PORTLAND – An ambitious multiday arts festival incorporating live music, theater, dance and more is planned in downtown Portland to kick off the July 4 holiday week, and organizers hope to make it an annual event.

Organizers of the Portland Performing Arts Festival, scheduled from June 28 to July 1, are expected to announce preliminary plans during an open house at 5 p.m. today in the Portland Public Library’s Rines Auditorium.

The festival is planned in venues across Portland’s peninsula. Some events will be outdoors, while others will be at Merrill Auditorium, the State Theatre, One Longfellow Square and other indoor venues.

The idea is to promote Portland’s reputation as an arts destination during the lead-up to Maine’s summer tourism season.

“We are trying to create an event that brings together all of the arts in Portland. We have nine core events over four days, fairly large in scale, and in the range of music, theater, dance and the performing arts,” said festival President Kara Larson. “We also are working with artists and arts organizations in Portland to create a broad range of fringe events that will run at the same time.”

The hope is that the Portland Performing Arts Festival will give visitors, year-round Mainers and seasonal residents a reason to come downtown over the course of several days.

“We think about this as an event that will attract people from away, who may be coming up or thinking about heading farther up the coast. We hope they think about coming to Portland for a short time at the beginning of summer,” said Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance.

Hutchins expects the festival will also raise awareness among Maine’s seasonal residents that Portland offers an interesting arts menu in the summer.

“There is a tendency for people to go off to the islands and not think so much of downtown in the summer,” she said. “This provides an anchor for arts-related activity in late June and early July.”

The Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance is helping to organize the event, and is the fiscal agent for Portland Performing Arts Festival, a new arts group. It has a nine-member board and is working with a $180,000 budget for the inaugural event, Larson said.

With the alliance’s help, the festival group is raising money to support the event.

“We’ve had a couple of substantial gifts, and we feel we are in a great position. We’ve been in our quiet period, and now we’re going public,” Larson said.

The festival, designed as a catch-all for the performing arts, will include a play and a contemporary dance piece commissioned for the event.

Artists who have committed include local and nationally known performers, including classical guitarist Sharon Isbin; choreographer Alison Chase, who lives in Maine; EepyBird Productions, a Buckfield-based duo that gained international attention for their Mentos-and-Diet Coke science experiments; the troupe from Celebration Barn Theater in South Paris; and the blues and jazz guitarist Doug Wamble.

Several other arts presenters have scheduled events in tandem with the festival. Westbrook-based Acorn Productions plans a Naked Shakespeare Ensemble production of “All’s Well that Ends Well” in a building on the Portland waterfront. The Portland Conservatory of Music will send musicians from the International Piano Festival for piano recitals. Mayo Street Arts will present puppetry, and SALT will host spoken-word events.

The Children’s Museum and Theater of Maine has also expressed interest in participating, and Larson said there have been discussions about a film component.

“We want to encourage everyone to do whatever they want, wherever they want,” she said.

Festival organizers are forming partnerships with arts groups in addition to the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance.

Portland Ovations is working with the festival to present the dance performance by Chase, who lives in Brooklin in Down East Maine. Chase is best known as founder of Pilobolus, a contemporary dance company dating to the 1970s.

Portland Ovations has stepped up its dance programming in recent years, and the festival offers a natural partnership opportunity, said Aimee Petrin, executive director of Portland Ovations.

“Anything that creates more energy around the performing arts in Portland is something we like to support,” Petrin said. “And the fact that it plays in the summer, when we don’t normally present, was an opportunity for us to bring in something else and expand our audience.”

Organizers hope the festival will grow into something similar to the beloved and now long-defunct Maine Festival, which enjoyed great success and drew large crowds to Bowdoin College in Brunswick for many years.

“People remember the Maine Festival really fondly and miss it greatly,” Larson said. “I don’t know if we are trying to rebuild it, because we will have a slightly different business model. But if we become as popular an event as the Maine Festival was, I will feel we have done a tremendously successful job.”

Hutchins said that during early discussions about Portland’s festival, many people mentioned the Maine Festival as a possible model or goal.

“There has always been this buzz, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Maine Festival-type event again?’ ” Hutchins said. “This festival might be sort of akin to it.”

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Twitter: pphbkeyes

 

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