ROCKLAND – The Rockland Sea Ceilidh, a celebration of the city’s waterfront heritage, is becoming a tradition.

For the third consecutive year, the musical extravaganza Saturday will bring together local and professional talent for an evening of song, dance, poetry and acting.

“It is the history of Rockland on stage,” Muriel Curtis, producer and director of the Sea Ceilidh, said Wednesday.

The benefit show, sponsored by The Courier-Gazette, an area newspaper, has a different theme each year, but always offers a variety of entertainment. This year’s focus is schooners – a heritage, which the city has not lost over the years. In fact, Rockland is touted as the “Schooner Capital of the World” and on July 13 will be the host of the 15th annual Schooner Day celebration.

For the first Ceilidh (pronounced KAY-lee), the theme was Rockland history. Last year, fishing was the focus.

The Sea Ceilidh was inspired by Revels, a stage show by John Langstaff of Cambridge, Mass. Proceeds from the Rockland event benefit The Apprenticeshop, part of the Atlantic Challenge Foundation, where students learn the art of boat building.

“One point of the Ceilidh is cultural identity,” Curtis said. “Rockland is changing. No one doubts that.”

Curtis says that it is important not to lose sight of the city’s heritage – its working waterfront.

Another key element in the stage show is audience participation.

“Folk songs are the songs folks sing,” she said. “We want people to sing. We encourage audience participation.”

The show, which begins at 7 p.m. at Rockland District High School at 400 Broadway, has a cast and crew of about 75, including performers who are well-known in the folk circle, she said.

Folk musicians Bob Stuart, Nick Apollonio, Kristin Tescher, Bob Witte and Richard Burbank, also known as The Chanty Chef, are this year’s headliners. Bob Witte was a storyteller on the Clearwater, a sloop that plies the Hudson River, offering children educational excursions to learn about the environment, according to Curtis.

The Rockland Children’s Chorale, a group founded by Curtis last year, will perform the children’s part of the Ceilidh.

Also, among the show’s performers are local fiddler Greg Dorr and contradance master Wes Cotten.

Even The Apprenticeshop students get into the act, she said, by helping to set up the show, usher, sing and dance.

“[There’s] a lot of grunt work involved in doing a show,” Curtis said. “Getting someone to hitchhike to Camden to hang posters isn’t easy.”

Everyone who helps stage the Sea Ceilidh is committed to preserving Rockland’s culture and history.

“They do it with boat building, we do it with song,” Curtis said.

Tickets for the show can be purchased at The Second Read, The Reading Corner, Waterworks, Huston-Tuttle and Good Tern Co-Op. They cost $10 for adults and $8 for students and seniors.