MONMOUTH — Twenty-nine people auditioned Monday for roles in six plays to be presented at the Theater at Monmouth this summer.

Directors Dawn McAndrews and Adam Blais listened to the actors read parts at the Hellen Melledy Grange.

The plays in the Summer Repertory Season, June 24 through Aug. 20, are:

• Moliere’s “Learned Ladies” directed by Sally Wood;

• Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” directed by Dawn McAndrews;,

• Shakespeare’s “Othello” directed by Catherine Weidner;

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• Lolita Chakrabarti’s “Red Velvet” directed by Jennifer Nelson;

• Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain” directed by Carmen-maria Mandley; and 

• “My Father’s Dragon” directed by Adam Blais. 

Each actor chosen for the session will play at least three roles. 

Khalil LeSaldo, 27, of Portland read lines from “Othello,” “Learned Ladies” and “Three Days of Rain.”

“I’ve got a day job but this is my passion,” he said. “It’s my plan A through C.”

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LeSaldo was raised in Fort Kent and went to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, studying psychology and theater. 

“I did theater in high school,” he said. “It was an accident that I got involved, and I just fell in love it.”

He said he loves the storytelling aspect of acting. “It’s a way to get you present and be mindful. It’s also therapeutic, getting in someone else’s mindset and reality,” he said. 

His favorite things about being on stage, LeSaldo said, are changing minds and people’s thinking, and being present and being connected. 

He said he gets a bit of anxiety auditioning, but he pushes through stage fright “by connecting harder to the circumstances of the character and the story.” 

LeSaldo’s dream role is a character named Yank from Eugene O’Neil’s play “The Hairy Ape.”

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“He’s really bestial. It’s an impressionistic kind of play,” LeSaldo said.

This is his first year being really active in the Maine theater scene; in an average year he tries to do 10 auditions, he said. 

LeSaldo said he was told by a director at Bowdoin College to audition for the Theater at Monmouth last year, and he auditioned again this year.

LeSaldo and the other 28 actors will find out if they’ve been chosen at the beginning of February. 


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