COMMUNITY

Homegrown’s 2020 shows move to 2021

Keizer Homegrown Theatre recently rescheduled its planned 2020 productions to 2021. 

There are no dates set in stone at the moment, but patrons and new audience members can follow the troupe on Facebook or visit www.keizerhomegrowntheatre.org.

KHT is also holding auditions for a newly added show, Miscast, that will replace the single show from the original line-up that ran before the pandemic shut down live performances. 

Directed by Stacia Purdie Rice, Miscast is a collection of scenes from well-known numbers from musicals but … miscast. Think gender bent and others variations on classics. 

Hopefuls can email a video submission to Purdie Rice or schedule an audition time, live auditions will need to provide their own accompaniments. Auditions and video due date are both April 3. Questions and video submissions can be sent to [email protected].

KHT cast and crew are planning a filmed production of Dating: Adults Embracing Failure by Josh Lanzet and Lindy Voeltner. In a series of comedic vignettes, couples navigate the triumphs and tribulations of dating via the internet. 

By selecting real-life couples to act out stand-alone scenes, KHT is limiting the rehearsals to the director and two actors. The play will be filmed start-to-finish using two cameras with the premiere date and ticketing information are to be announced. 

The couples taking the stage are: Jessica and Tom Cavanaugh; Deborah and Paul Nelson; Katherine and Matthew Otten; Loriann and Eric Schmidt; and Shilah and Sam Tibbits.

The shows that have been rescheduled include Steel Magnolias, The Revolutionists, The Book of Will, Bad Seed and Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some More!).

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.