2008 - 60th Anniversary Season

City Park Players announces stellar 2008 60th anniversary season featuring lower ticket prices and award-winning productions

Alexandria: City Park Players 2008 60th Anniversary Season—City Park Players Community Theater of Central Louisiana announces our 60th Anniversary Season. The season will include some of the most popular productions from our six decades of community theater in Central Louisiana. In appreciation of sixty years of community support, the theater’s board of directors has lowered ticket prices in every category as part of the yearlong celebration.

The anniversary season opens with Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, a national favorite with a local connection. Set in fictional Chinquapin, Louisiana, the play is based on real people and events occurring in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Six southern belles share laughter, tears, and strength through their seasons of life, all from the intimate setting of a beauty parlor. The stage play inspired the enduringly popular 1989 feature film by the same title. Directed by CenLa theater regular Diane Falcone, Steel Magnolias plays at the Bringhurst Park Little Theater Thursdays through Sundays, February 21st–March 2nd.

Following our anniversary kickoff, master playwright August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences will depict the painful relationship between Troy Maxson, a down-on-his-luck former professional baseball player and his son, Cory, an award-winning athlete who has been offered a college football scholarship. Troy is a proud and bitter man who was prevented by racism from playing major league baseball and now, at age fifty-three, earns a meager living as a garbage collector. He has built inner fences around his emotions that neither his family nor his best friend can cross. Fences plays at the Bringhurst April 17–27.

Retired New England professor and lovable curmudgeon Norman Thayer, Jr., and his spirited wife, Ethel, decide to spend one final summer at their family’s lakeside cottage in Maine in Ernest Thompson’s On Golden Pond. When the Thayer’s middle-age daughter, Chelsea, and her fiancé arrive to leave his teenage son while they embark on a European vacation, sparks fly and colliding generations ultimately forge common ground. Veteran director Frith Harwood directs this heartwarming and hilarious celebration of the triumphs of life, love and family, which plays the Bringhurst June 12–22.

A joyful salute to 1920s-era musical comedies, The Boy Friend sparkles with music, dance, and romance. Written by British composer and lyricist Sandy Wilson, this boy-meets-girl musical is set in the carefree world of the French Riviera. The story begins when Polly, the daughter of a millionaire, brags to her other socialite schoolmates of a fictional boyfriend who is “motoring down from Paris” to meet her at the upcoming carnival ball. Several solos, duets, and company production numbers later, boy gets girl and everyone, including the audience, goes home happy. A perfect summer musical fete, The Boy Friend runs August 7–17 at the Bringhurst.

Our season concludes with The Dinner Party, by America’s favorite playwright, Neil Simon. Simon’s comic genius explores the follies of love, marriage, and divorce in this story of three couples, three divorces, and one dinner party. Set in a lush, private dining chamber in a stylish Parisian restaurant, each of the principals arrives separately, surprised to find his or her ex-spouse in attendance. Sparks fly at full speed in this light romantic comedy ignited by Simon’s signature biting dialogue. Directed by Bringhurst pillar Edgar Reed, The Dinner Party closes the anniversary season October 2–12.

Subscriptions for the full City Park Players’ 2008 60th Anniversary Season are available now. At $24 for students, $40 for seniors, and $48 for general admission, 2008 anniversary season tickets reflect a 20% reduction from 2007 general admission prices, keeping City Park Players one of the best entertainment values in Central Louisiana. For more information call the City Park Players Box Office at (318) 442-1800 or email us at cparkplayers@bellsouth.net.

A premiere community theater, City Park Players is committed to offering quality cultural activities and experiences to the entire Central Louisiana community through live theater productions, programming, and education.



For tickets, reservations, or information call the theatre at (318) 442-1800.