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Sapphire Level Emerald Level

Audition Dates

• August 23 and 24 (6-8 PM)
• Possible callbacks August 25 (6-8 PM)

Performance Dates

• October 8, 9, 15 and 16 (all 7:30 pm)
• October 10 and 17 (both 2:00 pm)

Audition, Rehearsal and Performance Location

J. Philip Gibbs, Jr., Centre for the Performing Arts
(Old Town Theatre), 1023 12th St., Huntsville, TX

For tickets or more information call 936-291-7933

Synopsis

Scout, a young girl in a quiet southern town, is about to experience the dramatic events that will affect the rest of her life.

Scout and brother Jem are being raised by their widower father Atticus and by a strong-minded housekeeper Calpurnia. Wide-eyed Scout is fascinated with the sensitively revealed people of her small town but, from the start, there's a rumble of thunder just under the calm surface of the life here.

The black people of the community have a special feeling about Scout's father, and she doesn't know why. A few of her white friends are inexplicably hostile and Scout doesn't understand this either. Unpleasant things are shouted and the bewildered girl turns to her father. Atticus, a lawyer, explains that he's defending a young Negro wrongfully accused of a grave crime. Since this is causing such an upset, Scout wants to know why he's doing it. "Because if I didn't," her father replies, "I couldn't hold my head up."

When she asks why take on such a hopeless fight—the time of the play is 1935—he tells her, "Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason not to try." He goes on to prepare Scout for the trouble to come. "We're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends."

Things do get bitter—to the point where Atticus props himself in a chair against the cell door of the man he's defending and confronts an angry mob. Horrified Scout projects herself into this confrontation and her inconvenient presence helps bring back a little sanity.

Atticus fights his legal battle with a result that is part defeat, part triumph. As Atticus comes out of the courthouse, the deeply moved town minister tells Scout, “Stand up. Your father's passing!”  

Source: http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/product_info.php?products_id=1563

Character Descriptions

Jean Louise:  She's Scout, as a grown up, reliving the dramatic time of her youth in her mind.  She performs as a narrator and an interpreter of events.  (She could be anywhere in age between 30-50/60.)

Scout:  A young girl, kind of a tomboy, very open and honest,  about to experience the events that will shape the rest of her life. (She should appear around 9-10, but there are a lot of lines to memorize.)

Jem:  He is a few years older than his sister, Scout, and like his sister, he's reaching out to understand their unusual and thus not conventionally-admirable father.  (A young teen would work well.)

Atticus:  He's reserved, civilized, courageous, quietly impressive, and fifty-ish.  He does what he considers just.  The community knows him and trusts him to do what's right.

Calpurnia:   Black, proud and capable, she has raised the motherless Scout and Jem.  She's a self-educated woman and she's made quite a good job of it.  Her standards are high and her discipline as applied to Scout and Jem is uncompromising.  (She can be any age but is described as "all bones and angles."

Maudie Atkinson:  She's a lovely, sensitive neighbor with wisdom and compassion that suggests the best instincts of the South of that period.  (Age range can vary widely.)

Stephanie Crawford:  She's the neighborhood gossip and enjoys it to the hilt.  She has a name and a description for everyone; knows the whole history of the town--and if she doesn't know it, she makes it up.   She just can't keep from stirring things up and brings humor to the play.

Mrs. DuBose:  She is an old, bitter, and ill woman who makes life very uncomfortable for Scout and Jem; however, she's fighting a secret battle about which few people are aware and her existence has in it a point of importance for Jem and Scout.

Nathan Radley:  He is a thin, leathery man.  (He appears only twice on stage and the actor who plays him will also play Boo Radley.)

Boo Radley:  He is a pale recluse who hasn't been outside his house in fifteen years; outside, he is uncertain how to deal with people.  His very existence has provided great tales for children for many years.  (This is a great role for someone who has a minimal of time to give during the rehearsal period.)

Walter Cunningham:  Cunningham is a hard-up farmer who shares the prejudices of his time and place but who is nevertheless a man who can be reached as a human being.  He also has seeds of leadership, for when his attitude is changed during the confrontation with Atticus, he takes the others with him.

Dill:  Small, but wise beyond his years, Dill is about the same age as Jem.   He is neater and better dressed than his friends and he has an air is sophistication about him.  He has a lack in his own home life and thus is sent to stay in Macomb periodically with his aunt.

Reverend Sykes:  Rev. Sykes is the black minister of the First Purchase Church, called that because it was paid for the with the first money earned by the freed slaves.  He's an imposing man with a strong stage presence.  He needs to have a strong "minister's voice.

Heck Tate:  Heck is the town sheriff and a complex man.  He does his duty as he sees it, and enforces the law without favor.  The key to this man's actual feelings is revealed in his final speeches to Atticus, and this attitude should be an undercurrent to his earlier actions.

Bob Ewell:  Ewell is a little bantom-cock of a man who lives with his large family by the town dump.  As Harper Lee describes their situation--"The town gave them Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of their hand."  Bob thinks this trial will make him an important man, and when Atticus destroys his credibility, Bob's rage and frustration border on paranoia.

Mayella Ewell:  The oldest daughter of Bob Ewell, she's a desperately lonely and overworked young woman whose need for companionship--any companionship-- has overwhelmed every other emotion.  However, when her effort to reach out explodes in her face, she fights just as desperately for what she thinks is survival.

Judge Taylor:  The judge is a wintry man of the South, who does what he can within the context of his time to see justice done in his court.  While he tries to run his court impartially, his sympathy is with Tom.

Mr. Gilmer:  He is a public prosecutor who is doing his job in trying to convict Tom.  In many ways his manner is cruel and hurtful.  And yet under all this, he too has unexpressed doubt as to Tom's guilt, and his heart isn't really in this conviction.  Still -- he goes after it, and it's a hard thing.

Tom Robinson:  Tom is black, handsome, and vital, but with a left hand crippled by a childhood accident and held against his chest.  He's married to Helen and they have young children.  He faces up to a false charge with quiet dignity.  There's an undercurrent in him of kindness, sensitivity and consideration.

Helen Robinson:  She is half numb with the shock of the false charge against her husband Tom; she's someone caught in a nightmare.

Extras:  

Court Clerk, who administers the oath in the courtroom.

Three or four men, to be in the mob scene

Townspeople

NOTE: For arrangements to review the script, please call director Rebecca Cobo at 936-344-0522.

About the Cast

TBA

Author and Dramatist

Author - Harper Lee (Nelle Harper Lee -born April 28, 1926) “American writer, famous for her race relations novel To Kill A Mockingbird, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The book became an international bestseller and was adapted into screen in 1962. Lee was 34 when the work was published, and it has remained her only novel. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

Descended from Robert E. Lee, the Southern Civil War general, Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama. Her father was a former newspaper editor and proprietor, who had served as a state senator and practiced as a lawyer in Monroeville. Lee studied law at the University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, and spent a year as an exchange student in Oxford University, Wellington Square. Six months before finishing her studies, she went to New York to pursue a literary career. She worked as an Airline reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and British Overseas Airways during the 1950s. In 1959 Lee accompanied Truman Capote to Holcombe, Kansas, as a research assistant for Capote's classic 'non-fiction' novel In Cold Blood (1966).
To Kill a Mockingbird was Lee's first novel. The book is set in Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and a father, defends a black man, Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a poor white girl, Mayella Ewell. The setting and several of the characters are drawn from life - Finch was the maiden name of Lee's mother and the character of Dill was drawn from Capote, Lee's childhood friend.” – per Harper Lee’s Biography, (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.harperlee.com/bio.htm

Dramatist - Christopher Sergel (May 7, 1918 – May 7, 1993). “Sergel’s  interests and talents led him on many adventures throughout the world. As captain of the schooner Chance, he spent two years in the South Pacific; as a writer for Sports Afield magazine, he lived in the African bush for a year; as a lieutenant commander during WWII, he taught celestial navigation; as a playwright, his adaptation of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio was seen on Broadway.

But throughout his life, his greatest adventure and deepest love was his work with Dramatic Publishing [Sergel served as President of Dramatic Publishing from 1970 – 1993]. During that time, he wrote adaptations of To Kill a Mockingbird, Cheaper By the Dozen, The Mouse That Roared, Up the Down Staircase, Fame, Black Elk Speaks and many more.

Sergel’s love of theatre and his caring for writers made him a generous and spirited mentor to many playwrights here and around the world. His inspiration and integrity attracted to the company fine writers including C.P. Taylor, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Arthur Miller, Roald Dahl and E.B. White - to name just a few.

Sergel once said he hoped to be remembered as E.B. White described Charlotte... ‘…a true friend and a good writer.’" – per Christopher Sergel’s biography, (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/AuthorBio.php?titlelink=9848

About the Director

Rebecca Cobo – has worked in community theatre in Texas, Colorado and Oklahoma. This will be her second time directing “To Kill a Mockingbird”, the first time she directed the shortened version. She was the director of the State Award Thespian team for ten years. Rebecca’s most recent HCT production was last season’s Bell, Book and Candle, for that production she played the part of ‘Aunt Queenie’. Some of Rebecca’s other acting credits are: Morning’s at Seven (Esther Cramton) produced here at HCT; Rimers of Eldridge (Mary Windrod) and Moon over Buffalo (Ethel) at SHSU; and The Odd Couple (Gwendolyn Pidgeon) and Gaslight (Supporting) at El Reno Community Theatre in Oklahoma. She also performed in Sam Shepard’s True West (Mom) in a repertory theatre in New York City. Rebecca would like to send special thanks to her parents who let her play a bride doll even before she started to school, and to her beloved Gary who makes his own supper so she can play in the theatre.

Tickets

At-the-door

• Adults (18-64): $10
• Seniors (65 and over): $8
• Military (active or retired): $8
• Children (17 and under): $5
• Students (HS or college w/ID): $5
• Groups (10 or more): $1 discount*

* Group rates are given to groups or 10 or more ONLY. Tickets are discounted $1 off the normal price for that patron's level. One person from the group must purchase and pay for all tickets for the group at the same time and distribute the tickets. Tickets for a group will not be sold individually.

PLEASE NOTE: Discounts cannot be awarded to groups of 9 or less, or to already reduced admission rates – such as our children’s summer production.

To Reserve Tickets Call: (936) 291-7933

Season membership

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Box Office Hours

HCT’s Box Office opens one hour before the start time of each production.

• 7:30 PM Productions – Box Office opens at 6:30 PM
• 2:00 PM Matinee – Box Office opens at 1:00 PM

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