2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, an extraordinary military operation which changed the course of World War II and put the Allied forces on the path to victory. To mark this momentous year, Harleston Players are teaming up with Metfield-based singing group Station 366, plus a team of local Lindy Hop dancers, to create Friendly Invasion, a show about the arrival of the USAAF to this area and the ways in which the presence of thousands of Americans influenced life in the region.
We are holding auditions in March and we're looking for a cast of 6 – 8 actors to play:
A young man and young woman (playing age: 20’s) for the couple at the heart of this wartime romance, set in rural East Anglia. He’s a Navigator on a bomber flying out of the local American airbase. She lives on the family farm and works at the post office in the nearest town.
Other actors to play multiple roles - GIs, Women’s Land Army, local farmers, shopkeepers,
A range of playing ages is needed, from school age to old age, and a willingness to take on more than one role. The play shuttles between present-day and WW2, and actors will play a character from both time periods.
Ability to do an East Anglian or an American accent is an advantage, but not a requirement!
This will be a fun show, with the fantastic Station 366 ladies singing arrangements of 1940s songs, and local Lindy Hop dancers adding energy and bounce. But the production needs a strong emotional centre to convey the enormous stresses and challenges of life in wartime East Anglia and it is the actors who will recreate a period which called on the courage, fortitude and resilience of those who lived through it.
If you would like to be involved, please come along to an audition at the Jay's Green Hall in Harleston. These are on Sunday 17th March, 2pm - 5pm and Tuesday 19th March, 7.30pm - 10pm. If you can't make it to an audition, but would like to be involved, please contact Eileen Ryan - anyoldryan@gmail.com.