Gift certificates are available in various denominations and may be redeemed for tickets to upcoming musical, theatrical and dance performances, including “The Dixie Swim Club,” Eighth Blackbird, River North Chicago Dance Company, Canadian Brass, “Junie B. Jones,” Take 6, Chicago Jazz Orchestra, Chicak Corea and Gary Burton and much, much more!

To learn more about purchasing gift certificates, call the North Central College box office at 630-637-SHOW (7469).

Women's Chorale

You can catch two performances of three outstanding North Central College ensembles, the Women’s Chorale, Concert Choir and Concert Winds. The ensembles will perform first as part of the Outstanding Alumni Awards & Recognition Program.  at 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. The annual Homecoming Concert is at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. Both events are in the Wentz Concert Hall.

Starting Thursday, Oct. 22 and continuing through Sunday, Oct. 25, edgy Chicago theatre comes to Naperville with performances of “Love Song” in Meiley-Swallow Hall.

Also this week, North Central College hosts the screening of “The Band Plays On,” a documentary by Naperville Community Television celebrating the 150-year anniversary of the Naperville Municipal Band. The documentary will premiere at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, in Wentz Concert Hall at the Fine Arts Center, 171 E. Chicago Ave. The band will present a concert immediately following the premiere. Admission is free.

Tickets are on sale now: $30 for stadium seating and $40 for field-level seats. Local band Lady Upstairs will take the stage at 6:45 p.m. followed by Sleeping at Last at 7:30 p.m. and Lifehouse at 8:30 p.m.

Call the box office at 630-637-SHOW (7469) to reserve your tickets today!

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall

It’s here! North Central College is pleased to announce its 2009-2010 Fine & Performing Arts Season.

The season features a wide variety of shows, from Broadway star Michael Feinstein to music legends Gloria Gaynor and Herb Alpert with Lani Hall and a host of other artists and theatrical productions.

This will be the second season for the College’s magnificent Wentz Concert Hall and Fine Arts Center, which was universally hailed for its stunning acoustics by world-renowned artists who performed there during the inaugural season.

This year offers more options for ticket prices and season packages. Patrons may purchase discounted preferred seating for five shows in each of the Performing Arts, Jazz, Classical, Dance and A la Carte Series. Series ticket packages are available now; ticket sales for individual events begin July 15.

The season includes such crowd-pleasing shows as ABBA Mania, Ricky Skaggs Family Christmas, 500 Clown Christmas, River North Chicago Dance Company, Harlem Gospel Choir, Canadian Brass, Chicago Jazz Orchestra, The Fab Four, Monterey Jazz Festival, Boyz II Men, Chick Corea and Gary Burton, Take 6, One Night of Queen, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Shows sure to appeal to families include “Seussical” and “Junie B. Jones.” College and professional theatrical productions include “Pippin,” “Love Song,” Aquila Theater Company’s “As You Like It” and Organic Theater Company’s “Tomfoolery.” North Central College’s student and faculty musicians, actors and artists will be featured in numerous events, and the season includes a full schedule of exhibits planned for the College’s three art galleries.

So be sure to check out some of the amazing Fine & Performing Arts events this season at North Central College!

There are several chances to enjoy fine and performing arts events at North Central College this week, including several student and faculty recitals that are free and open to the public. Call the North Central College Box Office at 630-637-SHOW (7469) or visit www.northcentralcollege.edu/show for a full schedule or to order tickets.

For theatre lovers,  Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet” will be staged at 7:30 on May 7, 8 and 9 and at 2 p.m. on May 9 and 10 in the thrust theatre at Meiley-Swallow Hall, 31 S. Ellsworth St. Tickets are $10/adults and $8/students and senior citizens.

On Friday, May 8, the Luna Negra Dance Theatre presents dance by Latino choreographers at 8 p.m. in Pfeiffer Hall, 310 E. Benton Ave. Tickets are $35/person;  visit http://finearts.northcentralcollege.edu/x45202.xml for details.

Finally, on Saturday, May 9, North Central College welcomes the DuPage Symphony Orchestra for its spring concert “Five Plus Five.” The orchestra will present Sergei Prokofiev’s patriotic Fifth Symphony, followed by Beethoven’s masterpiece in C minor. The concert will be held at 8 p.m. in Wentz Concert Hall. Tickets start at $22/adults, $19/senior citizens and $10/students; call the North Central College Box Office 630-637-SHOW (7469) or visit www.dupagesymphony.org.

So when the guest director began to put together North Central College’s version, she gave the 1938 classic just enough tweaks to make it distinctive.

“I wanted to make it a lot different from productions that have gone before,” she told the Daily Herald in a story published Feb. 12. “The biggest concept thing I did was to cut the cast down to 12 people. Several actors play multiple roles.”

The story, narrated by a stage manager who guides the audience through scenes from the lives of several characters living in a fictional town, opens Thursday, Feb. 12 at the Naperville college’s Meiley-Swallow Hall.

Taylor, a veteran theater professor and actress making her North Central debut with “Our Town,” said several actors play as many as four roles.

“To make it make sense, we’re looking at the play as though these are actors coming to rehearse the production,” she said. “I’m making it a play within a play.”

It also gives cast members a more substantial opportunity to test their acting mettle.

“They’re representing characters differently by their physical and vocal choices,” Taylor said.

There’s one actor, she said, who transitions from playing an 11-year-old boy to portraying a 60-year-old policeman.

“These students are great to work with. I’ve found them extremely enthusiastic and dedicated,” she said.

Freshman musical theater major Hannah Toriumi plays the stage manager.

“She has me virtually never out of the theater,” Toriumi said of Taylor, explaining that the stage manager is always visible to the audience, even when she’s on the sidelines watching the action along with the audience.

The message that reverberates through the show, Toriumi said, is the preciousness of life.

“We need to take life for every minute that we have it. People don’t really realize life as they’re living it,” she said.

“Our Town” performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Feb. 12-14 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15 at Meiley-Swallow Hall, 31 S. Ellsworth St., Naperville. Tickets are $10, $8 for students and seniors. Call 630-637-7469.

North Central College student Valerie Heckman directs “Trifles,” being staged Jan. 8-10 in Meiley-Swallow Hall.

As described in a piece in the Jan. 8 Daily Herald, “Trifles” is about what happens after a man is found murdered in a Midwestern farmhouse. As a collection of neighbors and police descend on the crime scene, clues regarded as inconsequential by the men in the group are seized on by the women, whose insights and sensibilities lead to the perpetrator.

Though written in 1916, the play’s themes of misogyny and domestic abuse remain pertinent concerns in today’s society, said Heckman, a senior theater major.

“When I first read the play, I didn’t realize how long ago it was written,” she said, adding that she initially took it for a period piece written by a modern playwright. “Sadly, a lot of the oppression of women still exists today.”

Heckman said Susan Glaspell wrote the play for the famed Provincetown Players, a group she helped launch. The story is based on a murder trial Glaspell covered as a reporter, a story she later adapted into a short story, “A Jury of Her Peers.”

“It’s considered one of the earliest American feminist plays, if not the earliest,” said Heckman. “When the play was written, women couldn’t vote, women couldn’t sit on juries. My intent was to make it still seem significant today. I find it socially relevant. Our hope is to look at it through a 2009 perspective.”

Heckman said she’s chosen to use a color palette of black and white, with an overlay of red accents, to stage the show, a color scheme favored by American artist Barbara Kruger. Kruger’s work, she said, is often critical of social mores, particularly sexism.

“I’m trying to invoke the cast in black and white and the trifles are red,” she said, adding that the “trifles” of the title are the details, dismissed by the male characters, that eventually lead to solving the case.

Ali Ledbetter, a freshman from Galesburg, plays Mrs. Hale, a farmer’s wife.

“Originally, Susan Glaspell wrote herself into the play (as Mrs. Hale),” Ledbetter said. “Mrs. Hale was condemning the men for looking down on the women. She’s an older woman. She’s a kind woman, she’s open. In the stage directions, they describe her as a ‘comfortable woman.’”

Ledbetter, who appeared last fall in North Central’s “The Diary of Anne Frank” as Anne Frank’s mother, said she jumped at the chance to audition for a role in “Trifles” after studying the play as a senior at Galesburg High School.

The underlying issues are compelling, she said, as is the fluid dialogue that courses through the one-hour drama.

Mrs. Hale’s attitudes are revealed almost immediately.

“Even within the first five minutes, she has a line, ‘Men’s hands aren’t as clean as they might be,’” Ledbetter said.