Saturday, October 08, 2005

Tucson: Beowulf Alley Holding Auditions for Two Shows


From: Stephen Elton [mailto:selton@beowulfalley.org]
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 5:05 PM
Subject: Beowulf Alley Holding Auditions for Two Shows

Beowulf Alley Theatre

 

            Is holding auditions for:

The Eight Reindeer Monologues By Jeff Goode

December 9th –30th 

(Five Men, Three Women)

 

                                                                                                &

                                                Two One Acts By Christopher Durang:

Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You

 &

The Actors Nightmare

January 20th – Feb. 12th

 (Three Women, Two Men; Doubling)

 

General Auditions for both shows are October 29th from 2p.m. till 6p.m. at Beowulf Alley Theatre

 

Call Backs will be held October 30th from 12p.m. till 3p.m.

 

Auditions will be held at Beowulf Alley Theatre 11 S 6th Ave. 

(6th Ave between Broadway & Congress)

 

Actors should prepare one two-minute comedic monologue.

Actors will be paid a small stipend.

 

To schedule an audition time please Email: Theatre@beowulfalley.org or call 622-4460.

 

Show Information:  The Eight Reindeer Monologues

 

Accusations, rumors and all-out attacks are flying fast and furious around Santa’s toyshop this holiday season. What’s the true story behind Rudolph’s unlikely rise to fame? Does Mrs. Claus have a serious drinking problem? Can St. Nick himself really be guilty of sexual harassment... against one of the reindeer? And with all this going on, how can the spirit of Christmas be saved? Go behind the tinsel and hear the truth about Santa straight from the eight reindeer who know him best. When a doe says “No”, she means “No Way, Sucka!

 

 

 

Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You

 

Sister Mary Ignatius is giving a lecture. She points to drawings of the earth, moon and sun. Then she points to drawings of heaven, hell and purgatory. And also Limbo, where unbaptized babies are sent. She explains, sometimes with impatience, about the Immaculate Conception (“which is NOT to be confused with the virgin birth!”); she tells us what sins send you to hell (“murder, sex outside marriage, high jacking a plane, masturbation”); and she is assisted by her sweet and obedient student, Thomas, age seven. On cue Thomas recites answers to catechism questions and is rewarded with cookies. Sister also takes questions from the audience (“Why is St. Christopher no longer a saint, and did anyone listen to the prayers I prayed to him before they decided he didn’t exist?”), and tells disturbing and mysterious stories of her family background. 

Her lecture is interrupted midway by four ex-students of hers, who have come to put on a beloved Christmas pageant, written by Sister’s favorite student who joined a cloistered nunnery. The pageant is clearly the work of an innocent child’s brain, but sounds slightly off with adults presenting it. And afterward, as Sister chats with her unexpected visitors, her attitude darkens and darkens as she realizes all of these students have fallen away from the church’s teachings – one is an unwed mother, one is gay, one has had abortions. 

 

 

 

The Actors Nightmare

This play was inspired by the well known dream that many people in professional and amateur theatre have, that they go must perform in a play that they have inexplicably never been to rehearsals for, and for which they know neither the lines or the plot.

So in this play George is an accountant who wanders onto an empty stage, not certain where he is or how he got there.  The stage manager informs him he’s the understudy, and must go on in a few minutes.  George doesn’t know his name, doesn’t think he’s an actor (“I think I’m an accountant”), and has no idea what play he’s supposed to do.

He’s pushed onstage dressed as Hamlet, and finds himself opposite a glamorous actress who seemingly is in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. George does his best to guess the lines, and guess appropriate behavior, but then the actress leaves, and suddenly a new actor comes in, spouting Shakespearean verse (from Hamlet).  This is much harder to guess, and after a while George is left alone and must improvise his own Shakespearean soliloquy.

In the closing sections, George finds himself thrust into a Samuel Beckett play (a combination of Waiting for Godot and Endgame), which he has very little knowledge of. And then suddenly he’s Sir Thomas More in the historical drama A Man for All Seasons, facing a beheading for opposing Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boylen – and alarmingly the executioner seems more real than he should. 

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