[NEohioPAL] Final AUDITION Notice: August Wilson's JITNEY at Beck Center

[Scott Spence]

Audition Info for….



“*JITNEY*” by August Wilson



Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood is pleased to announce Open Call
auditions for August Wilson's "*Jitney*" directed by Jimmie Woody.



Auditions will be by appointment only, and will take place at Beck Center.
Interested

performers should schedule their appointments by calling the Beck Center
Box Office

during normal business hours at *216-521-2540*.



Open Call auditions will occur *Tuesday, January 16th and Wednesday,
January 17th* with slots beginning at 6PM each of those days.  Callbacks
will occur the weekend of January 17th/18th TBD.



Director Jimmie Woodie requests one brief (90 seconds or less) contemporary
monologue. If auditioner does not have a prepared piece readily available,
a monologue or cutting from the play will be provided at the time of the
audition.



"*Jitney*" opens on April 5th and closes May 5th. Performances are Fri/Sat
evenings and Sunday afternoons only. Rehearsals will begin circa late
February.



It is anticipated that 2 AEA contracts (Special Appearance) will be
offered. All other non Equity performers 18 and over receive a stipend for
their participation.



*Show/Roles: *



Regular taxi cabs will not travel to the Pittsburgh Hill District of the
1970s, and so the African-American residents turn to jitneys—unofficial,
unlicensed taxi cabs—that operate in the community. This play portrays the
lives of the jitney drivers at the station owned by Jim Becker.



*Cast*

·         Jim Becker, the well-respected manager of the jitney station. In
his 60s.

·         Doub, a driver, cautious and slow going, a Korean War veteranIn
his 50’s

·         Fielding, a driver, an alcoholic, formerly a tailor who clothed Billy
Eckstine <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Eckstine> and Count Basie
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Basie>. In his 50's/60's

·         Turnbo, a driver, notorious for being a gossip. In his late
30's/40's

·         Youngblood (Darnell Williams), a driver. Recently returned from
Vietnam, working several jobs to provide for his family. In his late 20s.

·         Rena, Youngblood's girlfriend and the mother of his young son,
Jesse. In her late 20’s

·         Shealy, a flamboyant bookie
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookie> who
uses the jitney station as the basis of his operations. In his 30/40's

·         Philmore, a local hotel doorman and a frequent jitney passenger.
In his 40's

·         Booster (Clarence Becker), Becker's son, who has just completed a
20-year prison sentence for murder. In his late 30s.        {More}

*Extended SYNOPSIS*

*Jitney* is the eighth play in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. It takes
place in The Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1977, in a gypsy cab station,
during Pittsburgh’s period of so-called “urban renewal.” As the city tries
to shut down businesses, including the cab station, to make way for new
buildings, we meet five gypsy cab drivers struggling to survive. Wilson’s
ensemble piece puts human faces to the process of gentrification seizing
the United States, telling of the specific human struggles of Becker,
Youngblood, Turnbo, Fielding and Doub as they cling to a nostalgic past,
while reaching for an uncertain future. Becker, the owner of the cab
station, descends into an emotional spiral when his son, Booster, comes out
of jail, where he served time after murdering his ex-girlfriend who falsely
accused him of raping her. Youngblood has saved up enough money to buy a
house for himself, his girlfriend, and their two-year-old son, Jesse, but
even this grand gesture fails to redeem him in the eyes of his girlfriend,
Rena, who refuses to forgive him for his unfaithful past. Turnbo is an
older man who is distressed with the manners of the young people today,
especially those of fellow cab driver, Youngblood, and is obsessed with
comparing their actions to those he remembers from his happier past.
Recovering alcoholic Fielding, who used to be a tailor, is waging an
ongoing battle against his alcoholism, even as his continued drunkenness
threatens his job. Doub is a Korean War Veteran, and a longtime jitney
driver, who equates his time at war where ‘they never paid him no mind’ to
the experiences he and his black colleagues have with white men today. Over
the course of the play, all five of these men and the characters that come
in and out of their lives pose questions about how we can heal past wounds
and leap into a less-than-certain future.

*About The Director:*

*Jimmie Woody (DIRECTOR)* Some of his most recent directorial credits
include: ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, ‘Clybourne Park’ by Bruce
Norris and ‘Raisin in the Sun’ by Lorrainne Hansberry (Weathervane
Playhouse), ‘The America Play’ by Suzan-Lori Parks (University of Akron),
‘The Split Show’, ‘How Blood Go’, and ’The Bomb’ by Lisa Langford
(Convergence Continuum & Cleveland Public Theater), ‘Glass Menagerie’ by
Tennessee Williams, ‘For Colored Girls…’ by Ntosake Shange, ‘Jitney’, ’Two
Trains Running’ & ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ by August Wilson (Cuyahoga
Community College (Tri-C Metro)), ‘365 days/365 Plays’ by Suzan-Lori Parks
(Cleveland Public Theater), ‘MLK Day’ by Jimmie Woody, ‘The Colored
Museum’, by George C. Wolfe & ‘When the Chickens Came Home to Roost’ by
Laurence Holder (Karamu House), ‘Seedfolks’ by Paul Fleischman (Tri-C
JazzFest Cleveland, Cleveland Public Library and the Cleveland Botanical
Garden), ‘Underground Griots’ by Natalie Parker & Keith Josef Adkins
(Cleveland Public Theatre, The National Black Theater Festival and Here
Café NYC), ’Wilberforce’ & ’Hollis Mugley’s Only Wish’ by Keith Josef
Adkins and (Cleveland Public Theatre, The National Black Theater Festival &
New York Hip Hop Festival), ‘The Baachae’ written by Wole Soyinka
(Cleveland Public Theatre and Columbia University), ‘Song’ by Daniel Gray
Kontar and ’InCogNegro’ by Lisa Langford (Cleveland Public Theatre). Jimmie
received his M.F.A. in acting from Columbia University. He is a 2012
Creative Workforce Fellow and is currently a Resident Teaching Artist of
Theater and Digital Media at Center for Art-Inspired Learning and he’s an
acting professor at Cuyahoga Community College.
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