Kelley Morgan sat upright in one of the red polyester chairs that line three walls of the Brown Room in Talley Student Center.

Bent over a script, she flipped through the pages, glancing over a few lines — and she waited.

Morgan, a junior in Spanish and international studies, is one of three actors reading lines in a casting for University Theatre’s performance of Dearly Departed, which is scheduled to open Nov. 29.

“I’m excited,” Morgan said before the audition. “Sometimes I get nervous right before [I audition], but then, when I get up on stage — singing, acting — it kind of just goes away.”

But when Morgan was called before the director of Thompson Theater John McIlwee, she toned in to the southern accent of Juanita, one of the characters in the play.

“That accent doesn’t come out when I speak normally,” Morgan said after she had read her lines. “If I want it to come out I can — I’ve lived in North Carolina all my life.”

Morgan’s ability to transform her stage persona into any character she plays comes from, she said, the character itself.

“When you’re performing in a show, you kind of have to get into the mindset of that character, so it makes it a lot easier to perform in a play,” she said.

Dearly Departed is the first University production for which Morgan has auditioned. She said she chose it, because from what she had heard, she expects it to be a witty play she would enjoy being a part of.

And in this performance, Morgan said she isn’t picky about the role she wants.

“I’m going for any female role, really,” she said.

Though Morgan hasn’t performed in a University play, she was cast in the 2005 and 2006 presentations of Madrigal, which she described as a medieval dinner theater-type show in which the cast interacted with the audience in character.

“The audience was kind of a part of the show as well,” she said.

But Morgan first took to the stage at 7, playing alongside Wendy, Tinkerbell and Captain Hook as one of the Lost Boys in J.M. BarrieÕs Peter Pan.

“I had danced and sung and played in band, so I liked performing,” Morgan said about her first excursion into theater.

And since that first performance, she’s kept to the stage.

However, though she considers acting something she deeply enjoys, she said she doesn’t plan to pursue it as a career.

“I like acting as a general interest,” she said. “But I just do it on the side. It takes away stresses that other things might cause.”

Morgan will know by either today or Friday, according to McIlwee, if she has been cast in the play.