AUDITIONS FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAY BY TOM JACOBSON, DIRECTED BY CLYDE SIMON

Roles for two 30ish, white males

The Twentieth Century Way by Tom Jacobson is a two-person play and a real tour de force for two good actors. The two characters are themselves actors, Brown and Warren, and the play is based on the true story of two actual actors who hired themselves out in 1914 to the Long Beach, CA police department to entrap gay men in private clubs and public restrooms for “oral sodomy.” But it’s a fictionalized, very theatrical version, starting with the two actors Brown and Warren waiting backstage before an audition for a movie. It turns out to be a long wait and to pass the time, Warren challenges Brown to an improvisation – which becomes the story of entering the hidden world of restrooms and private parties (mostly the latter) and the interactions with the men they ensnare.

Over the course of the “improvisation” they each play 6 – 10 roles, dropping in and out of character (i.e. back to Brown and Warren) in rapid succession. The play is as much about the nature of acting (both onstage and off) as it is about the relationship between the two men and sexual identity, institutionalized corruption and the conscience of civil servants carrying out questionable duties. (Also been described as “hilariously funny and simultaneously deadly serious”)

PLEASE CONTACT CLYDE SIMON AT CSIMON@CONVERGENCE-CONTINUUM.ORG FOR FURTHER DETAILS AND FOR SETTING UP AUDITION TIMES.

Another of Jacobson's plays, Ouroboros, had been produced at con-con before. His plays have a very shrewd, intricate, layered, meta-theatrical approach to bending and blending the real and unreal. Challenging, and really good stuff!