Orcas Center is holding auditions for the play “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, another play in the series of Great Classics in Literature performed on the OffCenter Stage.

The Orcas Center production is scheduled to perform February 10 to 18, 2012 for Black History Month.

Contact director Robert Hall directly for an individual audition: ocmockingbird@gmail.com.

The characters: Jean Louis Finch – Scout as a grown up; Scout – young tom boy about 12 years old; Jem – her brother – around 12 years; Atticus – their father, an attorney; Calpurnia – the housekeeper; Maudie Atkinson; Stephanie Crawford; Mrs. Dubose  – a neighbor; Nathon Radley – Boo’s father; Arthur Radley – Boo; Dill – a young boy and friend to the kids, around 12 years old; Heck Tate – the sheriff; Reverend Sykes; Mayella Ewell – a young woman, the accuser; Bob Ewell – her father; Walter Cunningham – a father; Mr. Gilmer – the prosecutor; Tom Robinson – the accused; Helen Robinson – his wife.

A Pulitzer Prize winner, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is loosely based on Lee’s family, Truman Capote, whom she remained friends with until his death, neighbors, and an event that occurred in her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

The story takes place during three years of the Great Depression in the fictional “tired old town” of Maycomb, Ala. Jean Louise Finch, the narrator of the story, takes the reader back in time when she was called “Scout” as a child. Scout lives with her older brother, Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive “Boo” Radley.

Atticus is appointed by the court to defend Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Although many of Maycomb’s citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability.