West Moon Rises over PEI for Hallowe’en
Preview evening and Auditions in June

   ACT (a community theatre) is going to stage an engaging drama in late October at the Watermark Theatre.  It’s West Moon by Al Pittman.  Auditions for the dozen roles will be held on June 17/18, and there’s a ‘preview evening’ on Thursday June 8th to let people get a taste of the play.
   Set in the graveyard of a Newfoundland outport which is being abandoned as part of the province’s resettlement strategy in the mid-1960s, this play bears an uncanny connection with the graveyard scene of ACT’s first production, Our Town.  It also resembles the Charlottetown Festival’s production of Spoon River.  The characters are dead.  Once a year, on All Hallows Night, they have consciousness again; they recall their lives, and yearn to know what is happening in their village and in the lives of their families and friends.
   It is a play of issues — of mortality and legacy, of comfortable tradition versus fresh opportunity, of the fabric of community … but its passionate dialogue is punctuated with gentle humour.
   The themes will resonate with Prince Edward Island’s own experiences, past and current — the 1970s pain of consolidating rural schools and the hospital system, the current push-pull controversy around municipal amalgamation, nostalgia for small-community life versus the impulse to get services and modern conveniences, and jobs.
  There’s a good variety of parts: 2 old women, 4 middle-aged men, an elderly man, a young man, a mid-30s woman, a pre-teen girl, and a narrating ‘voice’.  Rehearsals will start at the end of June and get going in earnest in late August.

   A ‘preview evening’ will happen on Thursday, June 8th, starting at 7:00, in the Fox & Crow café/pub in the Murphy student centre at UPEI.  Director Brian Collins will lead a read-through of the script and share the plans for the production.

Auditions — using select readings from the script — will also be held (by appointment) at the Fox & Crow, on Saturday 17 June and Sunday afternoon, June 18th.

   For information and/or audition appointment: 902-628-6778; robthomson@pei.sympatico.ca

Theatre PEI