COMMUNITY

KHT sets 2020 season, auditions

Keizer Homegrown Theatre will hold auditions for all its 2020 productions on Saturday, Jan. 11, at the theater at the Keizer Cultural Center.

The auditions will begin at 10 a.m. and run to 2 p.m. The theater is located on the second floor of the Keizer Cultural Center at 980 Chemawa Rd. NE.

Theater leaders and directors will conduct the auditions. Auditioners should prepare a monologue of two minutes or less; the pieces do not need to be memorized. Directors will gather with actors for cold readings; actors can read for all the directors, if desired.

The troupe organizers recommend that those who plan to audition download a form in advance at keizerhomegrowntheatre.org/auditions.html. 

The plays chosen for the 2020 season include many roles for females. Shows include Love, Loss and What I Wore, Steel Magnolias, The Revolutionists, The Book of Will, Bad Seed and Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some More!).

Love, Loss and What I Wore, written by Nora and Delia Ephron, is organized as a series of monologues with a cast of five rotating women discussing relationships and wardrobes and how the two interact. 

Steel Magnolias, written by Robert Haring, takes place in the fictional northwestern Louisiana parish of Chinquapin at an in-home beauty parlor where the women regularly gather. It’s an exploration of the enduring friendship despite conflict and loss. 

In The Revolutionists, written by Laura Gunderson, four revolutionary women lose their heads in a comedy set in 1793 Paris. The play deconstructs violence and legacy, art and activism, feminism and terrorism, compatriots and chosen sisters, and how we actually go about changing the world.

Bad Seed, written by Maxwell Anderson and based on a novel by William March, takes place in the small Southern town where a boy drowns during a picnic setting. Rhoda is a charming sweetheart, but her mother suspects it is a cover for something more sinister and the boy who drowned won the penmanship award Rhoda felt she deserved. 

A rip-off of Hamlet hits the Globe Theatre setting in motion the story of The Book of Will, written by Tim Ocel. Members of Shakespeare’s acting troupe, the King’s Men, are incensed. To try to put an end to the plagiarism and save Will’s works for the ages, they hatch a plan to put it all down on paper, setting them off on a mad chase to find all the bits and pieces to create the First Folio.

In Every Christmas Story Ever Told, by Michael Carleton, James FitzGerald, John K. Alvarez and Will Knapp, three actors decide to perform all the Christmas stories and Christmas traditions from around the world instead of Charles Dickens’ holiday classic for the umpteenth time. 

For more information about the plays, the season and auditions, visit www.keizerhomegrown.org.