‘Mockingbird,’ ‘Blue Leaves’ to audition in Moline
Two acclaimed American plays will have auditions this weekend for May productions in Moline.
Playcrafters will hold auditions for the QC premiere of “The House of Blue Leaves,” directed by Kathy Graham, on Saturday, Feb. 24th from noon to 2 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 25th from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Barn Theatre, 4950 35th Ave., Moline. Performance dates are May 17-19 & 26-28.
In the 1971 John Guare play (set in 1965), Artie Shaugnessy is a songwriter with visions of glory. Toiling by day as a zookeeper, he suffers in seedy lounges by night, plying his wares at piano bars in Queens, New York, where he lives with his wife, Bananas, much to the chagrin of Artie’s downstairs mistress, Bunny Flingus, who’ll sleep with him anytime but refuses to cook until they are married, according to a synopsis.
On the day the Pope is making his first visit to the city, Artie’s son Ronny goes AWOL from Fort Dix, stowing a homemade bomb intended to blow up the Pope in Yankee Stadium.
Also arriving are Artie’s old school chum, now a successful Hollywood producer, Billy Einhorn, with starlet girlfriend in tow, who holds the key to Artie’s dreams of getting out of Queens and away from the life he so despises. But like many dreams, this promise of glory evaporates amid the chaos of ordinary lives.
“The House of Blue Leaves” premiered Off-Broadway in 1971, and was revived in 1986, both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, and was again revived on Broadway in 2011. The play won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play and the Obie Award for Best American Play in 1971.
The star-studded Off-Broadway cast included Swoosie Kurtz (Bananas), John Mahoney (Artie), Stockard Channing (Bunny), Christopher Walken (Billy), Ben Stiller (Ronnie, in his stage debut), and Julie Hagerty (Corrinna).
For Playcrafters auditions, please bring a resume and be prepared to read from the script; “first-timers” are also welcome to audition. For more details, visit the website HERE or call 309-762-0330.
“To Kill a Mockingbird”
For the first time in over 40 years, the classic story “To Kill a Mockingbird” will be brought to a QC stage, Moline’s Black Box Theatre. Playcrafters did a production during the 1982-82 season.
The new Mockingbird on Main performances will be May 16, 17, 18 and 23, 24 and 25 at 8 p.m. and May 19 and May 26 at 2 p.m. at The Black Box, 1623 5th Ave., Moline. Auditions for the play will be held at Black Box on Saturday, Feb. 24 at 11 a.m.
Nearly a year after the Mockingbird was forced to leave its downtown Davenport home (320 Main St.), on the ground floor of the building that collapsed (May 28, 2023), the itinerant company will produce the play for which it is named.
Nothing needs to be prepared in advance for auditions; performers will be asked to read from the script.
A rehearsal schedule will be assembled after casting has been finalized. Rehearsals will begin in early/mid-April and will take place in the evenings during the week and in the afternoons on the weekends.
Based on the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, Christopher Sergel’s stage version debuted in 1991 at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey just two years before his death in 1993.
The story (made into the iconic 1962 film starring Gregory Peck) is set in a sleepy Alabama town in the midst of the Great Depression, where Scout and her brother, Jem, live with their widowed father, Atticus Finch.
The play immerses us in a simpler time as the children play outside in the summer, act out stories and muse about their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley, according to a synopsis. The facade of the seemingly peaceful town begins to crack when a young black man is accused of a terrible crime.
Driven by an unshakable moral conviction, lawyer Atticus defends the man in a trial that sends violent waves through the community. Timeless and lingering, this hard-hitting work explores prejudice, compassion and the courage to do what is right, the synopsis says.
The novel was famously adapted by TV and film writer Aaron Sorkin for his 2018 Broadway version.
“Sergel’s adaptation is more faithful to the book in structure and focus whereas Sorkin has thrown out the original flow and created a piece that is essentially a memory play,” Mockingbird on Main co-owner Tristan Tapscott said recently. “For example, Sorkin’s piece begins with the trial and flashes back to various moments and Sergel’s piece doesn’t hit the trial until later in the show.”
Neither Tapscott nor his wife (and Mockingbird co-owner) Savannah Bay Strandin have seen either stage version.
“It’s an impactful piece and I’m surprised it’s never crossed my radar,” he said. “We live in a world that continues to grapple with racial injustice, inequality, division. Unfortunately, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ still hits all these years later. The storytelling is simple, frank, a little complicated and a little funny. It’s life, you know? It’s a depiction of life at a certain time through the eyes of those that don’t lie — and more importantly – feel love without borders: children.”
Tapscott loved the book so much that he named his daughter Harper Leigh, who will turn 10 in March, and then he and Strandin turned their passion for the story into the name of their new cabaret-style theater, which opened July 29, 2021.
For more information about Mockingbird on Main, visit its Facebook page HERE.
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