Be ‘gnome’ for the holidays: Joliet theater hosting auditions for 46th ‘Festival of Gnomes’ on Sunday

For more than five decades, people of all ages have enjoyed a holiday tradition that is uniquely Joliet’s own – “Festival of Gnomes.”

Whole families have acted together and small children have grown up with the show, even returning home from college to take the stage once again at the Billie Limacher Bicentennial Park and Theater in Joliet, which produces the annual production.

Now, you can be a gnome, too.

The 46th annual “Festival of Gnomes” will be held at 2 p.m. Dec. 3 and Dec. 4 at Bicentennial Park, located at 201 W. Jefferson St.

Bicentennial Park will hold auditions for “Festival of Gnomes” at 5 p.m. Sunday at the Joliet park. People ages 5 through adult are needed.

Be prepared to do a cold reading with projection and animation and be prepared to do pantomime or some other movement, too, according to Bicentennial Park.

Those auditioning also may prepare an optional 30-second monologue or poem. If you can’t audition in person, submit a video to Lori Carmine, park manager, at lcarmine@joliet.gov. Put “gnome video audition” in the subject line.

Years ago, Billie Limacher, park board president for more than 40 years, and longtime park manager Georgiann Goodson created the Festival of Gnomes as a holiday event of good will that people of any age could enjoy.

Limacher played Grandma Gnome until the last few years of her life.

[ Goodbye, Grandma Gnome ]

Goodson wrote the show the first year she was park manager. She based the resource material from the gnome book by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, which she had discovered in a bookstore in Wisconsin, she said in a 1999 Herald-News story.

“I had wanted to do a holiday play, but nothing religious since it was a civic park, just something fun with a moral value,” Goodson said in the story. “I enjoy adapting stories and these contained action … conflict ... different theatrical elements.”

The Festival of Gnomes began with a cast of 10 people, which has increased over the years.

Lori Carmine, the current park manager, said in a 2021 Herald-News story that the “Festival of Gomes” appeal is likely due to its basic premise.

“It showcases family values of being good human beings, of being nice and taking care of one another,” Carmine said in the story.

Carmine’s parents, Tom and Jan Novotny, also have appeared in the show as Great Uncle Gnome and Great Aunt Gnome.

In a 2009 Herald-News story, Limacher shared the only negative comment she’d ever heard about the show. One woman disapproved of the Snotgurgle gnome and informed Limacher that she and her grandchildren would not return next year.

“The next morning I got a phone call and it was the woman,” Limacher said. “She said, ‘Mrs. Limacher, this is so and so, and I owe you an apology. I had the grandchildren overnigh,t and all they talked about was the show. They even went to bed with their gnome hats on.’”

Other traditional elements of the “Festival of Gnomes” include felt gnome hats that patrons may buy at the show. If they attend the following year, they can have a free tassel sewn onto the hat. Special tassels are available for the 10th, 20th and 30th year.

According to the 2009 story, the tassels are made from “dried moonbeams with a dehydrated star hanging from it.”

Other show features include a plate of assorted cookies and hot cocoa and coffee, typically for $1, and a variety of gnome-made crafts available to buy.

For information, call 815-724-3761 or visit bicentennialpark.org.