Southwestern hosts auditions for Winter Term play

January 2 , 2007

The Southwestern Oregon Community College Theatre Department is hosting auditions for the Winter Term production of Nickel and Dimed, a play by Joan Holden based on Barbara Ehrenreich’s best-selling book.

Auditions are scheduled at 7 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday, Jan. 8 and 9, at the Hales Center for the Performing Arts. The production will run March 2 through 10 at Southwestern. Rob Clingan will direct a multi-racial cast of five women and two men.

This powerful production delves into the challenges that face the working poor who often have to work two jobs to pay for food and rent; live without health insurance; and are denied adequate housing because they lack security deposit money. Ehrenreich, a noted social critic, posed as a member of the working poor to experience their life first-hand. She waited tables, cleaned motels, washed dishes, scrubbed toilets and stocked shelves at Wal-Mart. Her goal was to find out if a physically fit, reasonably intelligent person can land in a strange town; find a place to live and a job; eat, keep her clothes clean; and still save enough for the next month’s rent. With great hilarity, the play records Ehrenreich’s not always funny adventures trying to lead that life.

Copies of Nickel and Dimed are on reserve in the Southwestern library. For more information, those interested can contact Clingan at 888-1578. Past shows such as Macbeth, Waiting for Godot, Hamlet, The Investigation and The Laramie Project have established the reputation of the Southwestern Theatre Department for quality productions, staged with imagination and intense theatricality. Additional information is available online at http://www.socc.edu/dept/theatre.