Ohio Valley Summer Theater: OVST, Athens Ohio

Auditions will be Thursday, May 19th from 6:30 -8:30 at Ohio University Glidden Hall (The Music Bldg.) Room 494. Please prepare a monologue. Callbacks will be Friday, May 20th from 6:30-8:30. Show dates are June 23-30 and July 1-2.

Rex McGraw, retired professor, experienced actor and director, will return to the Ohio Valley Summer Theater stage to direct To Kill a Mockingbird. McGraw has directed eleven productions for OVST including Little Mary Sunshine and The Sound of Music. After years of teaching, McGraw moved to Athens in 1969 where he taught acting and directing and eventually be-came head of the Professional Graduate Directing Program.

Scripts are available on closed reserve at two Athens libraries.  The Ohio University Alden Library (at the circulation desk) has a 2-hour loan.  The Athens Public Library on Home St. will let you read it in the library but not check it out.  We encourage you to read the play.

Set in Alabama during the Great Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows the journey of Jem and Scout Finch, whose father has been appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man framed for a crime he didn’t commit. As the trial progresses, Jem and Scout witness their community in a tense tug of war between justice and racism. This timeless classic compels us to take an honest look at our nation’s past and our moral responsibility to each other. Harper Lee found instant fame after To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. The novel was showered with literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. After Mockingbird, Lee collaborated with childhood friend Truman Capote on his nonfiction masterpiece In Cold Blood, but never published another novel. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2007. Christopher Sergel’s stage adaptations include Winesburg’, Ohio, Cheaper by the Dozen, Up the Down Staircase and Black Elk Speaks.

Place: Maycomb, Alabama

Time: 1935

Character list: 12 Men and 8 Women, Extras

Jean Louise Finch (Scout as a grown woman, Narrator)

Scout (a young girl)

Jem (her brother, a few years older)

Atticus (their father, around 50 yrs. old)

Calpurnia (the housekeeper, African-American)

Maudie Atkinson (a neighbor, younger than Atticus)

Stephanie Crawford (a neighbor, a gossip)

Mrs. Dubose (a neighbor, an old woman)

Nathan Radley (Boo’s older brother and guardian)

Arthur “Boo” Radley (a recluse)

Dill (a young boy)

Heck Tate (the sheriff)

Judge Taylor (the judge)

Reverend Sykes (an African-American pastor)

Mayella Ewell (a young woman)

Bob Ewell (her father)

Walter Cunningham (a farmer)

Mr. Gilmer (public prosecutor)

Tom Robinson (young African-American man)

Helen Robinson (his wife)

Townspeople

Farmers

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