“Grease,” a musical full of ’50s nostalgia, has its cast indulging in old memories.

“I swear I’ve seen the movie over 500 times,” says Cassie Bonnet, a sophomore in performing arts who plays Jan. “When I got cast in it, that was a dream come true.”

Laura Bestler-Wilcox, program coordinator of the Dean of Students office who plays Miss Lynch, says she was in elementary school when the movie debuted and remembers playing “Pink Ladies and T-Birds” on the playground.

“Grease,” a rock `n’ roll musical set at a high school in the ’50s, is the Stars Over Veishea production this year. It will play at Stephens Auditorium April 19, 20, and 21, featuring hit songs like “Greased Lightning,” “Summer Lovin’,” and “Beauty School Drop-Out.”

Beyond the fond the memories that surround the play, many of the cast members say they feel familiar with the characters in the musical.

“There’s such a vast array of characters you can always find someone to identify yourself with,” says Sadie Shelton, senior in communication studies who plays Sandy Dumbrowski.

Bestler-Wilcox describes herself as a mixture of the sassy bad-girl character and the preppy cheerleader. “I’m a real combination of Rizzo and Patty Simcox,” she says.

Scott Morehead, sophomore in performing arts who plays Kenickie, says the underlying coming-of-age themes in the play account for its continuing popularity.

“It’s about a group of high school guys and girls trying to find themselves, find their place and figure out what is mature and immature. Everybody can relate to that,” he says. “Whether you were an auto shop guy, a cheerleader, or a geeky band guy, you look at the musical and there you are. Some people might say `I wasn’t like that,’ but you look through their old yearbook and yup, there’s the guy with the slicked back hair and the cigarette behind his ear.”

“It relates to high school kids now too – how they put up the image to look cool,” says Chris Newman, junior in graphic design who plays Danny Zuko. “I thought of who I thought the cool kids were in high school and tried to act like them.”

Morehead said he prefers the musical version of “Grease” over the movie because the characters are more fleshed out.

“It makes it more real to me,” he says. “The producers of the movie were really trying to sell John Travolta’s song and dance moves and Olivia Newton-John’s, so a lot was cut. The script is more in depth.”

Jeffrey Tangeman, director of “Grease,” says he designed the production with the intention of putting the audience in a nostalgic state of mind.

He says they tried to convey the dreamy tone by using pastel colors for the costumes and sets that are suggestive rather than literal.

“For example, rather than having whole literal walls, we’ll give the sense of a wall by playing with funky angles,” he says.

Linda Pisano, costume designer, said the “Grease” era is the perfect era to develop nostalgia.

“The ’50s are always remembered as a prosperous time so they epitomize the American dream in memory,” she says. “We always glamorize the past.”

“One of the things I really wanted to do was take the nostalgic elements of the ’50s and exaggerate that a little bit – the cool days of leather jackets, burger joints and James Dean movies,” Tangeman says.

The rock `n’ roll score helped the cast call up past times.

“It’s a blast,” he says. “We just started rehearsing with the band and the cast just got so jazzed.”

Kelly Larsen, freshman in math who plays Frenchy, says the cast had a few adjustments to make when re-creating ’50s characters.

“All the guys in the band have pompadour wigs, but the lead guys are actually growing out their own hair. I think they’re kind of annoyed that their hair is so shaggy,” she says with a laugh.

Megan Helmers, senior in English, plays Cha-Cha. She also co-choreographed the production along with Melissa Larsen, senior in performing arts.

Performing ’50s dance steps came easier for the cast than expected, says Helmers.

“We’re really very lucky,” she says. “We have 10 to 12 members of Orchesis I in the cast. And even the people who haven’t danced before can really move.”

She said the choreography included elements of swing dancing, with “all sorts of lifts and throws.”

“When the audience sees how much fun we’re having up there, part of that’s not acting,” Shelton says. “We really are having fun.”

Helmers says people who haven’t seen “Grease” before should expect “a really fun, upbeat ensemble musical.”

“Grease” is the 80th Veishea production. Stars over Veishea had its beginning in a vaudeville type show in 1922, according to the Veishea Web site, www.veishea.org.

By 1923, students were dancing and singing their own work. The show then evolved into one-act musicals written by students and was called the “Nite Show” because it took place outdoors.

In 1939 the name “Stars Over Veishea” was adopted, and in1970 it moved to its current location in Stephens.

“Grease” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. April 19 and 20, and at 2 p.m. on April 21 at Stephens Auditorium.

Tickets are $6, $8, or $10 for students and $10, $13, or $15 for the general public, and can be purchased at Iowa State Center ticket office or at any Ticketmaster location.