Dates: Monday January 2, 6:30-8:00 pm
Tuesday January 3, 6:30-8:00 pm

Callbacks: Tuesday January 3, 6:30-8:00 pm

Location: Sunflower Cafe at East Mountain High School, 25 La Madera Road, Sandia Park

Roles available:
Minimum of 3 males and 3 females who will play multiple characters across multiple age ranges- a tour de force of the actors’ versatility and skill.

The play is set in the dining room of a typical well-to-do household, the place where the family assembled daily for breakfast and dinner and for any and all special occasions. The action is a mosaic of interrelated scenes—some funny, some touching, some rueful—which, taken together, create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle-class WASP. The actors change roles, personalities and ages with virtuoso skill as they portray a wide variety of characters, from little boys to stern grandfathers, and from giggling teenage girls to Irish housemaids. Each vignette introduces a new set of people and events; a father lectures his son on grammar and politics; a boy returns from boarding school to discover his mother’s infidelity; a senile grandmother doesn’t recognize her own sons at Christmas dinner; a daughter, her marriage a shambles, pleads futilely to return home, etc. Dovetailing swiftly and smoothly, the varied scenes coalesce, ultimately, into a theatrical experience of exceptional range, compassionate humor and abundant humanity.

For More Information: call 286-1950

3 actors between the ages of 35 and 55 are needed. The production dates are December 9 – 18th.

Production Description
Three actors decide to bypass Dickens’ beloved holiday classic and stage a Christmas show that leaves no tinsel unturned. A madcap romp through the holiday season. This is a fast paced, holiday comedy.

“Dead End Killington Drive”takes place in a sleepy suburb of Sedona, Arizona. There’s a copy cat murderer who is killing people who reside on the dead end street Killington Drive.  The perpetrator wears a Jack-O-Lantern head mimicking the killer from the new John Carpenter film, “Dead End Killington Drive.”  As the bodies pile up, the mystery deepens. Will you be able to figure out who the murderer is?

You won’t want to miss this play. Last year the murder mystery (The Dress Shop Murders of 1933) sold out. Buy your tickets now so you can secure your seats.

Questions? Call the EMCT hotline at 505.286.1950 and leave a message or send an email to: emct@att.net.  Your call will be returned.

East Mountain Centre for Theatre is honored to have two new, professional teachers for its after school theatre classes on Monday and Thursday afternoons.

Actor and director Lee Kitts brings 30 years of experience having taught in San Francisco, Louisville, Hawaii and Oregon. Teacher/actress and coach Joanne Camp has appeared on Broadway (nominated for a Tony Award!), Off-Broadway, film and TV. She has taught privately in NYC and has conducted workshops for Universities and professional theatre. Students will have the luxury of working with both women!  So get to know these two great teachers by signing up for the after school classes taught at Vista Grande. Mondays for teens from 3:45-5:15 (the registration form below has 4-5:30 so just make a note that it starts at 3:45) and Thursdays for kids 12 and under from 4-5:30. Teen classes start Sept. 12th and the kids class starts Sept. 15th. Class size is limited so register now by downloading forms below or call 286.1683 for further info.

Registration Form

After School Youth Program Page

Picture: Left to Right – Professional acting teachers Joanne Sobel and Lee Kitts come to the East Mountains for after school theater classes and October Intensive!

Thursday, 01 October 2009 10:02

Young, old, shy, outgoing, and no matter the level of talent, community theater is a chance for just about anyone to ham it up on stage.

Richard Atkins joined the board of the East Mountain Centre for Theatre- formerly known as East Mountain Community Theatre — shortly after he moved to New Mexico from New York in 2004. He said it’s a collaborative effort to provide entertainment, education, and a creative outlet for folks in the East Mountains.

“It’s definitely a collaborative effort. Everybody works their tail off,” he said. “We have 50 to 60 people working to make this happen …”

The group of people who make the productions happen even includes a few professionals in the industry.

The costume wrangler, for example, Deborah Andrews, owns So Whateva, a tailoring and costuming business in Albuquerque. She said she makes a very good living working in the film industry, making sure that the actors are wearing the correct clothes.

“It is fun, I enjoy my job,” she said. “I kind of feel like (community theater) is my way to give it back.”

She said working with the theater group is completely different from her day job. She begs and borrows costumes for productions. Unlike films, where her job is to make the costumes as realistic as possible, things are pretty loose with the theater group, she said.

“It’s totally the opposite,” she said. “Doing this kind of stuff, anything really goes. We can fake it a lot.”

Like Andrews, Atkins, a resident of Sandia Park, is no slouch when it comes to the industry. He has written 16 plays, with one, “The Men of Mah Jongg,” produced in New York last year. He worked on that project with Tony Award winner Mark Medoff, who wrote “Children of a Lesser God.”

Even with his experience on the East Coast, he said he’d put his theater group in the East Mountains up against productions in New York.

“I was pretty impressed with the quality of the productions here, when comparing them to New York,” he said.

Atkins went even further, saying he and others in the group are working to build a cultural arts center in Cedar Crest. It’s a big dream.

If it was funded the project, which would be located at the corner of La Madera Road and N.M. 14, would cost $25 million. The plans have been drawn up and they are certainly dramatic. They include a 600 seat theater, studio space, art galleries, a film soundstage, and two restaurants.

So far the center has managed to have plans for a theater drawn up and has contacted some corporate sponsors; and is working to raise money through arts organizations, such as the McCune Foundation. Things were going along well for the plans until the economy took a nose dive, he said.

“This is supposed to be a little under the radar,” he said.

While he congratulated Moriarty High School, which is in the process of building a performing arts center, he said it may be too far from the Cedar Crest area for the theater group to use.

The group’s next production is a dinner theater and murder mystery, “Murder at the Swiss Chalet.”

Evening performances will be held on Fridays and Saturdays over three weekends starting the weekend of Oct. 9 and ending on Oct. 26 at Vista Grande Community Center. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., dinner is served at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets, which include dinner, are $30 for adults; seniors age 65 and older and students pay $25; and kids ages 11 and younger are $15.

The center will also hold auditions for the musical version of “Alice in Wonderland” on Saturday and Sunday. Auditions will be at the East Mountain High School commons building from 1 to 4 p.m. each day. Callbacks will be at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 6 at the high school. For more information, contact Lou Ann Graham at lougraham83@yahoo.com or call 286-1950.

Source:  The mountain View Telegraph.

http://www.mvtelegraph.com/index.php/news/1975-Volunteers-Pour-Their-Efforts-Into-the-East-Mountain-Centre-for-Theatre.html