For the first time in seven years, the 100 Mile House Performing Arts Society is putting on a musical and they’re looking for local talent to star in the show.
It’s the third time at the helm for director Nicole Weir who’s been with the society for about 10 years.
“It was time. We haven’t done a musical for seven years and we needed to do one. It needed to happen.”
It’s taken so many years because it’s a huge undertaking and time commitment and it takes a wonderful team which they now have, says Weir.
“It just honestly takes someone who has vision and wants to make it happen.”
This musical of choice is The Little Mermaid.
“When I was scanning through scripts, it was the first one that, like, I started to see things everywhere,” she says. “The Little Mermaid has wonderful characters, a fantastic story. It’s happy. It’s colourful. It has a nice range of age groups. So, it’s not all kids, it’s not all adults. We can incorporate a lot of different community members in that and the songs are amazing.”
They’ve chosen Disney’s Broadway version of the story which has all the songs that are in the movie and then a whole bunch more that were written for Broadway, according to Weir.
Auditions are on Sunday, Sept. 29 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Parkside Art Gallery.
“We’re looking for people who can sing and perform and are willing to have fun and be creative,” says Weir. “People are going to think that we’re looking for a lot of kids, there’s actually not that many roles for kids, so we do need a lot of youth and adults.”
Not everyone has to be a spectacular singer as there are a lot of character roles, so people can sing character which will make it a little bit easier but singing and a willingness to play are definitely super important, according to Weir, who says she’s looking forward to all of it.
“The hair, the costumes, the songs, staging it. Ya, it’s gonna be amazing.”
Rehearsals will start in early October with the performance around the end of February the beginning of March. Initially, rehearsals will be about twice a week, ramping up to three to five times a week.
“I would just like to encourage people that if they’ve been thinking that they want to do it to just come out and try and don’t worry about being nervous or scared, it’s really just about having fun.”
