That's right, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas is back. According to A&I's executive director Mary Lou Aleskie, who's helming her third festival, this one costs more because of the weak dollar but is stinting neither on world-class drama, music, nor ideas.

Aleskie said the festival got financial transfusions from official British, Irish, and Australian governmental entities helping to defray the cost of bringing productions of two great plays to New Haven for their U.S. premieres: the Nottingham Playhouse's Burial at Thebes, Seamus Heany's translation of Sophocles' Antigone and the Irish play, The Pride of Parnell Street by Sebastian Barry.

"I wish our government acted similarly," she said.

To bring the festival back to its roots in drama, to develop new audiences, and in particular to serve the many Spanish-speaking people who flocked to activities last year, she said A&I board members also, to use a dance metaphor, extended themselves.

The festival runs from June 14 to 28. It is incorporating in its themes and programming, the 2008 edition of the Big Read which this year features Ray Bradbury's futuristic dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451.

The Big Read launches on May 1 at 5:30 at the Shubert Theater. This year is a first in that 19 surrounding towns will also be scheduling Fahrenheit 451 activities that include marathon readings, sci-fi film festivals and musical performances scored for people and robots. A perusal of the schedule indicates there are no faux book burnings. The Bradbury novel takes its name from the temperature at which paper burns.

Aleskie and A&I's program director Cathy Edwards, who spoke at a press conference Monday at Bentara, are using the catch phrase "Take a world tour in your own backyard" to describe the festival. But they have clearly not only gone across the world to get what Aleskie called extraordinary talent to provide value-added to the high level that exists in New Haven already; they have also gone across town and reached out deeply into the local community.

Ecuadorian and Peruvian dance groups, for example, associated with St. Rose of Lima church in Fair Haven will be performing as part of a festival-long series of dances exploring spirituality expressing itself in prayer and/or action. Called "613 Radical Acts of Prayer," it will be the result of months of collaborations by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange with churches and other groups in the city.

To find the full list of activities in which you can see your neighbors along with Pulitzer Prize winners and virtuosos from the Metropolitan Opera, click here. In keeping with the theme of the technology and aesthetics of the future, A&I has also created a new search engine, Daisy (not to be confused with that infamous Hal of 2001: A Space Odyssey), who will help navigate the hundreds of talks, concerts, bike and pedestrian tours -- many of which are completely free.

She also said that to expand audiences with more kids and families, there are more and varied packages; it's 30 percent off for kids seventeen and under. If that's the future, we're all for it.

In addition to top notch programming and community engagement, the third goal of the festival, Aleskie said, is economic development. She said they've already booked 1,200 bed nights for artists alone in area hotels. "Last year," she added, "the festival pumped $17 million into the economy during its 15 days. We hope to at least equal if not exceed that this year."

Asked if they might venture a favorite from the ecstatic welter of art, music, and talking events, Cathy Edwards picked "Siren", a 40-minute long performance/installation piece where you travel between sirens as in alarms and the siren songs of . . . whatever your sirens may be.

Aleskie said she was a bit of a skeptic about music but was won over by what she called the virtuoso musical integrity of the East Village Opera Company who take "La Donna Mobile" and other classic opera arias and reinvent them in the musical language of rock.

Their free concert on the Green is June 21 at 8, with events before and after. Tickets go on sale Monday, May 5 for all events at the Shubert. Or online here or by phone: 203-562-5666 or 888-736-2663

For Big Read events, click here or here.

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