This may not be the best economic climate to launch a new theater company — in the summertime yet — but veteran Palm Beach producer Vicki Halmos saw the need for a professional troupe to give emerging performers the first credit on their theatrical resume. So welcome Entre’Acte Theatrix, an offshoot of her 10-year-old community theater, Palm Beach Principal Players.

“This is designed to take the idea of resume building to the next level for young talent,” says Halmos, who launches the new company next week at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton with the “tribal love-rock musical,” Hair.

Entre’Acte Theatrix will devote itself to producing musicals, but those that are edgy and relevant, rather than escapist. That is what led Halmos to choose 1968’s Hair, whose roots are in the counter-culture and protest movement of the Vietnam War.

As she explains, “Again we’re dealing with a generation that’s at war, a very different war, but war nevertheless. And some of the same scariness in the world.”

Hair will be directed and choreographed by KD Smith, a protégé of the late Michael Bennett. “Because I was taught by Michael, I could easily dissect this script like I was taught to in A Chorus Line,” she says. “I found all those underlying things, all that subtext that so helps the actors convey the story. If Michael Bennett had done Hair, I probably am giving them the staging he would have done with the show.”

But Smith understands that all people really want to know, when they hear she is directing Hair, is whether or not the production will include the first act finale nude scene.

Absolutely, Smith says, adding that it is surely the most misunderstood scene in the show. “Everybody thinks it’s just the dirty, pot-smoking hippies getting naked. They missed the point. It is all about this guy Claude who can’t make a decision whether he wants to stay with the Tribe and hang out in the park all day and get stoned or whether he should move on and do something with his life,” she explains. And if that includes the army, so be it.

“At that point in the show, all the guys have just burnt their draft cards, they’re pumped up, they’re hyped, and all of a sudden they go, ‘If we’re going to be free, let’s be free.’ ”

The nude scene has traditionally been voluntary for the cast members. Currently, the number of performers willing to doff their clothes is on the increase, reports Smith. “Well, we have a little more daily, as the light bulb goes on over their heads of what the show is about.”

Like the current revival of Hair on Broadway, the audience is invited onstage at the end of the show for a dance party. But, cautions Halmos, “The audience has to keep their clothes on.”

Following a week’s run at the Caldwell, the production moves north for a week at Palm Beach Gardens High School.

Dramaworks teams with Dreyfoos … Want to see more young talent in action? Palm Beach Dramaworks inaugurates its Emerging Artist Showcase, an evening of monologues, scenes and songs by the graduating seniors of the Dreyfoos School of the Arts. It plays at 7 p.m. June 15 and at 2 and 7 p.m. June 16 . Tickets are $15, available by calling (561) 514-4042.

Take heed of a summer play festival … The intermittently active Take Heed Theater Company is teaming up with Palm Beach State College for its second annual Summer Play Festival, a pair of full productions and a staged reading, beginning June 15, and continuing through Aug. 11.

First up is Frank McGuinness’ Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me (June 15-17), about a trio of hostages struggling to survive in a Middle Eastern Prison cell. It is followed by William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (July 13-15), the knockabout comic battle of the sexes between the wily Kate and chauvinistic Petruchio. The festival concludes on Aug. 11 with a reading of Marsha Norman’s ’night, Mother, a test of wills between a mother and the unhappy daughter who announces her intention to kill herself.

The venue is Stage West Theatre on the Lake Worth campus. Tickets range from $12 to $17. Call (561) 868-3309 for reservations.