Heartland News X 3

In addition to opening the first show of their fall season tonight and launching the new ten-minute play contest this week, Heartland Theatre has also announced auditions next week for their November show. Here's the lowdown on all three Heartland happenings:

Fighting Words by Sunil Kuruvilla, directed by Don Shandrow, opens tonight with a Pay What You Can preview. After tonight, tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for seniors over 65, and $5 for students, with performances through September 24. Groups of ten or more qualify for special discounts. Kuruvilla is a Canadian playwright who has a master's degree in playwriting from Yale School of Drama. This particular play involves three women in a small mining town in Wales, waiting to watch their hometown hero in a boxing match taking place halfway across the world in Los Angeles. Shandrow's cast for Fighting Words is Jessie Swiech, Lizzy Selzer and Nancy Nickerson. If you're interested in seeing the show, you'll find show times here and reservation information here.

Heartland has revealed the new theme for their annual ten-minute play competition. It's "The Graduation Party." They're asking for plays "that explore the fleeting moments when people realize they’re finishing a journey together." If your "Graduation Party" play earns highest honors and wins a spot in next year's festival, performances will take place June 8 to July 1, 2017. For more information on what they're looking for in terms of plays, try this link. Rules and guidelines are here.

Auditions for the next play on Heartland's schedule, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, will be held at the theater on Sunday, September 11, from 3 to 5:30 pm, and Monday, September 12, from 7 to 9:30 pm. Sandra Zielinski is directing The Homecoming, which features Pinter's trademark brand of menace and unpleasantness, as a professor with working class origins comes back into contact with his family, a loutish bunch of men. He brings his wife with him to this Homecoming, creating tension and conflict as the men posture for her attention. A bit of trivia: Like Fighting Words, The Homecoming has a would-be boxer among its characters. Zielinski will be looking for five men ranging in age from mid-twenties to 70s, and one woman in her 30s. Click here for all the audition info. Performances are scheduled for November 3 to 19, 2016.

To sum up, Fighting Words opens tonight and runs through the 24th; ten-minute plays on the theme "The Graduation Party" are now being accepted in a contest for possible production next year; and auditions for The Homecoming will take place this coming Sunday and Monday.

Sliding Softly Into September ...

Yes, I know, it's already Labor Day Weekend and you're all headed outside for the last barbecue, the last camp-out, the last lounge by the pool during the Summer of 16. But September is officially the kick-off for a whole lot of theater seasons, which means there is a lot of good stuff starting right now. Good inside stuff. Without a need for bug spray. I'll try to hit all the TV premieres a little later, but for now... Cue intro music... It's theater time!

If you prefer to dip into Fall in a comedic frame of mind, you'll want to try Boeing Boeing, which opened last night at Community Players. It's a fast, fizzy farce about a womanizer in Paris in the 60s and the trouble he gets into when his three flight attendant fiancées all descend at once. This "non-stop comedy" is directed by G. William Zorn, with Dave Krostal as the free-wheeling bachelor whose love life includes hot-and-cold running stewardesses of different nationalities. Community Players' preview of their production is available here.

Heartland Theatre launches its fall season next week with Sunil Kuruvilla's Fighting Words, about three women in a small town in Wales in 1980 who are left at home while their hometown hero, a bantamweight boxer, fights for a world championship in Los Angeles. Don Shandrow directs Jessie Swiech and Lizzy Selzer as sisters Peg and Nia, women with very different but equally powerful aspirations, and Nancy Nickerson as their landlady, a woman who thinks she has made her peace with her own life and limited choices. Fighting Words opens with a "Pay What You Can" preview on September 8, followed by regularly ticketed performances through the 24th. More info about the production is available here, with show dates and times here.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts fuses music and the movies on September 15 and 16 in what they're calling "A Cine-Concert with Live Music" around The Triplets of Belleville, the Academy Award-nominated film from director/writer Sylvain Chomet. Composer Benoît Charest, who was nominated along with Chomet* in the Best Song category for "Belleville Rendez-Vous," will be on hand to conduct Le Terrible Orchestra de Belleville in a live performance of the film's score as the film is screened. For all the details, including un petit aperçu of the film itself, visit this page at the Krannert Center site.

There aren't a whole lot of details yet about who is included in the group of "the area's finest actors, dancers and musicians" who'll be helping the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts celebrate its 10th anniversary on September 16 at 7:30 pm. Whoever is included, A Toast to 10 promises "a glass of bubbly and a heartfelt look at a decade of performing arts." Click here for more information.

The singular theatrical experience known as Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play opens September 22 in the Meyer Jacobs Theatre at Bradley University in Peoria. In her play, Washburn fashions a dystopic future world where the people who've survived have no electricity, but they do have memories of a classic episode of The Simpsons to keep them warm, with echoes of pop culture taking on mythic and even religious significance over time. If you're interested in where theater is going in the new millennium or keeping track of rising playwrights, Mr. Burns should be a destination play. Washburn definitely made a splash with this strange, smart play. (Note that the image that accompanies this listing is from the ACT production in San Francisco in their 2014-15 season.)

The House of Blue Leaves, John Guare's 1971 Obie Award-winning play, takes the stage at Illinois Central College from September 23 to October 2. Guare's script is an absurd, crazy and off-kilter visit to Sunnyside, Queens, where a man named Artie has been trying to write a hit song forever. He has a wife named Bananas, a girlfriend named Bunny, and a whole lot of mishegas, as the Pope visits New York, nuns mistakenly visit Artie's apartment, and a bomb goes off in the midst of the mess. Yes, it's funny, but there's pain underneath all the weirdness.

Illinois State University's first play of the new season will be Waiora, by New Zealand playwright Hone Kouka, about a Māori family that moves from their small village to a larger city, upending their sense of family and home. Kim Pereira directs a cast that includes William Brown, Mac Byrd, Emilia Dvorak, Anastasia Ferguson, Anthony Harden, Emma Harmon, Brandi Jones, Alex Levy, Hannah Spohnholtz, Cayla Jones and Chloe Szot. Waiora opens in the ISU Center for the Performing Arts on September 30, with performances continuing October 1 to 9. For tickets, call the CPA Box Office at 309-438-2535 or visit them in person between 11 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday. (And the image accompanying this listing comes from a production of Waiora running right now at the Court Theatre in New Zealand.)

* The Triplets of Belleville was nominated as Best Animated Feature at the 2004 Oscars, while Benoît Charest (music) and Sylvain Chomet (lyrics) were nominated for Best Song for "Belleville Rendez-Vous."

Calling All Actors: Auditions Next Week at Heartland Theatre and Community Players

Heartland Theatre Company and Community Players Theatre have both announced that they'll hold auditions next week for upcoming shows. The dates overlap a bit -- Heartland's auditions will be held on the 24th and 25th, while Players will be doing their auditions on the 25th and 26th -- but not to worry. The shows they're casting could not be more different, so it seems unlikely anybody who is interested in one will also be trying out for the other.

First up, Heartland and director Don Shandow will be looking for three women for Sunil Kuruvilla's Fighting Words, a 2003 drama set in the small town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Auditions are set for Sunday, July 24, from 4 to 8 pm, and Monday, July 25, from to 10 pm.

Fighting Words has a cast of three, with action involving two sisters -- Peg and Nia -- and their landlady, Mrs.  Davies. Heartland will be looking for actresses in the 20 to 30 range for Peg, approximately 25 to 35 for Nia, and 50 to 60 for Mrs. Davies, and everyone will need to be able to handle a Welsh accent. (Here's a short Youtube video of two actual sisters from Merthyr if you want to hear what they sound like and see a bit of the town in its current state.) As for the play... Here's what it's all about:

In September, 1980, three women in the tiny Welsh village of Merthyr Tydfil wait, worry and watch, pinning their hopes and dreams on a bantamweight boxer named Johnny Owen, who has traveled all the way from Wales to Los Angeles to fight for a world championship. Every man in town who could scrape up the money is in California with their favorite son, but sisters Peg and Nia and their landlady Mrs. Davies are left behind. To pass the time before the bout is on television, they bake, they talk – and they fight – about their futures and fears and how they live their lives in this sorrowful mining town.

Performances of Fighting Words are scheduled for September 8 to 24, 2016 at Heartland Theatre.

Over at Community Players, the comedy Boeing Boeing is in need of two men and three women. Director G. William Zorn and producer Chris Terven will hold auditions on Monday, July 25 and Tuesday, July 26, starting at 7 pm each night. Boeing Boeing is a silly, sexy farce -- very "Coffee, tea or me" if you remember that phrase -- about a playboy in Paris and the three flight attendants from different countries he's juggling. It was originally written in French in 1960 by playwright Marc Camoletti, but it was in English that it found its biggest audiences, with a smash London production that ran for seven years, a movie starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, and a revival in the new millennium that featured an all-star cast on Broadway. That cast included Bradley Whitford as a swinging bachelor living in a fab pad in Paris, with Mark Rylance as his clueless friend from the States, Christine Baranski as his housekeeper and Gina Gershon, Kathryn Hahn and Mary McCormack as the beautiful Italian, American and German women who are running in and out of the apartment. Rylance won another Tony for his Boeing Boeing performance. You can see descriptions of all the roles on the Players website, along with suggested ages for the various characters.

Community Players' production of Boeing Boeing will run from September 2 to 11, 2016.