GOLDEN BOY - Lakewood Theatre Company Non Equity Auditions

Lakewood Theatre Company will be having open auditions for the Clifford Odets drama Golden Boy on SATURDAY, SEPT. 12 and SUNDAY, SEPT. 13, 2015.Call
503-635-3901 to reserve an audition slot.

Golden Boy is directed by Vladimir Ilnitzky.

The director is seeking seven actors: 1 woman (age 25-35) and 6 men (ages 20-60s). Performers of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are encouraged to audition. All roles receive remuneration. For a breakdown of roles, please
click here.

Audition Location: Lakewood Theatre Company at Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S. State Street in Lake Oswego.

Materials Needed: Please bring a resume, a current head shot, and prepare a 1-2 minute prepared monologue. Auditions may also consist of readings from the script. Please be prepared to stay 30+ minutes if the director requests you to read with others. Callbacks, if needed, will be at the director's discretion.

Performance Schedule: Golden Boy opens January 8, 2016 and continues throughFebruary 14, 2016. Performances are Thurs. - Sat. at 7:30 PM, some Sundays at7:00 PM (Jan 10, 17,24), some Sunday matinees at 2:00 PM (Jan 17, 31 & Feb 7, 14) and two Wednesday performances (Jan 20 & Feb 10) at 7:30 PM. Lakewood Theatre Company features an intimate 220-seat theatre located at Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S. State Street in Lake Oswego.

About the play: Clifford Odets' timeless drama, Golden Boy, tells the story of Joe Bonaparte, a young Italian New Yorker in the late 1930s who pursues the American dream of fame and fortune. Joe, a violin prodigy, is lured into the lucrative world of prizefighting and loses everything he holds dear.

Plot: Joe is a moody young Italian with cockeyed notions. At heart a musician - he has a real talent for the violin - he longs to be top man in some other field. So he goes into the prizefighting racket and becomes surprisingly good at it. In each fight he becomes more and more brutish and finally in a big match he kills his opponent. With both hands broken and his spirit crushed, money and fame mean nothing to him. Not even Lorna, the girl who once gave him courage to face defeat, can lift him out of his despair.

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About Lakewood Theatre Company

63 Years of Live Theatre: Founded as a not-for-profit organization in 1952, Lakewood Theatre Company is a theatre dedicated to the study and presentation of drama in all its forms; the training and development of actors; and the creation, maintenance, and operation of a theatre in which to present plays and other forms of entertainment. Lakewood Theatre Company is the oldest continually operated, not-for-profit theatre company in the Portland Metropolitan area. It annually provides more than 400 theatre artists the opportunity to learn and display their craft and attracts more than 40,000 people to its shows.

- 62nd Season -

Productions in the 2014-15 season are underwritten, in part, by

The Regional Arts & Culture Council and the Work for Art Program

The Oregon Arts Commission

The National Endowment for the Arts

Media Sponsor: The Oregonian, Powering OregonLive

Background info:

Clifford Odets was born to Jewish immigrant parents in Philadelphia, PA, on July 18, 1906. He was raised in New York City, but dropped out of school at 17 to become an actor. He worked in small repertory companies throughout the 1920s before becoming one of the original members of the New York City-based, avant-garde, left-wing ensemble Group Theatre, founded by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and method-acting guru Lee Strasberg. The group, now considered the most influential American theater troupe, was committed to radical revolutions in theater; they would focus on, and possibly affect, pressing social issues of the day while ridding their original productions of the artificiality that had consumed Broadway. They also shunned celebrity and made their productions true collaborations, following the views espoused in their plays.

Golden Boy, produced in 1937, became his and Group Theatre's biggest success. It turned out they would need it, as the ensemble was hemorrhaging money and decided to take on Hollywood actors as a last-ditch resort to attract audiences. The production helped launch the careers of Frances Farmer, Lee J. Cobb, Howard Da Silva, Karl Malden, and Elia Kazan (who acted the role of gangster Eddie Fuseli). The 1939 film version featured William Holden in the title role, with Cobb (who had created the small role of Mr. Carp) as his father. Only thirteen years later, the play had a major Broadway revival, with a cast that included John Garfield, Cobb, Jack Klugman (as Garfield's brother, Frank), and Jack Warden (in the bit role of Mickey). In 1964, Golden Boy was turned into a musical by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, with Sammy Davis, Jr. in the lead. Odets' rhythmic, emphatic way with words inspired many later dramatists, among them Rod Serling, while his moral themes anticipated those of Arthur Miller.

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