[NEohioPAL] Auditions for TWAIN'S Comedy "Is He Dead?" are announced by Beck Center

[grumio85 at aol.com]

Beck Center will hold open call auditions for the regional premiere of
Mark Twain's IS HE DEAD?
(Adapted by David Ives)

Open calls (NO appointments necessary) will take place on both Tuesday, Nov. 17th and Wednesday. Nov. 18th from 6PM to 8PM. Actors will be seen in order of arrival, and will have individual appointments with director Matthew Earnest. Auditioning actors should also be prepared, if needed, for a callback session on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 21st.

Performances are Feb. 5th thru Feb. 28th. Rehearsals will begin Jan. 3rd.

Director Matthew Earnest has requested a brief (2 minutes maximum) prepared monologue. A monologue will be provided to read if you do not have anything available to present. The director also requests actors to have 16 bars (or 15-20 seconds) of a song--sung a capella. "Is He Dead?" is NOT a musical!! But the director would like to make it a part of the audition process to hear you sing a snippet.

"Is He Dead?" has opportunites for 11 to 16 actors, depending upon potential doubling. Of the 16 roles, 12 are male and 4 are female. The roles range in age from early 20's thru early 60's. All roles are open except Jean-Francois Millet/Widow Daisy Tillou which has been cast. (Local AEA actor Nick Koesters)

One other AEA contract is available, and all non-Equity actors 18 and over are paid a modest stipend for their participation.

Scripts will be available beginning Tuesday afternoon to be read at Beck Center only.

If you have further questions, you may reply to this e-mail...or call Scott Spence, Beck Center Artistic Director, at 216-521-2540 x15.

~~~Special Note: There will be 3 or 4 weekday student matinees offered. Please only audition if you can take several mornings off of your day jobs, if that applies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Play......


A once-thought lost Mark Twain comedy could be in the running for the best play Tony as "Is He Dead?" opened Sunday to good reviews a mere 109 years after being written. Unlike the Oscars, the Tonys tend to find room in the race for well-received comedies like this one. This buried treasure, discovered in the author's archives and adapted by David Ives, is headlined by the much-praised Norbert Leo Butz in his first Rialto run since winning the Tony two years ago for "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."
As Michael Kuchwara of AP notes, "Farce is the theatrical equivalent of a wind-up toy. It requires some exertion before the mechanics kick in and produce (one hopes) the required laughs. Act 1 marks time, dutifully laying the groundwork for the inspired antics of the play's riotously funny second half." He deftly describes this, "satiric examination of greed in the art world of 1840s Paris - it focuses on real-life painter Jean-Francois Millet, perhaps the best known painter of Twain's day. In Twain's version, a young Millet, played by Butz, is promising but penniless. He surmises monetary rewards won't really kick in until after he's dead. So why not pretend to be on the way out, disappear and collect the money now, posing as his sister. The lady, Millet in disguise, turns heads and causes complications." For Kuchwara, "Butz, done up in drag, is the fireplug who jump-starts the farce, adapted by Ives and directed by Michael Blakemore with a sure ear for language and an even surer eye for physical comedy. Their teamwork is one of the most felicitous collaborations of the season."

About the Director.....



Matthew Earnest  is an American theater director. As Founding Artistic Director of New York City's deep ellum ensemble Earnest created multi-disciplinary performance works from plays, literature, his own original texts and various other sources, and the company toured them internationally from 1995 until they disbanded in 2007. Today Earnest is a freelance director, creating work at many theaters in the US and abroad. He has been an associate artist at English Theatre Berlin (formerly known as Friends of Italian Opera) , since 1999, and at the University of Delaware's Professional Theatre Training Program since 2001. His work has been recently seen in the NE Ohio area at Porthouse and Weathervane, and he is also slated to direct later this season at Cleveland Public Theater.


Awards


"The Cleveland Scene" Best Director and Times Tribute (2007): Peter Pan (Porthouse Theatre, Cuyahoga Falls, OH) 
Raleigh News & Observer Top 10 of 2007: Elizabeth: Almost by Chance a Woman (Still Water Theatre, Raleigh, NC) 
Roe Green Visiting Director, Kent State University, 2008 
The Cleveland Scene Outstanding revival and Times Tribute: Our Town [9] (Porthouse Theatre, Cuyahoga Falls, OH), 2007                                      BIFF Award: Excellence in Ensemble Acting, deep ellum ensemble (The Jilting of Granny Weatherall), NY Fringe Festival, 1997 





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20091109/f8562f6e/attachment-0003.htm>