Audition Sign Up March 13

The Department of Theatre and Dance will hold auditions on March 12 and 13 for The Odyssey in Shadow, a large-scale cinematic shadow theater experience inspired by the ancient epic The Odyssey. The production will perform at the end of spring quarter 2026 in the Arena Theatre, Wright Hall.

Co-directed by longtime artistic associates and veteran collaborators Caryl Kientz and Lydia Greer from the renowned ShadowLight Productions and the interdisciplinary collective Facing West Shadows, this work merges myth and memory through an immersive visual language of light, shadow, and movement.

Blending traditional shadow theater techniques with live performance, filmmaking methods, experimental cinema, and layered projection, The Odyssey in Shadow reimagines Homer’s timeless tale through a contemporary lens—centering perspectives from the margins, reframing the hero’s journey, and illuminating the unseen.

Auditions will be held March 12 6-9 pm and March 13 12-3pm in the Arena Theatre, Wright Hall. For the audition:

1. Dress to move 

2. Prepare a song ( could be happy birthday/ we want to see your comfort with singing and hear your range 

3. Prepare 1 minute of text. You can prepare something from text ( included) or other heightened text ( poem, sonnet). 

4. Be prepared to work together as a group

Kientz is a director, producer, and educator specializing in cinematic shadow theater. She is the Theatrical Director and co-founder of Facing West Shadows, an experimental shadow theater collective known for blending traditional shadow puppetry with animation, installation, and opera. For nearly two decades, she has worked with the internationally renowned ShadowLight Productions, where she now serves as Managing Director and Artistic Associate. Her collaborative work has been performed at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard University, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

Greer is a widely exhibiting interdisciplinary visual artist, filmmaker, director, animator, and the artistic director of Facing West Shadows, a Lumia arts collective working with shadow casting and hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art. Expanding into film/animation, theater/opera, puppetry, and sculptural installation, Facing West Shadows creates surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms. Her work has been exhibited and performed at museums, theatres and galleries nationally and internationally with recent work presented at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, The Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose (ICASJI), The Strangloscope International Experimental Film Festival,  Brazil, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, MeMeraki Artist Residency in Cyprus and invited by the NaFilM: National Film Museum based in Prague. She is currently an assistant professor of Animation and Fine Art at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California.

The Department of Theatre and Dance is part of the UC Davis College of Letters and Science. For information about other department productions, visit theatredance.ucdavis.edu.