The Eastport Arts Center’s Music for Children program is seeking young performers for a musical production of YOU CAN’T SIT HERE—A Children’s Opera, with music by Gregory Biss and script and lyrics by Catherine J.S. Lee, to be performed in October of 2023. An audition will be held at Eastport Arts Center on Monday, May 22 at 4 pm. Roles are available for young people who can portray 6th or 7th graders. This is a musical and all parts will involve singing; all experience levels are welcome to audition. For more information, or to arrange an audition, please email musicforchildren@eastportartscenter.org.
More information: The cast includes four soloist singer/actors and other speaking and chorus roles: approximately 12 performers in total. The singers will be accompanied by a small orchestra on stage live for each show. The four lead singers, who portray 6th graders (though of course they may themselves be older) will be able to carry slightly spiky melodies with some rhythmic diversity, written within a compressed and flexible range. Microphone use will be possible. Rehearsals are planned for Saturday mornings in September and October; performances will be the last two weeks in October, in two or three locations: Eastport Arts Center and Performing Arts Center in Machias and possibly at the Sunrise Center in Calais as well. We will endeavor to provide ride-sharing transportation when needed. Coaching of soloists would take place during the summer vacation at mutually convenient times and places.
Plot synopsis
LIAM is a sixth-grader who moves from a middle-sized city to a small town on the coast of Maine. At Harbour Elementary, he discovers that the class is divided into cliques which shun him. The only person who befriends him is ZINNIA. When their teacher assigns a group presentation and Liam becomes a team captain, he chooses his new friend Zinnia and also his two main tormentors, cool girl AUDREY and wanna-be tough guy MASON. Through the team’s innovative role-playing project, Audrey and Mason come to understand the damage that bullying and shunning can cause. After working successfully together, the four realize that it’s time to end the divisions within their class. In the cafeteria they make a very public move towards unity.
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