Gainesville — A talking pig will be making its way to the stage of the First State Bank Center for the Performing Arts in the coming months.

The fun and entertaining play “Babe” will hit the stage in November, and auditions are planned for 6:30 p.m., Sept. 10-11 at the North Central Texas College Gainesville campus.

Actors ages 8 years old and up are needed for the play.

“There is a large cast, but fortunately there is room for actors playing multiple parts so we are looking for performers ages 8 and up,” director Arturo Garcia said. “We’re just looking for performers who are willing to have fun, work together and be respectful of one another. Ultimately, it’s all about having fun and putting on a great show.”

Cast members and the audience will no doubt be familiar with “Babe,” thanks mostly to the 1995 film version. But the movie was based on the book “The Sheep-Pig” by Dick King-Smith, and a play version of the book followed.

For Garcia and NCTC Fine Arts department chairman Thom Talbott, “Babe” was an easy choice when they went looking for a play that would reach audiences of all ages.

“I’ve always been fascinated with doing children’s literature,” Garcia said. “I had not even seen the movie, so I decided to read the book first and then the play. Sometimes when you watch a movie, you are persuaded by what someone else’s vision is. So I read the book and I really liked it.

“It’s about a pig who has a place in this world. What I like about ‘Babe’ is there is a sense of the unreal and the real. You have this idea that pigs can talk, and that’s very fanciful and very similar to ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ And like ‘Charlotte’s Web,’ they deal with moments that maybe some people don’t consider children’s literature. They deal with the idea that death is a phase.”

In the book, movie and play, Babe the pig is brought to the Hoggett farm, where Mrs. Hoggett is planning on cooking the pig for Christmas dinner.

 “That’s just the fate everyone assumes for Babe,” Garcia adds. “They like him, but they know that at some point he is going to be served. Well Babe decides to follow these dogs around and everyone has their own station, but yet he is able to look past that and see that the dogs have a relationship with the sheep that is not very nice but just the way things always are. So he decides to be polite to them and it changes everything in the way the structures are set up, and they are very receptive to that. And there is nothing greater than being able to say that this is a story about going beyond what you think their position is and being nice, to be kind and to be generous and open.”

Garcia, who has worked on several NCTC Drama productions, says the play version will be slightly different from the film version that most in the audience have already seen.

“There are some elements of the film that make their way into the play, but for the most part it’s based on the book,” he said. “So I would like to keep it as close as possible to the original instead of trying to recreate the movie.”

As a director, having a film version that most are familiar with sometimes makes his job more difficult when trying to stay true to the play.

“There are certainly challenges to what everyone perceives of what a piece of art is,” Garcia said. “What I will try to do with the cast is to have them read the original. It’s a very short story so that kind of helps. It’s always good to go back to the original and to be inspired by the film. But certainly it is intimidating because you think that people know ‘Babe’ and they are going to associate it with the film so perhaps I should, so I’m sure there are going to be some moments that are influenced by the film.”

Performances of “Babe” will be Nov. 16-18. On Nov. 16, students from area schools will take a field trip to NCTC to watch performances at 10 a.m., and 1 p.m. Regular performances that are open to the public will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 17 and 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 18.

For more information about NCTC’s “Babe,” call 940-668-3324.