[NEohioPAL]Audition: Staged reading: The Conjure-Man Dies

[a.gosselin at csuohio.edu]

The CSU Poetry Center is sponsoring a staged reading of The Conjure-Man
Dies on Tuesday, October 18th, at the CSU Factory Theater.

AUDITIONS for the reading will be held on Wednesday, September 21, 2005,
from 7 to 10PM at the Cleveland Art Theater,  11619-20 Euclid Avenue at the
corner of Euclid and 116th Place, near University Circle.


Cast of Characters:
Dr. John Archer,        pedantic doctor and amateur detective
Detective Perry Dart          New York?s first black detective, Harlem Unit
Bubber Brown:           private investigator
N?Gana Frimbo:          African king and conjure-man
Jinx Jenkins                  Bubber?s partner
Stanley Crouch          undertaker
Martha Crouch           undertaker?s wife
Easeley Jones                 Railroad man, Frimbo's client
Aramintha Snead         church lady, Frimbo's client
Tynes                   finger print expert
Officer Brady
Officer Smalls
Landlady
Landlady?s boyfriend
Narrator


The cast is large [15] and the pay is small [$10.00 plus parking
reimbursement on the night of the performance]?but the rewards will be
great. For one thing, this is the first step in re-introducing a value
piece of American history [The Conjure Man Dies was the first black
detective novel]. Even more, it?s a chance to introduce a work of
literature that student learners of all ages can appreciate. The novel was
written in 1932 and reprinted by the University of Michigan Press in the
early 1990?s. Its growing and continued use in African American Literature
classes at the college level has the potential to influence middle and high
school English Literature curriculum, offering a

The original play was adapted by Rudolph Fisher from his book, The Conjure
Man Dies, and was the second production by the Harlem Unit of the WPA
Federal Theater Project. The play drew the largest audience of the
Project?s theater productions, performing in New York at the Lafayette
Theater in 1936 and in Cleveland at Karamu in 1939.

The script for the Harlem production was based on the first draft of
Fisher?s three-act adaptation, written in 1934, the year of Fisher?s death.
Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen, also writers of the Harlem Renaissance,
completed the script two years later. John Houseman directed the finished
product, a musical mystery in 1936, with Orson Welles as Stage Manager.
This version was recently performed in NY as part of the Langston Hughes
centennial.

The Factory Theater presentation updates the script with an adaptation by
Adrienne Gosselin of the CSU English Department. A Fisher scholar, as well
as creative writer, Gosselin?s script includes more of the novel?s
narrative, expanding Fisher?s original script to five-acts that showcase
Fisher?s talent for light satire and social commentary.

Rudolph Fisher was an incredible African American. Born at the turn of the
century, he received his BA Brown University, majoring in Biology, with a
minor in English. He received his MA from Brown, as well, majoring in
Biology, valedictorian of his class.  As a young man, Paul Robeson was one
of Fisher?s best friends and the two once performed a tour to earn money
for college tuition. [One can easily envision Robeson as the conjure man].
Among other things, Fisher was the second African American to be published
in The Atlantic Monthly [Cleveland writer, Charles Chesnutt, was the first]
and was a contributor to The Nation. Most impressive, perhaps, is that
while Fisher was writing and publishing, he was also studying and/or
practicing research biology. His area of specialization was x-ray
technology and by the time of his death was the head of that department at
a hospital in Jamaica Queens, New York.

This play has a life and spirit of its own: Come and be part of it!