[Capdist-auditions] Equity & Non-Equity auditions "The Importance of Being Earnest"

[Shauna Kanter, VOICETheatre]

Produced by Voice Theatre
 THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
 by Oscar Wilde




CONTRACT:

Equity: Special Appearance Contract, Non-Equity Stipend: $1,200. Accommodation and travel provided for all actors who live more than 50 miles away.

 

Auditions by appointment only. Sides will be sent via email.

 

DATES:

KINGSTON, NY CASTING: Bethany Hall, 272 Wall St. Kingston - 3/2 & 3/9

NYC CASTING, Pearl Studios: 500 8th Ave, 3rd floor - 2/28 - 3/1

 

DAYTIME Rehearsals: June 10 - July 10, 2024

Performances: July 11 – July 28, 2024.

Thursday - Saturday @ 7:30pm with 3 Sunday matinees @ 2pm + one extra Sat. matinee @ 2pm on July 27th.                                                           

Rehearsal and performances take place in Uptown Kingston, at Bethany Hall, 272 Wall St., Kingston, NY. Rehearsals will take place during the day.

 

Production will be set in the sixties, in London and Hertfordshire, UK.

 

Submit for appointment:

Email picture/resumé to RRhodesDevey at voicetheatre.org Put in subject: “EARNEST AUDITIONS”

 

PERSONNEL:

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Shauna Kanter
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Paul Bloom

COMPANY ADMINISTRATOR: Rachel Rhodes-Devey

DIRECTOR: Shauna Kanter

LIGHTING DESIGNER: Wheeler Moon

COSTUME DESIGNER: Charlie Barnett III

SET DESIGNER: TBA

SOUND DESIGNER: TBA

SM: TBA

ASM: TBA

 

AVAILABLE ROLES:

Gwendolen Fairfax (25-30) English, upper class. Accent required. Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and like her mother, can be pretentious. She has led a very privileged, sheltered life She hasn’t done a day’s work in her life, however she does have an open heart and she is given to flights of romance. Gwendolen thinks she is a model and arbiter of high fashion and society. We are looking for actors who can play the circumstances and are interested in physical expression as well as text. We are not interested in actors solely playing a style. This production is set in 1968 and those times in London have somewhat evaded the conservative Gwendolen. Gwendolen is Algernon’s cousin and Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest and says she will not marry a man without that name.

 

Cecily Cardew (18-23) English, upper class. Accent required. Cecily is a very smart, very sheltered, and a champagne hippie living on a large country estate. She will be extremely wealthy when she comes of age. She can appear virtuous but can also be somewhat calculating. She has naïve ideas about romance coupled with a large imagination. She lives in a world of romance and flowers and hates her schoolbooks. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest. We are looking for actors who can play the circumstances and are interested in physical expression as well as text. We are not interested in actors solely playing a style. This production is set in 1968 and Cecily is a creature of her time with a few pre-Raphaelite influences thrown in.

Cecily has fallen in love with Jack’s brother, Ernest (Algernon in the city), and through her imagination, she has invented an elaborate romance and courtship between her and Earnest. Cecily is the granddaughter of the man who found and adopted Jack when Jack was a baby.

Lady Bracknell (45-65) English, upper class. Accent required. Lady Bracknell is a snobbish, controlling, domineering, know it all. She thinks she is the absolute authority on everything and everybody. Her pronouncements are a keen window into the sheltered life and ignorance of the British upper class.  Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She is an authoritarian and absurdly quotable, but she does love her daughter, Gwendolen. We are looking for actors who can play the circumstances and are interested in physical expression as well as text. We are not interested in actors solely playing a style. This production is set in 1968 and those times in London have completely evaded Lady Bracknell who is still living in the 50’s proudly wearing her Channel suits. Bracknell is Algernon’s aunt.

 

Miss Prism (50-68) English, middle class. Accent required. Cecily’s governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. She is a rigid, old-fashioned teacher but she also entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble, the local reverend. A bit of a puritan. She is easily shaken, easily tossed off her plinth, and really has no center.

 

Jack Worthing (25-35) English, upper class. Accent required. Jack Worthing is an intelligent, very well educated, wealthy and seemingly responsible and respectable young man who enjoys leading a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a large country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. He enjoys intellectual jousting and has a highly developed sense of romance. We are looking for actors who can play the circumstances and are interested in physical expression as well as text. We are not interested in actors solely playing a style. This production is set in 1968 and Jack is a creature of his time.

 

As a baby, Jack was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by a man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax.

Algernon Moncrieff (20-30) English, upper class. Accent required. Algernon is charming, witty, rebellious, and always up for a good time. He can be selfish, but his wit always wins the day. He too, is given to romance and flights of fancy. He is impulsive yet extremely smart. We are looking for actors who can play the circumstances and are interested in physical expression as well as text. We are not interested in actors solely playing a style. This production is set in 1968 and Algernon like his friend Ernest is a creature of his time.

He has invented a fictional friend, “Bunbury,” an invalid whose frequent sudden relapses allow Algernon to wriggle out of unpleasant or dull social obligations. He is the nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest.

Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. (45-65) English, middle class. Accent required. A country rector in Hertfordshire, UK. Pedantic, out of touch with his flock. Not a very effective reverend. Not too experienced in matters between the sexes. Very educated, but not learned. He is a Doctor of Divinity.

Voice Theatre is committed to diversity and encourages all its employers to engage in a policy of equal employment opportunity designed to promote a positive model of inclusion. As such, we encourage performers of all ethnicities, gender identities, and ages, as well as performers with disabilities, to submit.

SYNOPSIS:

Please go to: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/earnest/summary/ for in depth summary.

VOICE THEATRE BRIEF HISTORY:



Started in Paris in 1988 with initial funding from the French Government, Voice Theatre moved to New York City in 1989. Since then, we have produced more than 40 full-scale productions, from original plays such as "Birds on a Wire" (four stars at the Edinburgh Festival), to American classics, Off-Broadway shows, Spring Reading Series, 10-Minute Play Festivals, and many more activities in the United States, Germany, France, Britain and the Middle East. Since 2003, we have led free, in-school workshops in New York City and Upstate, NY. We also offer adult classes and summer youth workshops. In 2014 Voice Theatre renovated the historic Byrdcliffe Theater in Woodstock, NY. Our home is now Bethany Hall in Kingston, NY.

 

Voice Theatre’s first production in Paris was “Family Cycles”, a theatre piece for 30 actors. The following year, at La MAMA in New York City, Voice Theatre produced "Pushing Through" (University of Nebraska Press), a music theatre piece performed by Palestinian and Israeli women.

 

Off-Broadway productions; “Retzach”, 59E59 Theatres, “Our Country’s Good”, CSV Cultural Center, “The Laramie Project” at the Barrow Group Theater. Featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” and the New York Times, London Times, Daily Telegraph, and The Washington Post, among many others.

 





Shauna Kanter 
Artistic Director, Voice Theatre (office) 845 679 0154 (cell) 917 494 6273
http://www.voicetheatre.orgFacebook.com/Voicetheatre.org
Giving voice to extraordinary theatre
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