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Battery Point’s pre-lighthouse days as an internment camp chilled Ruth Rhodes and made her realize how little she knew about her adopted home.

Rhodes and her friend Geneva Wiki, a Yurok tribal member whose family comes from Requa, were at the then-Smith River Rancheria near the ocean more than a decade ago. Wiki had told Rhodes about one of her ancestors who survived the camp, which got Rhodes thinking.

“That got me thinking about all the other layers of history that I didn’t understand and I suspected most people living in Crescent City didn’t know about,” Rhodes told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday. “And that led me to research and write the play.”

The play turned into a musical — “This Is Crescent City.” And 10 years after it first premiered, Rhodes is using a grant from the Wild Rivers Community Foundation to hire cultural consultants and revive the musical.

Lighthouse Repertory Theatre is holding four days of auditions starting today. The production’s on-stage comeback will take place the last week of October, according to production manager and LRT Board President David McPhail. It will be LRT’s first “full-on production” in about eight years, he said.

“We’re doing high school age and up,” McPhail said of the auditions. “And we’re really wanting the different cultures to come and audition — the Hmong and Native American community. There’s so much talent in Crescent City from all cultures. To me, that’s what Crescent City is — it’s a cultural community.”

Rhodes is an associate dean and English professor for College of the Redwoods. Though she currently lives in Eureka, Del Norte County was home for 20 years. Its people are featured two of her other works, the ethnography, “Come to the Edge: Arrival and Survival in Del Norte County” and the graphic novel, “How Did We Get Here.”

For the graphic novel, Rhodes teamed up with project manager Melissa Darnell and illustrator Robert Love along with the California Endowment and Building Healthy Communities.

The original version of “This Is Crescent City” features a history teacher who returns to his hometown and inspires his students to interview family members and dig into their past. They uncover some dark secrets and are forced to “grapple with their own demons,” Rhodes said.

She said she teamed up with her childhood friend Damon Sink, a composer and music professor from Western Carolina University, to create the melody and lyrics. When it debuted, it was so powerful, Don Olson, the then-superintendent of Del Norte Unified School District, asked LRT to hold the show over one more weekend so he could pay for his students to see the performance, Rhodes said.

They also held discussion groups following every Saturday performance, giving the audience to ask the cast and crew questions.

“This show is a serious one. It deals with issues of genocide and drug addiction and political polarization,” she said, adding that she’s not yet sure if the musical’s revival will feature the same discussions. “It’s good to talk about these things in a group and to listen.”

For the revival, Rhodes said she interviewed people who identify as Tolowa Dee-ni’, Yurok, Hmong as well as youth who identify as LGBTQ. It wasn’t enough to get facts right, she said, but for those whose stories it tells, did it feel true? Was it authentic?

The consultants Rhodes hired helped her with language, character names and provided feedback about the plot and the characters themselves.

It was through this process that Rhodes got a better idea of what poverty might look like to a Yurok and Tolowa family.

“There’s a scene where they’re going to open up a can of Dinty Moore beef stew. This is supposed to be a family that’s middle-class and connected to their cultural roots,” Rhodes told the Outpost, adding that consent is integral to the storytelling she does. “The culture consultant in this particular instance said, no Dinty Moore beef stew. It’s August and September, this should be deer meat stew. This cultural consultant, when she hears Dinty Moore beef stew, that says poverty to her. To me, it’s comfort food that my parents served camping, but it did not resonate that way with her.”

Rhodes said she hopes WRCF will continue to support LRT by supporting the actual production of “This Is Crescent City.” The 10 cultural consultants she interviewed also included four youth who identify as LGBTQ.

“They just came up with the most awesome ideas,” she said, “and they saw the script in a whole new way and they helped me see it in a whole new way too.”

Kirsten Randrup will direct the play and David Sedgwick will direct the pit band — it’ll be the first time in eight years an LRT production has featured live music.

“This Is Crescent City” auditions and its production will be held at the Crescent City Cultural Center. Those wanting to try for a part should be prepared to sing and do some light choreography in addition to speaking.

Auditions will be held at 6 p.m. this evening. For more information, visit Lighthouse Repertory Theatre on Facebook.

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