s radio broadcast of the master of suspense's earlier films. With The Lodger, Sabotage and The 39 Steps, Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play is a triple feature, complete with vintage commercials, that recreates a daring train chase, a serial killer's ominous presence, and a devastating explosion through the magic of live sound effects and musical underscoring.

YOU’RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN

Based on the Comic Strip "Peanuts" by Charles M. Schulz

Book, Music and Lyrics by Clark Gesner

NOV. 30, DEC. 1-2, 7-9, & 14-16, 2012

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a favorite musical comedy based on the characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz in his comic strip Peanuts. Though considered a "good man" by his friends, Charlie Brown can't seem to win the heart of the Little Red-Haired Girl, nor his friend Lucy, her crush, the piano-playing Schroeder. Meanwhile Snoopy and Linus daydream and the rest of the friends battle with kites, school, baseball and misunderstandings before finally coming to realize what makes them truly happy. T

MASS APPEAL

by Bill C. Davis

FEBRUARY 1-3 & 7-10, 2013

This brilliantly funny yet compassionate play had a long and critically hailed Broadway run. The play explores the conflict between an established older priest and the impassioned young seminarian who challenges the validity of his well-routined regimen. "There are few more invigorating theatrical experiences than hearing the voice of a gifted writer for the first time." —NY Times. "…Davis has a funniness that is more benign, more interwoven with elemental human weakness and strengths, more forthright than wit. Humor, in short." —NY Magazine. "…one of those very rare plays which not only entertains but also educates." —The Hollywood Reporter.

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Tennessee Williams

APRIL 5-7, & 11-14, 2013

In a plantation house, a family celebrates the sixty-fifth birthday of Big Daddy, as they sentimentally dub him. The mood is somber, despite the festivities, because a number of evils poison the gaiety: greed, sins of the past and desperate, clawing hopes for the future spar with one another as the knowledge that Big Daddy is dying slowly makes the rounds. Maggie, Big Daddy's daughter-in-law, wants to give him the news that she's finally become pregnant by Big Daddy's favorite son, Brick, but Brick won't cooperate in Maggie's plans and prefers to stay in a mild alcoholic haze the entire length of his visit. Maggie has her own interests at heart in wanting to become pregnant, of course, but she also wants to make amends to Brick for an error in judgment that nearly cost her her marriage. Swarming around Maggie and Brick are their intrusive, conniving relatives, all eager to see Maggie put in her place and Brick tumbled from his position of most-beloved son. By evening's end, Maggie's ingenuity, fortitude and passion will set things right, and Brick's love for his father, never before expressed, will retrieve him from his path of destruction and return him, helplessly, to Maggie's loving arms.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

Book by Joseph Stein

Music by Jerry Bock

Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

Directed by Robert W. Komendera

JUNE 7-9, 14-16 & 21-23, 2013

Based on Sholem Aleichem's stories by special permission of Arnold Perl

In the little village of Anatevka, Tevye, a poor dairyman, tries to instill in his five daughters the traditions of his tight-knit Jewish community in the face of changing social mores and the growing anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia.

Rich in historical and ethnic detail, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF has touched audiences around the world with its humor, warmth and honesty. The universal theme of tradition cuts across barriers of race, class, nationality and religion, leaving audiences crying tears of laughter, joy and sadness.

The show features a star turn in Tevye, among the most memorable roles in musical theatre. Original director/choreographer Jerome Robbins' staging is legendary, and available from MTI in a comprehensive choreographic guide. Its celebrated score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, features songs loved the world over: "Sunrise, Sunset," "If I Were A Rich Man" and "Matchmaker," to name a few. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF is simply Broadway at its very best.

Thur., Fri., & Sat. show

times are 8:00 pm.

Sun. Matinee is