What: The Clayton Center for the Arts Second Annual Community Theatre Festival
Where: Clayton Center for the Arts, Maryville, TN, 20 minutes from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
When: Friday, July 27-Sunday, July 29, 2012
Who: Athens Community Theatre, Foothills Community Players, Clayton Center, Morristown Theatre Guild, Theatre Knoxville Downtown, WordPlayers
Why: To celebrate the value and life enrichment of community theatre and display outstanding theatrical productions
Fare: "Anything Goes," "Back to the 80's: The Totally Awesome Musical," "The Dixie Swim Club," "The Last Five Years," "Tuna Does Vegas," "Ragtime"

The Clayton Center for the Arts, currently in its second full season as a presenter of national and regional performances, will host The Second Annual Community Theatre Festival, Friday, July 27-Sunday, July 29, 2012. The festival features six of East Tennessee's most successful and long-running community theatres. All five of the groups who participated in the first festival in 2011 are returning, and the highly respected WordPlayers of Knoxville will join the line-up.

The inspiration for the festival was the awareness of the positive impact community theatres have had on both participants and audiences all across the United States for generations. It is art and entertainment by the people and for the people, and it a cherished part of the lives of many communities. Too seldom do people realize just how important community theatre is to individuals and local populations, and too seldom is that importance honored and celebrated.

The offerings for 2012 are generally light fare, but include thoughtful and historically important plays as well. For three days, plays will be presented virtually non-stop in the three performance spaces of the Clayton Center for the Arts: the 1200-seat Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre, the Haslam Family Flexible Theatre, and the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall. The festival's opening day includes a smorgasbord of festival food prepared by local restaurants, live music on the plaza, in addition to the performance of three of the plays.

Presented on opening night will be one of the most prestigious and panoramic musicals of the past two decades, "Ragtime," based on E.L.Doctorow's 1975 best-selling novel. It follows the intersecting lives of three families, WASP, Black, and immigrant, and blends fictional characters with historical figures of the early 20th Century. The Broadway production earned thirteen Tony Award nominations and won four. It is a production of the WordPlayers, and will be presented in the largest of the three halls. The same evening Theatre Knoxville Downtown will present the latest installment of one of the most popular play franchises ever created, the one begun with "Greater Tuna." The selection for the Festival is "Tuna Does Vegas." The newplay re-unites the eccentric characters of the "the third smallest town in Texas" when radio broadcaster Arles Struvie announces that he and his wife Bertha Bumiller are going to Las Vegas to renew their wedding vows. The whole town decides to go along. The comic potential of local yokels crashing into the brightest of any city lights is fully realized in the play, which is to be presented in the Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall. On the same evening, "The Dixie Swim Club" will occupy the Haslam Family Flexible Theatre. The choice of the Athens Community Theatre, "The Dixie Swim Club" brings together five Southern women whose friendship dates to their days on their college swim team. They meet annually for a long weekend of reminiscence and catching up. The play presents four of those reunions, and in doing so follows the very different lives of the women. The expected hilarity of five girlfriends free to be their most down-to-earth selves has surprising poignance as they face an unexpected challenge.

The entire weekend of performances is scheduled so that all six plays can be seen, and the Festival's first night allows for the viewing of two. On Saturday, July 28, the first half of the day reprises the roster of the night before, but a major change-over in late mid-day, brings three more plays to their respective stages.

In the spectacular Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre, one of the classics of American musical theatre will be presented by the Foothills Community Theatre. "Anything Goes" by Cole Porter, a genius of melodies and lyrics, brought to the American songbook such beloved numbers as "All Through the Night," "You're the Top," "Blow Gabriel Blow," "I Get a Kick Out of You," as well as the title song. This play with its farcical plot entangling an improbable collection of characters, a cruise ship setting, and more tap dancing than in almost any other of the great musicals represents an era of American culture as vivid as that in"Ragtime." Joining "Anything Goes" in the shift of fare are Morristown Theatre Guild's "Back to the 80's: the Totally Awesome Musical, which brings to life the audacious decade of Michael Jackson, Atari, blue eye shadow, and the Mullet along with a score of the most beloved musical hits of the time. The fresh and exuberant musical will be presented in the Haslam Flexible Theatre. Bringing the weekend's cavalcade of century-long nostalgia to a contemporary close will be a cleverly constructed history of a couple falling in and out and in love. "The Last Five Years," is the CCA's way of joining the fun in 2012. The romantic story told almost entirely in music will find the perfect setting in the acoustically wonderful Harold and Jean Lambert Recital Hall.

The family-friendly and affordable tickets will go on sale in mid-May, offering patrons the options of individual tickets or two types of weekend passes. The Clayton Center for the Arts website, www.claytonartscenter.com or the box office (865) 981-8590 can provide further information about the theatre festival, set in a picturesque small town within view of America's most-visited national park and vacation areas.