[Capdist-auditions] Casting for The Triangle Factory Fire Project at SLCA - June 27

[Sand Lake Center for the Arts]

CASTING AND ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING FOR A STAGED READING OF:

THE TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE PROJECT

By Christopher Piehler and Scott Alan Evans

Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

June 27th, 2011, 7 pm – 10 pm, Sand Lake Center for the Arts, Circle Theater Players

Directed by Deborah Dorman     <mailto:deborahdorm at gmail.com> deborahdorm at gmail.com

Performance to be held on Saturday, September 17th, 2011

Rehearsals will begin at the end of July, one or two per week, no weekends until Sept.10

Three rehearsals during performance week.

Cast needed:  5 to 13 men and 4 to 12 women:  Will cast up to four roles per person, of varied ages (17-60’s)

Ideally, 18 people playing 33 roles.   This is not a formal audition, but there will be readings from the script.

Excellent lighting person needed, as well as producer, stage manager/props, assistant director, sound, costumes (very basic), set decorator (very basic) : production roles can be doubled, except for lighting and sound.  Students with experience are welcome.

Also seeking underwriting (logical would be unions, insurance companies, fire departments)

If you cannot attend on the 27th, and would like to be involved, please send the director an e-mail.

 

This year is the 100th anniversary of this tragic fire that occurred in New York City in 1911.

Joshua Freeman, in The Nation on NPR describes the event:

“On March 25, 1911, a fire that broke out in a bin holding scraps of fabric at the Triangle Waist Company, just down the block from New York City's Washington Square Park, quickly spread, fed by cotton garments, tissue paper and wooden fixtures. Though the building that housed the clothing manufacturer was modern and advertised as fireproof, the cramped layout of the factory, a locked exit door, a flimsy fire escape that soon crumpled and inadequate fire department equipment brought a staggering loss of life. Within a half-hour, 146 workers had died, mostly young Jewish and Italian women, nearly half still in their teens. Two were only 14. More than a third of the victims jumped or fell from upper-story windows trying to escape the flames.

Triangle commands our notice in part because of the specifics of the disaster. There is something particularly horrifying about being trapped in a fire and plummeting through the air to escape it (so much so that ninety years later, on 9/11, newspapers and television generally refrained from showing images of people jumping from the World Trade Center). That so many of the victims were young and female added a layer of poignancy, as we commonly associate youth, especially young girls, with innocence, making their deaths seem even more undeserved than those of older victims of mining explosions and industrial accidents. And the Triangle Fire took place in the media capital of the country, receiving massive press coverage, including harrowing photographs difficult to forget.

But if the horror of death, of young life snuffed out, figures centrally in the Triangle story, particularly as relayed in poetry, fiction and young people's literature, the story looms large for another reason: it fulfills a deeply held belief, or at least a yearning to believe, that good can come out of suffering, that death does not have to be in vain. "Out of the smoke and the flame," not only "downward dashed the girls," as an Episcopal minister wrote at the time, but also came a host of government reforms, union advances and a political approach that at least for a while eliminated many of the worst horrors associated with industrialization.”

 

The play uses headlines, a reporter, union organizers, and the workers and owners of the factory.  The first act is a very dramatic account of the event, and sounds much like the stories from 9/11.  The second act focuses on the trial of the owners of the factory.  There is little “action” involved, which lends itself to a staged reading.  Actors will be welcome to memorize as much or as little as they wish, although certainly “acting” is better without total reliance on a script.  The show will be blocked, costumed and lit.  The rehearsal schedule and scripts will be available on June 27th.

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