This weekend, amateur and professional actors, writers and directors will come together at University Park for the first performance of the spring Penn State New Musical Theatre Festival.

The New Musical Festival is an annual event that takes place in both the fall and spring. The festival, founded by artistic director Raymond Sage, will be hosting its first performance of the Spring 2008 season this Saturday with the musical Tales from the Bad Years.

Tales from the Bad Years was written by professional lyricist Kait Kerrigan and composer Brian Lowdermilk from New York and features about 20 songs, Sage said. The songs in the musical are pop melodies set in a contemporary timeframe in order to speak to the generation to which the musical is trying to connect, said Richard Roland, Tales from the Bad Years guest director.

The musical addresses all kinds of harmonious pieces including solos, group numbers and duets. But unlike most musicals, Tales from the Bad Years does not have a set storyline and, instead, consists of individual songs put together.

"It's more of a comment than a story," Sage said.

Accompanying the songs are five undergraduate students -- three women and two men -- who portray five distinct characters, Roland said. The characters range from a questioning, insecure man to a brainy, juvenile man and from an open-minded, innocent woman to a quirky, comic woman.

The music shows the characters during a recent life change. They have all recently graduated from college, Sage said, and are going through a transition period in their lives.

Tales from the Bad Years takes a look at what it's like to be 20-something and facing reality after having been told what to do all their lives.

"They don't know what's ahead of them; they just know they are free," Roland said.

With this freedom comes responsibility and the need for sound decision-making, he said, and the characters express this through song.

"The songs deal with certain aspects of starting life," Roland said.

The topics include a one-night stand, a man's comforting his sister, a couple planning their future together, telling off a boss and cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time.

Through these events the characters learn how to act and talk to one another during a time in life when there is a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding, Roland said.

Not only does Tales from the Bad Years approach relatable subject matter but it gives the actors and the audience a taste of how theater is done at the next level, he added.

"It gets [the student actors] to understand how things work in the professional world," Roland said.