Edition 4, Volume 4
February 15, 2009

Welcome to our Newsletter...

   Hello, and welcome to our newsletter.  Well, in just a little over a month Spring will be here, according to the calendar that is :)  Depending on the cooperation of the weather or not, you can see the shore coming alive already with Vacationers and the seasonal business owners working hard to get ready for the upcoming season!  Valentine’s Day weekend attracted many people to the Jersey shore to share a romantic escape or a dinner for two with that special person! How about those brazen people in Sea Isle City that participated in the Polar Bear Plunge (brrr), I think I'll wait a few more months before stepping foot into the Atlantic Ocean! Well the time is now to make plans for your GREAT VACATION visit to the Jersey Shore because all indications and traffic on our websites are showing that it should be a very busy and fun 2009 season!  

Sincerely,

The Great Vacation Staff
“Great Vacations We Will Help You Find In 2009!”

CLICK HERE FOR GREAT VACATION SPECIALS
OFFERED BY OUR ADVERTISERS

Cape May Stage

   One of the oldest traditions of our civilization is that of the storyteller.  We tell stories to teach and enlighten, to entertain and delight.  In their many forms, stories have long served as a way to bring people together both as a community and, more importantly, as a family.
   It is with this idea in mind that Cape May Stage, Cape May’s premier professional Equity theatre, in cooperation with the New Jersey Theatre Alliance, has designed their contributions to the 12th Annual Family Week at the Theatre and Stage Festival event. This annual statewide program, beginning March 4 and running through March 31, offers free and discounted tickets to attendees, and was developed to encourage families to attend professional theatre together by making the experience affordable, educational, and exciting. Family Week at the Theatre has been very well received throughout the state, and this year will be no exception.  During the month of March, there will be a number of free arts-related events available to the residents of Cape May County.
   Cape May Stage’s offerings include events for people of all ages.  For the very youngest (and their parents) local libraries will be holding special storybook reading sessions on Saturday mornings in March from 10 AM – 11 AM.  These readings will be held on March 7 and March 21 at the Lower Township library branch (located on 2600 Bayshore Road in Villas), and on March 14 and March 28 at the Upper Township branch (located on 2050 Route 631 in Petersburg).  Children who attend will have the opportunity to listen to an exciting adventure or fairy tale story read by local performers, and will create a picture to take home from their favorite part of the story.
   For those young people looking to take a more active role in storytelling, Cape May Stage will be offering a weekly acting course for teenagers ages 12-17.  The class will be held every Wednesday afternoon in March from 4 PM – 6 PM.  Cape May Stage’s Education Outreach Coordinator, Donald Toal, will be teaching the courses, and is very excited for the opportunities it offers.  Toal comments, “This is an ideal course for any young actor who loves being on stage.  Even if you don’t have acting experience (or even if you do), these courses give you the chance to explore what it takes to create a world full of living, breathing characters, and share that world with an audience that has never seen it before.”  The students will study essential acting techniques that focus on creating honest, believable, and (especially) fun performances.  This includes physical movement and vocal techniques, improvisational acting, and monologue/scene work.  Advance registration for the course is encouraged but not required, but attendance for all four sessions is preferred and will allow students to get the most out of the program.  Classes will be held at the Robert Shackleton Playhouse on the corner of Bank and Lafayette Streets in Cape May.
   Children are not the only ones that can take advantage of the fun of Family Week—exciting programs are also offered for adults as well.  Visitors to senior recreation centers in Cape May County will be treated to a trip back in time, in the form of a live reading of the classic radio play, Sorry, Wrong Number.  Local performers will bring this classic broadcast, originally performed by Agnes Moorehead in 1943, to life, complete with traditional radio music and ‘advertisements.’  The audience members will also have the opportunity to get a taste for acting themselves, through participation with the performers in several improvisational acting exercises.  This unique event will be held on Mondays in March.  The first reading is scheduled for March 9 from 10:30-11:30AM at the Stainton Senior Center on Asbury Ave in Ocean City, with the second scheduled for Monday, March 16 at the Lower Cape Senior Center in Villas from 10:45-11:45 AM.
All of these programs offered are free and open to the public, and a great opportunity to enjoy the theatre arts at its finest.  For more information, please contact Cape May Stage at (609)- 884-1341.
Family Week at the Theatre is a co-sponsored project of The New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts and Discover Jersey Arts.  Visit www.JerseyArts.com for more information about other arts programming happening around the Garden State. 
 
Additional support has been provided by Appel Farm Arts and Music Center, Bank of America, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, The F.M. Kirby Foundation, Fund for New Jersey Blind, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey, The George Ohl, Jr. Trust, The New Jersey Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the New Jersey Library Association, New Jersey Monthly, New Jersey State Library, The Prudential Foundation and WNYC.
For more information (click here)
Box office at (609) 884-1341.
The box office is open Monday through Sunday from 10AM – 5PM.
Assisted Listening devices are also available upon request.
 

East Lynne Theater Company


Just because East Lynne Theater Company isn't currently doing four shows a week in Cape May doesn't mean the company is idle. This is the time to apply for grants; finalize design work for brochures, posters, and ads; send shows on the road; and prepare for, along with other Equity professional theaters in the state, "Family Week at the Theatre." 
      Since 2002, ELTC has produced a Sherlock Holmes performance to coincide with Mid-Atlantic Center for the Art's "Sherlock Holmes Weekends."  In March, this also coincides with "Family Week."
     "Family Week at the Theatre" is an annual statewide event offering free and discounted tickets to attendees. Across the state, in all 21 counties, young people (ages 5 – 18) receive free tickets to over 100 performances and special events including free classes, workshops and backstage tours.  This event has become so popular, that is has grown from one “week” to the whole month of March. 
     The organization responsible for this much anticipated program is the New Jersey Theatre Alliance: the statewide consortium of professional theaters in the Garden State, of which East Lynne Theater Company is a proud member. To receive a full schedule of events for "Family Week at the Theatre" call 1-800-THE-ARTS or visit www.familyweek.com. 
     "Sherlock Holmes' Weekend" is later than usual this year, and so is ELTC's stylish radio-style production. March 20 and 21 at 8:00p.m. marks the final Cape May performances of "Sherlock Holmes' Adventure of the Speckled Band," based on one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite stories, and his rarely produced play "The Stonor Case." Just like the Sherlock Holmes' radio series on NBC that premiered in 1930, the sound effects are live and so are the commercials. This case involves Holmes and Watson pitted against a psychotic villain in a race against time.  Stay tuned for next November, when ELTC presents "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."  
     The location is The First Presbyterian Church, 500 Hughes St., in Cape May, where the company is in residence. Tickets are $23 for general admission, $13 for full-time students, and, since ELTC is celebrating "Family Week," anyone age 18 and under is free.  For information and reservations, call 884-5898     
Earlier in the afternoon of March 21, artistic director Gayle Stahlhuth will conduct a workshop for sight-impaired students from five South Jersey Counties.  She’s been teaching theater for two years for the Blind Center of the Jersey Cape, and her next class with them is on March 19.
     Like last year, Stahlhuth will be working with the fifth and sixth grade students at West Cape May Elementary School.  After only a week of rehearsals, students will perform a play about Cape May's own Civil War hero, Henry Sawyer.  On July 6, 1863, it was only by the bad luck-of-the-draw, that Sawyer, and another captain were sentenced to death at Libby Prison.  How they avoided the noose had something to do with President Lincoln, General Lee, and Sawyer’s wife.  The free performance is at the school, 301 Moore St., West Cape May, at 7:00p.m.  For reservations, call ELTC at 884-5898.
     Funding for the school performance, and workshops at two south Jersey libraries, are provided by New Jersey Theatre Alliance's "Family Week."  
     On Saturday, March 28 from 1:00-2:30p.m., is an "Intro to Theater Workshop" for ages 11-18, at Lower Township Library, 2600 Bayshore Rd. The class is free, but reservations are recommended and made be made by calling 463-6357.  The class will involve a bit of everything from warm-up exercises, to improv work, to scene study, and playwriting. 
     On Sunday, March 29 from 2:00-3:30p.m., is a "Scene Study Workshop" for ages 9-17, at the Atlantic Free Public Library, One N. Tennessee Ave., Atlantic City.  Students have the opportunity to rehearse with scripts-in-hand. The class is free, but reservations are recommended.  Call Jennifer Boyce, Director of Teen Services at the library, at 345-2269, ext. 3052.
     Stahlhuth is conducting both workshops.  She has worked with students in in-school and after-school residencies throughout the country for over twenty-five years, working in places as varied as Native American Reservations out West, high schools in the Bronx, and underserved schools in central New Jersey.
     ELTC shows are on the road, too! On March 15, Robert Aberdeen's popular "Victorian Magic," which was part of ELTC's summer mainstage season last year, will be at The Newark Museum for a free performance, courtesy of "Family Week."
     Meanwhile, to celebrate Women's History Month, two women take to the road in three ELTC productions:  Michele LaRue in "Someone Must Wash the Dishes," a humorous look at the Suffrange movement, and "Yellow Wallpaper," based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's gripping novel, and Jill Dalton in "Lizzie Borden Live," about the infamous Victorian who had parental issues.   
     "Dishes" will be at the Monmouth County Library in NJ on March 7 and at libraries in Croton-on-Hudson and Garnerville, both in NY on March 22 and 23.  All are admission-free. "Yellow Wallpaper" can be seen on March 20 at 8:00p.m. at Passage Theatre's "7th Annual Solo Flights Festival" at Mill Hill Playhouse, 205 E. Front St., Trenton.  For information and reservations, call 609-392-0766.  From March 13-15, "Lizzie Borden Live" is at the Columbus Theater in Providence, RI.  
     Michele LaRue is also performing her "Tales Well Told," an off-shoot of ELTC's popular "Tales of the Victorians" in libraries in the following towns in NJ: Elmwood, Oradell, and Bridgewater.  The stories she's reading are by Kate Chopin and Edna Ferber.
     To stay up-to-date with what’s going on with East Lynne Theater Company and to check out the Cape May Summer/Fall Production Season, (click here), or call 884-5898.  Season tickets are available through June 30.  See five shows for only $90 and you many use the tickets in any way.  See five different productions, or see fewer shows, and take friends.  Checks may be mailed to: 121 Fourth Ave., West Cape May, NJ 08204.  For information and reservations for shows, contact ELTC at 884-5898, or (click here).

Great Vacation Things To Do

Homestead Real Estate Company Inc.     
846 Broadway
West Cape May, NJ 08204
Phone 1-609-884-1888 
Toll Free 1-888-309-7454

HomeStead's award winning agents are there to provide you with courteous, professional service. Using all their skills and resources, they work hard to market and sell your home, find the home of your dreams, or place your family in the perfect rental property. The company was created to provide a level of service for people buying and selling their real estate in Cape May, West Cape May, Cape May Point and the surrounding areas of New Jersey. The mission of HomeStead Real Estate Company is to serve their customers and clients with Honesty, Integrity and Professionalism.
For information: (click here)

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