The Barton Community College Theatre Department will hold open auditions for its fall production of “The Diviners,” by Jim Leonard Jr. from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 21, in the Fine Arts Auditorium. There will be callbacks from 6:30-8:30 on Aug. 22. The Theatre Department will be casting all roles and all technical positions.

No preparation is necessary, and all are invited to audition. Rehearsals begin Aug. 26 and will run from 6-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The production will run for three shows on Oct. 4, 5 and 6. 

Theatre Director James Miller said this marvelously theatrical play is the story of a disturbed young man and his friendship with a disenchanted preacher in southern Indiana in the early 1930s. When the boy was young, he almost drowned. This trauma and the loss of his mother in the same accident left him deathly afraid of water. The preacher, set on breaking away from a long line of Kentucky family preachers, is determined not to do what he does best. So, he works as a mechanic for the boy’s father. The town doesn’t have a preacher and the women try to persuade him to preach – while he tries to persuade the child to overcome his fear of water and to wash his infected skin. When the preacher finally gets the boy in the river, the townspeople mistake the scene for a baptism. They descend on the event and, in the confusion, the boy drowns.

For more information, contact Theatre Director James Miller at millerj@bartonccc.edu or 620-792-9205.