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AUDITIONS, AUDITIONS, AUDITIONS!!

The Theater Department announces the following opportunities for student actors:

---Auditions tomorrow eve (Friday) for a role in the Theater Major's Culminating  
show this Spring, RUSSIAN ROMANCE (a comedy by Murphy Guyer)  One male role  
available.

-- Auditions on Monday eve for our VOICES production directed by Baron Kelly,  
THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III by Carlyle Brown. Available Roles:  2  
African-American males, 2 African-American females, and 1 white male

-- Don't forget to attend the Department's SPRING SHOWCASE on Monday at 6:30 in  
the Bentley to hear about MORE opportunities to get involved in Theater this term!


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RUSSIAN ROMANCE
A Comedy by Murphy Guyer

Get involved with the Senior Theater Majors' Culminating Performance!
Work with a professional dialect coach, a professional playwright, native Russian  
speakers, Russian professors, Theater Dept faculty along with the senior theater  
majors!
Directed by Veronica Haakonsen '12

We are looking for one male actor to fill the part of "Michael Nasjagai"
Auditions TOMORROW (Friday, March 30th)
6:00-8:00 pm
Bentley Theater
Sign up for a time slot in Shakespeare Alley in the HOP

Please address all questions to Veronica Haakonsen with the subject line "Russian  
Romance"

**Audition sides are available in HOP 111 and will be available at the audition  
as well**
**If you wish to read a copy of the full script of if you would like to audition,  
but have a time conflict, blitz <[log in to unmask]>**

No experience necessary to audition!

This is a fully-produced production in the Moore Theater. Performance dates are  
May 25th & 26th at 8pm and May 27th at 2pm.

THE PLAY:
Russian Romance is a comedy of mistaken identities taking place in the year after  
the fall of the Soviet Union. Ivan Verminitsky has recently received acclaim for  
the publication of his book The Red Ladder. On a book tour in America, Ivan meets  
(and drinks copious amounts of vodka with) Russian Literature professor Brad Bradley.  
When Ivan refuses to go with his wife to schmooze with his rich relatives in Saratoga  
Springs the beautiful, crude, and wily Svetlana coerces Brad Bradley to pose as  
her husband and come with her to extort his rich family into getting them green  
cards. Hilarity ensues as these two enter into the privileged and dysfunctional  
world of these New York socialites which has also been invaded by the mysterious  
Michael who knows some dark secrets from Ivan's past. American privilege clashes  
with Russian memories of the tumultuous finals years of USSR police state, rife  
with censorship and brutality.

THE PART:
The part we are casting is the part of Michael, the mysterious stranger, "a young  
man in a plain black suit" who possesses "a brooding determination." Michael was  
born in Russian but raised in America after his mother fled the Soviet Union.  
His father, destined to follow them a few days later, was intercepted before he  
could do so by the secret police and died in prison. Michael is haunted by his  
father's death and is determined to find the man who betrayed him.

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Announcing Auditions for our VOICES production this Spring:

THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III
Guest Directed by Baron Kelly 
(BaronKelly.com)
 
A fully-produced production to be presented in the Bentley on May 18-20

AUDITION DATE: MONDAY April 2 from 7:30 PM ­ 10 PM in the BENTLEY (after the  
SPRING SHOWCASE)
Sign up sheet is posted in Shakespeare Alley in the HOP
**Go to the Theater Department's website for more audition information and a link  
to the script***

Questions?  Please blitz Maggie Devine-Sullivan ([log in to unmask])

Full Length Drama  ~ Available Roles: 2 African-American males,
2 African-American females, and 1 white male
 
In 1821, forty years before Lincoln ended slavery, and fifty years before black  
Americans earned the right to vote, the first black theatrical group in the country,  
the African Company of New York, was putting on plays in a downtown Manhattan  
theatre to which both black and white audiences flocked. Yet the drama of this  
progressive group reached further than their stage....
 
"...the personal and the historical, the comic and the angry propels THE AFRICAN  
COMPANY...theatrical and social concerns entwine with powerful resonances to today...Mr.  
Brown is a writer with a distinct voice and a powerful story to tell."
--Washington Post.
 
"What makes THE AFRICAN COMPANY...so effective is the way in which the playwright  
not only suggests the New York of 1821, and the particular circumstances of "freed"  
blacks in that era, but even...suggests their angers, concerns and tensions."
--NY Post.
 
THE STORY:
Earning their bread with satires of white high society, the African Company was  
an African-American theatre company in NYC in the earlypart of the 19th century.  
They came to be known for debunking the sacred status of the English classics  
(which many politically and racially motivated critics said were beyond the scope  
of black actors). Inside the Company's ranks, similar debates raged about whether  
to mimic the English tongue, or to provide a more lively interpretation of white  
theater by acknowledging the vibrancy of the black experience (in the words of  
the African Company's manager: "Say ya Shakespeare like ya want"). Shakespeare  
is the chosen cultural battleground in this inventive retelling of a little known,  
yet pivotal event in the African Company's history. Knowing they are alwaysunder  
prejudicial pressures from white society, and facing their own internal shakeups,  
the African Company battles for time, space, audiences and togetherness. Their  
competition, Stephen Price, an uptown, Broadway-type impresario, is producing  
Richard III at the same time as the African Company's production is in full swing.  
Price has promised a famous English actor overflowing audiences if he plays Richard  
in Price's theatre. Fearing the competition of the African Company's production,  
which is garnering large white audiences,Price manipulates the law and closes  
down the theatre. The Company rebounds and finds a space right next door to Price's  
theatre. At the rise of curtain of the next performance, Price causes the arrest  
of some of the actors in a trumped-up riot charge. The play ends with the Company,  
surviving, its integrity intact, and about to launch an equally progressive new  
chapter in the American theatre: They'll soon be producing the first black plays  
written by black Americans of their day.