Arizona Repertory Theatre is gearing up for this season’s performances, with productions varying from a Shakespeare classic to the 1940s award-winning musical “Oklahoma!”

The theater’s first production this year will be “Boeing-Boeing,” a 1960s farce based on the antics of a bachelor with three fiancés who are all oblivious to the others’ existences. The production will run from Sept. 22 to Oct. 13.

Bruce Brockman, director for the UA School of Theatre, Film and Television, said there is a formula for choosing an ideal series of performances.

“We want to make sure the material we select is challenging for the students and is appropriate to the talent we currently have in the school,” Brockman said. “We also want to offer our students and community audiences an array of work that is both entertaining and artistically important, and represents a broad range of dramatic literature.”

The upcoming season will be “intriguing” to UA students and the Tucson community, Brockman said, because Arizona Repertory Theatre features elements “other companies in town can’t produce.”
Additionally, theatergoers can look forward to a refurbished ticketing system that will offer more purchasing options to students, Brockman said.

Also new this semester will be “Widescreen Wednesdays,” when the school will host a free film screening of each production preceding its premiere at the Center for Creative Photography. An information session hosted by faculty from the school will follow each session.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to see how dramatic works and musicals translate from stage to screen,” Brockman added.

Rehearsals for “Boeing-Boeing” began on Aug. 19. The actors have been reviewing their scripts and doing dialogue work all summer to ensure their voices will be appropriate for their roles when the play makes its debut in September.

Carli Naff, a musical theater junior, is set to play Gabriella, the Italian fiancee. Naff began preparing for her role months ago, and said she has been pleased with the professional feel of the production.

“I had to start working on the standard Italian dialect, and there is also a French character, a German, a Texan and a Wisconsinite,” Naff said. “Along with that, we also had to do some research about the ’60s, life as a flight attendant, the rules of farce comedy, etcetera, so we could get to know the world we would be living in.”

The sets and costumes for the production are still in progress. Taryn Wintersteen, the set designer for “Boeing-Boeing” and a design and technical production senior, has been utilizing what she learned in her classes to bring her vision to life. The work began under the motto, “Just think ’60s.” Stage manager Kendall Phillips, also a design and technical production senior, is eagerly anticipating the advancements made in rehearsals.

“The set and costumes have been drafted and rendered, so now we’re just waiting to see what fun discoveries we can find in the rehearsal room,” he said. “I’m really excited for this production because it’s a hilarious script and we have some actors who can really do it justice.”