Stage Crafters hopes you'll scratch its ‘Seven Year Itch.'

For director Joe Perna, working on “The Seven Year Itch” is like coming home.

Not home to the setting of the play — a New York apartment in the 1950s — but to the Fort Walton Beach Civic Auditorium, where Stage Crafters Community Theatre puts on its shows.

“It feels really, really good,” Perna told The Log. “I grew up in this theater.”

Perna’s first turn with Stage Crafters was in “Heaven Can Wait” in 1980, followed by multiple other roles up through the previous Stage Crafters production, the thriller “Wait Until Dark.” “Seven Year Itch” is his first time in the director’s chair for the group, although he’s directed with other area theaters.

“Stage Crafters was looking for a comedy, and I like the older stuff,” Perna said, “and I just thought it would be funny, especially for our audience.”

Best known as a Marilyn Monroe movie, “Seven Year Itch” is a comedy focusing on a Manhattan book editor left alone when his wife and child take an upstate summer vacation. When he discovers an attractive twentysomething subletting the apartment upstairs, he finds himself torn between his marriage vows and his baser instincts.

“You don’t know if people expect you to play Marilyn Monroe,” said Chelsea Sorenson, who plays “the girl,” but Perna encouraged her to find her own voice.

Sorenson said she likes The Girl because despite her sex appeal, the character has a good heart and a good head on her shoulders: “A lot of people come on to her (but) she’s a nice person regardless.”

Want to go?
“The Seven Year Itch” runs 7:30 p.m. Aug. 15, 21 and 22 and 2 p.m. on Aug. 16 and 23. All performances are at the Fort Walton Beach Civic Auditorium. Tickets are available at the door or in advance from all Century 21 offices in Okaloosa County, Walton County and Navarre and at Dowd Title Group, Bayou Books, PS Gifts and Connect With Flowers.