‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ on stage at LynnArts Jan. 19-28

LYNN – For its second full-scale musical theater production, the newly formed Arts After Hours will stage “I Love You, You?re Perfect, Now Change” starting Thursday.The 1996 award-winning off-Broadway show will be performed in the Neal Rantoul Black Box Theater at LynnArts on Exchange Street from Jan. 19-28.?It?s a musical comedy about love and companionship and how we constantly seek it. And yet when we get it, we try to manipulate it into exactly what we want. But we?re always sort of in that give-and-take,” said Corey Jackson, Arts After Hours managing director and director of the musical.The show consists of 20 vignettes, where the musical?s four actors play a variety of characters in different stages of their lives. Situations range from a first date to parenting to being single again in the middle of one?s life.?There?s a lyric in the final song, ?I keep coming back,? and that?s sort of what it?s all about,” Jackson said. “We?re watching hilarity ensure all night, but what we all look for is just to be together and experience life with someone else by your side.”Jackson said the show is a logical follow-up to Arts After Hours? first musical, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which was performed last June.Because of some profanity and a humorous love scene, the show is intended for audiences 13 years old and up.?It?s certainly not for the kiddies,” Jackson said.Katie Johnson, a Lynn native and current resident, plays 14 characters through the course of the musical. They include a businesswoman on her first date with an online match, a perpetual bridesmaid and a 12-year-old girl.?It runs the gamut. I?ve never played that many characters in one show before,” she said. “It?s challenging, but it?s really fun to find each character.”Johnson, 34, graduated from Lynn English High School in 1995, and has been acting since she was 12. She went to the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, majoring in performing arts with a concentration in arts management. After graduation, she got involved with the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield.Once she moved back to Lynn in August 2010, Johnson said she went looking for a theater group to join. She heard about Arts After Hours, and was especially intrigued that the group was performing in LynnArts? Black Box Theater, something she said was still in the planning stages when she was in high school.The rehearsals have moved at a quick pace, Jackson said, because the show only started coming together at the end of November.?It?s been a very tight schedule, but that?s why we cast professional actors to make sure that we do our work, they do their work,” he said. “And the show is coming together brilliantly.”Arts After Hours was founded in August 2010 by Jackson and Jocelyn Almy-Testa, and it also puts on visual art and music events. Its upcoming theater productions are “You?re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” in May and “Twelfth Night” in August as a part of “Shakespeare at Lynn Woods.”Jackson said he knows there is an audience in Lynn for Arts After Hours? programming because of the success the group had with “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”?Usually a first musical for a theater company would potentially lose money or barely see much of an audience. We were able to put on a pretty high-budget musical, and draw almost 600 people over the run of the show,” Jackson said, adding that the group?s other events have been popular and ticket sales for the upcoming musical are going very well.?All of those facts gives me confidence that there is a thirst for this in Lynn,” he said. “You don?t have to go into [Boston] for this type of entertainment.”IF YOU GO? “I Love You, You?re Perfect, Now Change” will be performed at LynnArts on Jan. 19 at 8 p.m., January 20 at 8 p.m., Jan. 21 at 8 p.m., Jan. 22 at 3 p.m., Jan. 26 at 8 p.m., Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. and Jan. 28 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 for students and seniors, $25 for adults and $20 for matinee shows, and ca