Casts Selected, Characters Welcome

Bill Morris figured OK. He’d go to TriArts’ auditions for “Oklahoma.†After all, this 70-year-old, Chattanooga-born trumpeter/race-car driver/MG-loving/folk singer and self-described sitdown comic (he performed his monologue in a rocking chair) has the accent. The moxie. The inclination.

   And he likes being on a stage.

   “I wasn’t nervous at the audition†Morris tells me. We are in his home office, a part of the 18th-century cottage that was probably a tack salesroom in Sharon maybe a century ago. A fat yellow cat sleeps on the printer.

   A lot of people came to that audition in TriArts’ Bok Gallery last month.

  They danced.

  They read.

   A lot of them sang the title song “Oklahoma,†which Morris knew not to do. At least not right off.  He performed “They Call the Wind Maria†from “Paint your Wagon,†the 1951 Lerner-and-Loewe musical set in California’s Gold Rush days. (As in “Oklahoma,†Agnes de Mille did the choreography.)  

   “Away out here they got a name/ For rain and wind and fire/ . . . And they call the wind Maria.â€

   Same kind of elemental, mythic feel as “Oklahoma.†Just staged eight years later.

   “I always have butterflies. But soon as I plant my feet and the first note comes out I’m fine.â€

   Director Mark Robinson looked interested.

   “He had me read the part of Andrew Carnes.

   “Robinson told me Carnes was a real hillbilly, not at all sophisticated. And a little slow on the uptake.

   “I can do that†Morris told the director.

   Singing the second-act opener “The Farmer and the Cowman Should be Friends†sewed it up for Morris. Soon after, he got word the part was his.

   “I would have been perfectly  happy with a job in the chorus.â€

   But he seems perfectly happy about getting something bigger, too.

TriArts opens its summer theater season with “The Wedding Singer,†June 24 to July11. “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee follows, July 16 - 25; and the season wraps up with “Oklahoma,†Aug. 5 - 22.

   Tickets can be purchased online: www,triarts.net, or by telephone: 860-364-7469.

  

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