Harding University’s Searcy Summer Dinner Theatre will be holding open auditions Tuesday, May 5 for the upcoming 2015 season. Now in its 33rd year, the season will begin June 11, and the three shows featured this year follow the theme, “A Season to Die For.”
The season will open with “The Game’s Afoot,” performed June 11-14 and 18-20. It is December 1936 and Broadway star William Gillette, admired all over the world for his leading role in the play Sherlock Holmes, has invited his fellow cast-members to his Connecticut castle for a weekend of revelry. But when one of the guests is stabbed to death, the festivities in this isolated house of tricks and mirrors quickly turn dangerous. It’s up to Gillette himself, as he assumes the persona of his beloved Holmes, to track down the killer before the next victim appears. The danger and hilarity team up in this whodunit set during the Christmas holidays.
“The 39 Steps” will continue the season July 2-3, 5 and 9-11. A man with a boring life meets a woman with a thick accent who says she’s a spy. When he takes her home, she is murdered. Soon, a mysterious organization called “The 39 Steps” is hot on the man’s trail in a nationwide manhunt that climaxes in a death-defying finale.
The season will conclude with Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” performed July 23-26 and 30-31 and August 1. A group of strangers is stranded in a boarding house during a snowstorm, one of whom is a murderer. The suspects include the newly married couple who runs the house, a spinster with a curious background, an architect who seems better equipped to be a chef, a retired Army major, a strange little man who claims his car has overturned in a drift, and a jurist who makes life miserable for everyone.
Come-and-go auditions will be held on May 5 from 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Ulrey Performing Arts Center on the Harding University campus. No preparations or appointments are necessary. Roles available include 11 male and nine female characters. For more information, contact Steven Frye at sfrye@harding.edu.
Harding is the largest private university in Arkansas with 6,075 students and has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report for the 21st consecutive year as a top 25 school in the South. Harding also maintains campuses in Australia, Chile, England, France, Greece, Italy and Zambia. For more information visit www.harding.edu.
