Hovey Players Presents the 10th Annual

Hovey Summer Arts Festival

Produced by Leigh Berry and Mark Sickler

July 28, 29, August 4 and 5 ,2006

“Summer Shorts is …the best damn theater company doing what they do best…”
– Larry Stark, Theater Mirror
Summer is here once again, and it’s time to gear up for the Tenth Anniversary Hovey Summer Arts Festival at Hovey Players! Join us for our annual summer festival, featuring original one-act plays, short films, and more.
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Michelle M. Aguillon

Lysander loves Hermia, and Hermia loves Lysander. Sounds simple enough? In this most beloved of Shakespeare’s comedies nothing is quite that simple.

Helena loves Demetrius; Demetrius used to love Helena but now loves Hermia. Hermia’s father prefers Demetrius as a suitor and enlists the aid of Theseus, the Duke of Athens. Hermia, given four days to choose between Demetrius, life in a nunnery, or worse, chooses none of the above and escapes with Lysander into the surrounding forest. Where, in typical Shakespearean tradition, complications ensue.
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Buried Child

By Sam Shepard

Directed by Bill Doscher

This powerful and brilliant play, winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, probes deep into the disintegration of the American Dream. Set in a squalid farm home occupied by a family filled with suppressed violence and unease, a ranting alcoholic grandfather; a sanctimonious grandmother (who goes on drinking bouts with the local minister) and their sons harbor a dark secret. Into their midst comes Vince, a grandson none of them remember, and his girlfriend, Shelly, who cannot comprehend the madness to which she is suddenly introduced. “…wildly poetic, full of stage images and utterances replete with insidious suggestiveness…” —NY Magazine. “Shepard is one of the most prolific of our playwrights, and, for that matter, certainly one of the most brilliant.” —NY Post. “Mr. Shepard is an uncommon playwright and uncommonly gifted…” —NY Times.
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses

By Christopher Hampton

Directed by Kristin Hughes

Boiling beneath the elegant surface of this scintillating study of sexual politics set on the eve of the French Revolution are the deviously twisted sensibilities of the Marquise de Murteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, a pair of schemers (and former lovers) who take pleasure in coolly manipulating and seducing those around them. The Marquise challenges the Vicomte to seduce the virtuous Madame de Tourvel but when he finds himself genuinely falling in love with his intended prey, the game quickly turns fatal–with devastating consequences for everyone involved. Dangerous Liaisons is decidedly wicked fun!
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Prelude to a Kiss

By Craig Lucas

Directed by Ronni Marshak

A charmingly comic and original modern fairy tale—both for and about adults, that takes the storybook wedding of two young lovers and (in the best fairy tale fashion) turns it upside down through the magic of an old man’s kiss. By the time the laughter subsides you are deftly locked into a dream where you keep telling yourself to hang on, knowing that sooner or later you will have to wake up—but you secretly hope you don’t. Prelude to a Kiss is a unique vision of the wonder and confusion of love and a honeymoon that defies description.
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The Beauty Queen Of Leenane

By Martin McDonagh

Directed by Michael Tonner

Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, The Beauty Queen Of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman, and Mag, her manipulative aging mother, whose interference in Maureen’s first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play’s terrifying dénouement.
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