Mundelein Arts Commission sets auditions for Children’s Summer Shakespeare Shorts

The Mundelein Arts Commission has announced auditions for its annual Summer Shakespeare Shorts. This year’s production will be for young people ages 13-18 in middle and high school.

Auditions will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m on May 29-30 at the Fremont Township Center on Highway 60 and Fremont Center Road in Mundelein.

This year’s production will be a condensed version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,“ edited by Joyce Lee to shorten the script while honoring Shakespeare’s language and adding narrators to help advance the action.

Auditioners are being asked to fill out a preliminary form, which can be found at mundelein.org/mac, and which asks for contact information and a brief list of past performance experience.

Return the completed form to Jon Matousek at jmatousek@email.mundelein.org, or print and bring to auditions. For auditions, prepare a brief Shakespeare monologue or sonnet; these don’t have to be memorized and may be read.

First read-throughs will be held on June 4 and 6, with following rehearsals to be determined. Performance dates will be Aug. 9-11, tentatively held in the Community Space next to AREA Coffee House on Park Avenue. For further information contact Matousek.

Directors for the production are MAC Member Jon Matousek and Joyce Lee.

“We are very excited to be offering Shakespeare as a teen project,” Matousek said. “Students are so receptive to the show and adapt quickly to the language.”

The MAC Summer Shakespeare Shorts event was first presented in 2019 and has proved a popular summer entertainment.

Last year’s production was “Sounds and Sweet Aires,” presented in Kracklauer Park in cooperation with Kirk Players, and was well-attended.