NORWAY — Actors, singers and the public are invited to a first-time public reading of “The Road to Eden’s Ridge, the Musical” on July 23.

The reading by members of the Oxford Hills Music and Performing Arts Association will take place at 7 p.m. at the Norway Memorial Library on Main Street. The co-author of “The Road to Eden’s Ridge,” Myra McLarey of New York, will be at the reading of the play that was adapted from the book.

Organizers say it will be an opportunity to become familiarized with the script and original songs prior to auditions early next month. Hundreds of people were able to hear the songs from the musical at the Norway Arts Festival this past weekend for the first time.

Casting for the production is Aug. 6 and 7, and director Sally Jones of Norway, who co-wrote the musical with Steve Jones of Harrison, who is the musical director, is urging actors and singers who wish to get a preview of the musical to come to the free event in preparation.

Auditions for the musical cast will be held at 6:30 p.m. on both nights at the W. J. Wheeler Building, 15 Market Square, South Paris.

Jones said there has been interest in auditioning from a wide area outside of the Oxford Hills including the Lewiston-Auburn area.

The cast will include Lindsey Frost, the lead actress who is described as 25, a singer/songwriter and strong-headed. The story involves Frost who jilts her fiance at the altar, decides to follow her dreams to make music in Nashville and what happens as a result of that.

“The musical is set in Eden’s Ridge, a thinly disguised Norway, Maine, and in Nashville, Tennessee,” Sally Jones said in an earlier interview. The three-generational love story will feature country and Broadway-style music.

Central to the plot is an old opera house, bought by the fictional town of Eden’s Ridge in order to save and restore it. Although McLarey came from the Oxford Hills area, she actually wrote the story many years before the town of Norway began its quest to save the Norway Opera House five years years ago.

More information about the available roles is available on OHMPAA’s website at www.OHMPAA.com.

Monday night also will be the first opportunity to purchase raffle tickets for “Lily’s Eyes,” a cobalt blue necklace designed by Dennis Creaser of Creaser Jewelry in South Paris. The special cobalt blue necklace will be worn by the actress who plays Lily in the musical, becomes crucial to the storyline of the original play, Jones said.

The premiere of two-act romantic musical “The Road to Eden’s Ridge, the Musical,” is set for Nov. 9.

The book was written 15 years ago by McLarey, a former Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School English teacher, who lives in New York, and Linda Weeks. They are known collaboratively as M.L. Rose.

OHMPAA is a nonprofit organization that began staging productions at the Paris Hill Academy in 1990 and the Norway Grange in 2002. In 2009, OHMPAA became a program of Norway Maine Opera House Corp.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call Norway Memorial Library at 743-5309 or visit the library’s website at www.norway.lib.me.us.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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