Auditions

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST is often called the greatest comedy of the English stage, this is an absolutely hilarious, satirical farce from the supremely witty pen of Oscar Wilde, which skewers 1895 England’s rigid social conventions, mores and romantic ideals. Conventions, mores and ideals all of which, moreover, have parallels in today’s society.

Two young men about town, Jack and Algernon, lead double lives to evade unwanted social obligations, both assuming the name and fictitious identity of Jack’s disreputable, younger brother Ernest. While doing so, they both fall in love with women who have firmly, resolved to love only someone of the name of Ernest. Their quest for true love and happiness is further complicated by the opposition of the domineering enforcer of social rectitude, Lady Bracknell (Algernon’s aunt and the mother of Jack’s love), who emphatically disapproves of Jack’s origin as an infant found in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria station!

Guaranteed to make you laugh!

NOTE: All roles are open to all (gender/racially neutral). However the Lady Bracknell role will only be open to female presenting actors.

John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, (Age: late 20s-30s) - The play's protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax.

Algernon Moncrieff (Age: late 20s-30s) - The play's secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements.

Gwendolen Fairfax (Age: 20s) - Algernon's cousin and Lady Bracknell's daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society, Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious.

Cecily Cardew (Age: 20s) - Jack's ward. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness.

Lady Bracknell (Age: 50-65) - Algernon's snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen's mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of "eligible young men" and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknell's speeches is unintentional. Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as "a delicate exotic fruit." When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character in the play.

Miss Prism (Age: 40-65) - Cecily's governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. Puritan though she is, Miss Prism's severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer side. Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble.

Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. (Age: 50-65) - The rector on Jack's estate. Both Jack and Algernon approach Dr. Chasuble to request that they be christened "Ernest." Dr. Chasuble entertains secret romantic feelings for Miss Prism. The initials after his name stand for "Doctor of Divinity."

Lane (Age: 30-65) - Algernon's manservant. Lane appears only in Act I.

Merriman (Age: 30-65) - The butler at the Manor House, Jack's estate in the country. Merriman appears only in Acts II and III.

Dates / times arranged with cast.

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is so often touted as "My Favorite Movie!" So be a part of the rarely seen stage version. NOTE: The three lead roles (Andy, Red, and the Warden) will be played by AEA - Actors Equity Union Performers, but there are plenty of fabulous roles for local actors.

Based on the novella by Stephen King, this adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption hearkens to the 1994 critically acclaimed film, bringing audiences to the edge of their seats. Andy Dufresne is convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover and sentenced to life imprisonment at Shawshank prison. While at Shawshank, Andy befriends some of the other inmates, namely a character known as Red. Over time Andy finds a way to live out life with as much relative ease as one can find in prison, leaving a message for all that while the body may be locked away in a cell, the spirit can never be truly imprisoned.

ANDY DUFRESNE: UNION ROLE - 30’s - Described in the book as "thirty years old, a short neat little man with clever hands and gold-rimmed spectacles, his fingernails were always clipped and they were always clean." However, we don't have to prescribe to this exact description. Tim Robbins, who played him in the movie, was nothing like that, and also Kyle Secor, who played him in the Edinburgh production, was a lanky six-foot-five; but I think it is important to keep this description in mind. Andy is a fish out of water and in a place like the Shawshank that really has to come across, so in the end, despite the brutality and injustice he receives, this quiet, very intelligent, softly-spoken man manages to retain his humanity and his dignity, manipulate almost everyone in the Shank, exact his revenge on the warden, and break out by crawling through a sewer shit-pipe five football fields long.

RED (Ellis Boyd Redding): UNION ROLE - 40’s
 - Has been played in the movie and in the stage play by an African-American actor, and this seems to be the preferred option, though original written as Irish. He uses his charms and sales technique that he learned on the outside to become the "guy who could get things." Over the years Red had learned almost every trick in the book to survive the Shank, which is why Andy is drawn to him.

WARDEN STAMMAS (Gregory) : UNION ROLE - 40-50’s - 
Described in the book as "a lean man with a tight wiry gut and the coldest eyes you ever saw. He always had a painful pursed little grin on his face as if he had to have a shit but couldn't quite manage it, a cruel wretched cold-hearted weasel of a man." Gregory Stammas was expelled from college when he was 19 for trying to bribe one of his tutors into giving him a good grade. Stammas is a coward, a bully, and a cheating hypocrite, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

HADLEY (Bryan): 40’s
 - The head prison guard at the Shank. Described in the book as "a tall muscular shambling man with thinning brown hair, he sunburned easily and talked loud all the time and if you didn't move fast enough for him he'd cut you with his nightstick." There is not much subtlety to Hadley. He is in the pay of Stammas and is paid to watch his back at all times. Hadley isn't really aware of it but he is just as institutionalized as the cons on his landings. He would have no idea what else to do if he wasn't a warder at the Shank. It gives him a power that he could never attain anywhere else. He is not the sharpest knife in the box and the rumor is he can't read or write.

BOGS DIAMOND: 35-40’s
 - Described in the book as "a big hulking sister with a brooding expression." I wanted Bogs to be more than a thug, which he is in the book. So I gave him an interest in chess and more of a vocabulary than most cons in the Shank. Bogs is a psychopath but he's not stupid and not without charm and humor. He is feared throughout the prison. He is the first one to suss out Andy, and at one point tells him, "You don't fool me with your fucking Mr. Nice Guy act." He is jealous of Andy, sees him as a challenge and tries his best to break him.

BROOKSIE (Brooks Hatlen): 65-70’s
 - Described in the book as a "tough old con." Brooksie has been incarcerated in the Shank since the 1920s-he’d had a college degree in animal husbandry and worked as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company. Poker was Brooksie's downfall, he lost everything: his house, car, and finally his job. When his wife tried to leave him and take their 11-year-old daughter with her, he shot them both dead in a drunken rage. He became a model prisoner in the Shank and was in charge of the library trolley. This was a status that Brooksie held on to for years, it defined who he was inside. When he was eventually paroled, he was riddled with arthritis, and had spent 30 years in the Shank.

ENTWISTLE (Mert): 35-40’s - Part of the furniture at the Shawshank. He's a "yes-sir, no-sir, three-bags-full sir" Jobsworth. He follows in the scary shadow of his head guard Bryan Hadley, who treats him like a slave. Entwistle does have a heart though, and when he can, goes easy on the cons. They know this, which makes him an easy touch-sometimes he tries to emulate Hadley and play the tough guy but he doesn't convince anyone.

ROOSTER (Roger Coogan): 40-50’s
 - Serving two life sentences for beating his stepson to death with a claw hammer when he threatened to tell his mother about Rooster's sexual advances. He hails from white "trailer trash" in Montgomery, Alabama. Rooster has been a drug addict all his life, and his denial of his attraction to men manifests in sexual violence. The Shank has given him a status that he would never have gained on the outside, and it is also an environment where it is common to have sex with men. Rooster never wants to leave the Shank and glories in the fact that he's Bogs Diamond's "Sister," slang for sexual partner.

RICO (Paul Rodriguez): 35-40
 - Rico is originally from Portuguese stock and grew up in Detroit. His father was a Pastor and his mother a former prostitute who was "saved" by his father's church. Rico is bipolar. He married young and had seven kids. He could never hold down a job and was eventually jailed for three years for robbing a gas station.
When he got out, he tried his best to hold down a job but he was eventually evicted from his home and before the bailiffs arrived he set it on fire and burned his whole family to death. Rico is now a born-again Christian.

TOMMY WILLIAMS: 20-25
 - At 24 years old, Tommy is the youngest con in the Shank and the best looking, which causes him problems with the "Sisters." He was brought up in an orphanage and then fostered from family to family; he never knew his parents. He was addicted to stealing expensive cars and became quite good at it. He fell in love with Shirley, and she married him after he promised her he would never steal another car. They have a two-year-old baby girl, Tommy went back on his word and is now doing three years in the Shank. He is a good kid at heart and is desperate to better himself and prove to Shirley that he will be a good husband and father to their baby. Andy is a father figure to him and is helping him with his studies.

DAWKINS (Jordan Dawkins): 35-40
 - Was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and is serving life for the murder of his two former associates. Bill Neely and Harold Pinker. Neely and Pinker ran a gambling den in Kansas City. Dawkins, who was part of their criminal gang at the time, tried to steal $100,000 of their money. They suspected he was up to something and lay in wait for him in the cellar where they kept the safe. Dawkins shot both of them in a gun battle. He went on the run but was captured several weeks later. Dawkins has a short fuse and can be prone to violence, but could be described as an ordinary decent criminal. He was married three times, twice to the same women. Despite spending many months in the hole for persistent betting, he is still obsessed with gambling and will bet on anything.

PINKY: (any age)
 Really a minor character. Can be of any age, creed, or color, and can come from any corner of the USA. Can double as the prison COOK.

Additional Ensemble roles may be cast to play various inmates (Male, 20+).

Ages given are playable ages, actors need not specifically fit the given age to audition.

Dates / times arranged with cast.