MONMOUTH, Ill. — Auditions for “Founders’ Days,” a play about the early
history of Monmouth College by faculty member William Urban, will be held
Feb. 22 at 3 p.m. and Feb. 23, at 5 p.m. Both audition sessions will be
held in the Morgan Room on the second floor of the college’s Poling Hall.
The play, one of many activities designed to highlight Monmouth
College’s year-long sesquicentennial celebration, centers on the events
and individuals who played key roles in the school’s founding. The show
will be directed by Melissa Coulter, adjunct professor of theater at Black
Hawk College in Moline, Ill.
According to Jeff Rankin, MC’s director of college communications, the
three-act play, which centers around the period of the college’s history
from 1852 to about 1870, will feature as many as 20 roles, primarily for
adult males and females.
“What we are hoping for,” said Rankin, “is a good mix of both members
of the college community and the Monmouth community.”
Rehearsals for the play are slated to begin March 3 and continue in the
evenings until the performance dates of April 4 and 6. Rankin says the
play will be the first dramatic production performed in the college’s
newly-remodeled Dahl Chapel and Auditorium.
According to Coulter, who is an English and theater graduate of
Augustana College, those auditioning for the play will not have to
prepare, as they will be asked to do a “cold reading” of a selected
portion of the script.
Urban, the Lee L. Morgan Professor of History and International
Studies, wrote the play in 2000. He is also the author of “A History of
Monmouth College Through Its Fifth Quarter-Century,” published in 1979.
In describing the play, Coulter says its basic aim is to inform people
about the history of the college in a way that is far more personal than
simply reading through old documents or studying old photographs.
“The founders actually come alive right in front of the audience,” she
noted, adding, the play “gives us some insight to the struggles that the
founders of the college came up against … everything from raising
finances, drumming up enrollments and surviving the Civil War.”
One of the most interesting aspects of the play, she said, is the
“focus on the role of women in the founding of the college. We learn from
Mr. Urban that the wives and sisters and first female students at the
college played a large role in the early years.”
Coulter’s assistant director for the production in early April is MC
student Kyle Anderson, a senior theater major from Somonauk, Ill.
