The experiences of children in foster care in Hawaii will get a dramatic retelling by PlayBuilders of Hawai‘i Theater Company, a Chinatown theater group that draws its stories from the community.

The project, “Fostering Ohana,” aims not only to give former foster care children opportunities to learn acting and play writing, but also to spread awareness about the need for more foster parents, said Terri Madden, founder and executive director of PlayBuilders.

“We’re holding auditions for former care youth to work with us on the production, and it’s community collaborative,” Madden said. “The community is actually helping us write the play.

“Our hope is that it will be all-encompassing. We’re hoping to interview birth parents who had to give their children up for whatever reason. We would like to interview social workers, former foster youths, siblings of foster youth. Someone we know, the daughter of a former foster home parent, we’re going to talk to her about what it’s like to have foster children brought into your home by your birth parents. It’s just a really rich and interesting subject.”

Young adults ages 18 to 26 who have been in foster care are invited to audition for the project at 7 p.m. Sunday at The ARTS at Marks Garage. No experience in acting or stagecraft is required.

Madden also said those unable to audition Sunday can contact her directly through playbuilders.org for the rest of January. “No one will be turned away if you’re interested in this opportunity,” she said.

“We originally wanted to work with young children, but then we realized there’s an issue of privacy,” Madden said. “These young people have lived through it, and they’re continuing, because foster youth are at higher risk of homelessness, having children too early, being imprisoned, so we are going to be exploring all these stories of resilience, and at the same time these foster children will be given agency to speak on behalf of themselves as well as other children in need.”

Madden, a Po‘okela award-winning director, will work with the cast on acting and on the development of the play, which is expected to take a year to develop and bring to the stage.

The cast will also receive training in dance and movement from Becky McGarvey, a dancer and choreographer who studied at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The cast will help gather information for the play, through interviews with current members of the foster care community as well as relating their own experiences, Madden said.

Her company has done several plays developed in similar fashion, including works about homelessness in Chinatown; the experiences of Hawaii’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community; and regionally oriented plays about Waipahu.

She became interested in creating a production about foster care families after someone from the foster care community spoke at her Rotary Club about the need for more foster parents.

“Right now they’re short 70 foster homes for children in need,” she said. “I thought doing a play and having a discussion about it with the community at large seem to be good places to start.”

Participants who are cast in “Fostering Ohana” must commit to attending workshops and agree to interview at least one member of the foster care community. Training will be at The ARTS at Marks Garage on Sundays from 7-9:30 p.m., with scheduled time off for school holidays and summer break. The workshops are free.

All participants who complete the training and perform in the play are eligible to become official members of PlayBuilders’ ensemble.

PlayBuilders, a nonprofit group, plans to take the production to neighbor islands. It has received a grant from the Victoria S. and Bradley L. Geist Foundation and is working with several foster care organizations on the project.