The Monashee Arts Council is now recruiting actors for a new drama production, The Moose Under Coyote Sleeping, to be staged in Lumby this spring.
The B.C. Arts Council has provided a grant for the writing of the play and upon completion of the script, has sanctioned another grant to help the Monashee Arts Council produce it, said the play’s producer Doug Jones.
“We are very pleased that the B.C. Arts Council is supporting the creation of a new work by our local playwright and director Phil Wagner,” said Jones. “We would like to fill our cast and crew with talented actors and artists from our region.”
According to Wagner, all ages are welcome to audition, however, male and female First Nations actors between the ages of 18 and 45 years old are needed.
“I am impressed that so many people from Lumby, Vernon, Cherryville, Enderby and even one from Kelowna have already committed to perform, build or design for this production,” said Wagner.
The play celebrates more than 100 years of Monashee history, beginning with the first contact of explorers with the Okanagan and Shuswap First Nations all the way to the 1960s.
The story is told through a series of short vignettes, featuring not only the area’s most famous and notorious personalities, but also the unsung heroes and heroines who contributed to the building of the community.
“This play is tragically comic, at once touchingly sad, but primarily funny and universal,” said Wagner. “Pretty much everything that has happened in Lumby and Cherryville has happened everywhere else in rural Canada… The only difference is that Lumby has more trees.”
Auditions are being held this Tuesday, Jan. 13 at 7 p.m. at the Lumby Community Hall, located next to the hockey arena. Actors who are cast will receive an honorarium to cover expenses. For more information, call 1-250-547-9464 or 1-250-547-6045.
The play is scheduled to run for six performances at Lumby’s Charles Bloom Community Theatre in mid-April.
