This inaugural summer season of collaboration between the two organizations offers new musicals in staged-reading format at the Downtown Theatre in University Park.

The slate includes:

How Can You Run With a Shell on Your Back?
Music, lyrics and book by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler
Central Pennsylvania's Festival of the Arts 2011
July 13 at 10 AM and 2 PM
July 15-16 at 10 AM
Downtown Theatre
"Inspired by the enduring relevance of Aesop's classic fables, Alan Schmuckler and Michael Mahler chose three tales — 'Androcles and the Lion,' 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' and 'The Tortoise and the Hare' — stories that are more than 2,500 years old, to rediscover through the eyes of young people today. How Can You Run with a Shell on Your Back? places Aesop's three tales into the hands of several unlikely — and seemingly unalike — storytellers: six young students who have been sent to after-school detention. There, the reluctant group is confronted with a substitute teacher named Mr. Sopperstein, who encourages them to spend their hour-sentence together by using their imaginations and exploring one of the library's books. The six come around as they take on the Aesop's characters and imprint the stories with their own points of view."

Bubble Boy the Musical
Music and Lyrics by Cinco Paul
Book by Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio
Central Pennsylvania's Festival of the Arts 2011
July 14-16 at 9 PM
Downtown Theatre
"Bubble Boy the musical follows the odyssey of Jimmy Livingston, a boy born without immunities and confined to a plastic bubble room. When he discovers that the love of his life Chloe is getting married, he builds a bubble suit, breaks out of his home and travels across the country to stop the wedding. Along the way he must deal with unlikely cults, ferocious bikers, an Indian ice cream man, and the greatest obstacle of all, his controlling mother."

The Giver
Music by Scott Murphy
Book and lyrics by Nathan Christianson
Based on the novel by Lois Lowry
Penn State NU Musical Theatre Festival & Central Pennsylvania’s Festival of the Arts
July 14-16 at 6 PM
Downtown Theatre
"Based on the beloved novel Lois Lowry, The Giver is a coming of age story set in a utopian community that is free from pain, sickness and conflict, but also without color, weather, or deep emotions. Jonas and his friends, Asher and Fiona, along with his family, journey through the questions of life, love and happiness." For more information, visit www.numusicals.psu.edu or www.arts-festival.com.

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The Penn State NU Musical Theatre Festival's mission is to "explore, encourage, and foster new works of musical theatre by today's progressive playwrights and composers in an educational setting, giving the students of Penn State University access to the collaborative process between the artist, the art form, and the professional world of musical theatre."