ARMS AND THE MAN Equity Principal Actors - Gingold Theatrical Group Auditions

ARMS AND THE MAN - NYC EPA Gingold Theatrical Group | New York, NY

Notice: Audition Call Type: EPA

AUDITION DATE

Friday, July 28, 2023

11:00 AM - 7:00 PM (E)

Lunch 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

CONTRACT

Off Broadway

$810 weekly minimum (Cat. 3) + Pension and Health.

SEEKING

Equity actors for principal roles in ARMS AND THE MAN (See breakdown).

Note for all actors: We recognize that characters are written on the binary (use she/her pronouns) and invite gender non confirming, genderqueer, transgender, and non-binary actors to submit for the roles they most identify with. We seek to cast expansively and intentionally with

consideration of race/ethnicity, gender, body type and ability.

All stage managerial positions have been filled for this production.

PREPARATION

Please prepare one of the monologues in the breakdown that suits the role you'd like to be considered for. Please bring your headshot and resume.

BREAKDOWN

LOCATION

Ripley-Grier Studios (939)

939 8th Ave

New York, NY 10019

Holding room Studio 3D / Holding room will open at 10:00AM

PERSONNEL

Expected to attend:

David Staller, Director and Artistic Director of GINGOLD

OTHER DATES

1st rehearsal: 09/12/23

1st performance: 10/17/23

Close: 11/18/23

OTHER

gingoldgroup.org

Actors wishing to attend the EPA can read/familiarize themselves with the play here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3618/3618-h/3618-h.htm

EPA Procedures are in effect for this audition. An Equity Monitor will be provided.

Equity’s contracts prohibit discrimination. Equity 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, Equity encourages performers of all ethnicities, gender identities, and ages, as well as performers with disabilities, to attend every audition.

Always bring your Equity Membership card to auditions.

ARMS AND THE MAN

SEEKING:

RAINA PETKOFF (she/her, 20s, any ethnicity) American accent. She is quick-witted, educated, a challenging mind, determined, headstrong. She is besotted with her war-hero fiancée, but her world is turned upside down when her bedroom becomes the hiding place for a hunted soldier with a weakness for chocolate. She has lived an entitled life, believing completely in the fantasy-like scenario presented to her, prepared to fiercely defend the precepts upon which her world has been built. In the course of the play, she realizes that facing the world without illusion and refusing to allow anyone to dictate who she is or how she’ll live is how she wants to build her future.

BLUNTSCHLI (he/him, 20s-40s, any ethnicity) American accent. He is witty, insightful, highly educated, wryly amused by life’s absurdities. Eager to figure out what life means for himself. He has left his wealthy Swiss family home to experience life on his own terms. When we meet him, he’s a mercenary soldier. Running for his life, he climbs through the bedroom window of a young woman, Raina. She boldly agrees to hide him from the advancing enemy army and they subsequently challenge each other in a spirited exchange of ideas. In the course of the play, he realizes that facing himself without illusion has helped him realize that connecting to another human must be part of his life’s journey. He and Raina ultimately agree to forge a life together.

CATHERINE PETKOFF (she/her, 40s-60s, any ethnicity) ROLE IS ON OFFER. American accent. She fully embodies the unaware nouveau-riche mentality of more is more. Married young and not for love, she tries to live a more romantic existence through her daughter, Raina. She has created a regimented world of illusion for Raina and, as that world begins to unravel, she desperately tries to figure out how to face a future without artifice. She is never less than fully and elaborately dressed, coiffed, and accessorized wearing as much jewelry as possible at all times. She imagines herself to be very grand, indeed.

MAJOR PAUL PETKOFF (he/him, 40s-60s, any ethnicity) ROLE IS ON OFFER. American accent. He has lived his life as a military leader and, in his world, he has reached all of his professional and financial goals. He seems generally confused by the world but is determined to enjoy life. Though wealthy in Bulgaria, is a somewhat bumbling and inept man who, despite his rank, doesn’t seem to be good at or interested in dealing with military affairs. Though he is immensely proud of his library (which consists of about a dozen books) we get the sense that he is not particularly well-read. He is deeply fond of his daughter, and accepts her relationship with Bluntschli at the end of the play.

SERGIUS (he/him, 30s-40s, any ethnicity) ROLE IS ON OFFER. American accent. He is the vainglorious hero of the war, engaged to Raina, is convinced that he is the center of the universe. He is the embodiment of the entitled, wealthy, alpha-male, sexist man. Although he is the hero of the Battle of Slivnitza. Sergius, by his own and many others’ admission, has no military skill. In fact, aside from always looking his best, he has no practical skills at all. He sees himself as the Byronic romantic ideal and simply assumes everyone else will see him this way. He is, quite frankly, not particularly bright. In the course of the play, he begins to realize that he has lived a useless and non-contributive life and realizes he has the opportunity to live a more aware and less-predictable existence.

LOUKA (she/her, 20s, any ethnicity) ROLE IS ON OFFER. American accent. She is bright, extremely ambitious and manipulative. She is a servant in a relatively wealthy household. She is an upwardly mobile young woman who is determined to make a better life for herself. Though those around her insist that her entire life’s trajectory will be to remain in her working-class level, marry, and question nothing, she has a rebellious spirit and questions everything.

NICOLA (he/him, 30s-40s, any ethnicity) American accent. He is the head servant in the Petkoff family and proud of it, though he secretly harbors ambitions to leave service and open his own establishment and become independent. He has always played by the rules, sees everything and says nothing, and is fiercely proud of doing everything extremely well. Doubles, for under five lines, as a dashing Russian Officer.

UNDERSTUDY #1 (she/her, 30s- 40s, any ethnicity) American accent. To cover Raina, Catherine, Louka.

UNDERSTUDY #2 (he/him, 30s-50s, any ethnicity) American accent. To cover Paul, Nicola, Bluntschli, Sergius.

MONOLOGUES:

RAINA AUDITION MONOLOGUE

I am so happy -- so proud! It proves that all our ideas were real after all. I sometimes used to doubt whether they were anything but dreams. And yet -- Well, it came into my head just as Sergius was holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes, that perhaps we only had our heroic ideas because we are so fond of reading Byron and Pushkin, and because we were so delighted with the opera that season in Bucharest. Real life is so seldom like that. Only think, mother, I doubted him: I wondered whether all his heroic qualities might not prove mere imagination when he went into a real battle. I had an uneasy fear that he might cut a poor figure there beside all those clever Russian officers. Yes, I was only a prosaic little coward. Oh, to think that it was all true -- that Sergius is just as splendid and noble as he looks -- that the world is really a glorious world for women who can see its glory and men who can act its romance! What happiness! What unspeakable fulfillment!

BLUNTSCHLI AUDITION MONOLGUE

You never saw a cavalry charge, did you? Well, it’s like slinging a handful of peas against a window pane: first one comes; then two or three close behind him; and then all the rest in a lump. Oh, if only you’d seen the first man in the charge to-day. Ha! He did it like an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up as white as a sheet, and told us they’d sent us the wrong cartridges, and that we couldn’t fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed at the other side of our mouths. And I hadn’t even a revolver cartridge—nothing but chocolate. Of course, they just cut us to bits. And there was Don Quixote flourishing like a drum major, thinking he’d done the cleverest thing ever known, whereas he ought to be court-martialed for it. Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest. He and his regiment simply committed suicide—only the pistol missed fire, that’s all. You don’t happen to have any chocolates here, do you?

CATHERINE AUDITION MONOLOGUE

Raina, come away from the window, you’ll catch your death! Oh, I’ve such news. There has been a battle! A great battle at Slivnitza! A victory! And it was won by Sergius. You can’t guess how splendid it is. A cavalry charge—think of that! He defied the Russian commanders—acted without orders—led a charge on his own responsibility—headed it himself—was the first man to sweep through their guns. Can’t you see it, Raina; our gallant splendid Bulgarians with their swords and eyes flashing, thundering down like an avalanche and scattering the wretched Servian dandies like chaff. And you—you kept Sergius waiting a year before you would be betrothed to him. Oh, if you have a drop of Bulgarian blood in your veins, you will worship him when he comes back. Well, I must see that everything is made safe downstairs. Go to bed!

PETKOFF AUDITION MONOLOGUE

I don’t believe in going too far with these modern customs. All this washing can’t be good for the health: it’s not natural. There was an Englishman at Phillipopolis who used to wet himself all over with cold water every morning when he got up. Disgusting! It all comes from the English: their climate makes them so dirty that they have to be perpetually washing themselves. Look at my father: he never had a bath in his life; and he lived to be ninety-eight, the healthiest man in Bulgaria. I don’t mind a good wash once a week to keep up my position; but once a day is carrying the thing to a ridiculous extreme. But I can assure you I took care to let them know that we had A Library! And I’ll tell you something I’ve learnt, too. Civilized people don’t hang out their washing to dry where visitors can see it; so you’d better have all those sheets put somewhere else.

LOUKA AUDITION MONOLOGUE

How easy it is to talk! Men never seem to me to grow up: they all have schoolboy’s ideas. You don’t know what true courage is. Look at me! how much am I allowed to have my own will? I have to get your room ready for you—to sweep and dust, to fetch and carry. How could that degrade me if it did not degrade you to have it done for you? But if I were Empress of Russia, above everyone in the world, then you would see—though according to you I could show no courage at all. I would marry the man I loved, which no other queen in Europe has the courage to do. If I loved you, though you would be as far beneath me as I am beneath you, I would dare to be the equal of my inferior. Would you dare as much if you loved me? No: if you felt the beginnings of love for me you would not let it grow. You dare not: you would marry a rich man’s daughter because you would be afraid of what other people would say of you.

NICOLA AUDITION MONOLOGUE

Be warned in time, Louka: mend your manners. I know the mistress. She is so grand that she never dreams that any servant could dare to be disrespectful to her; but if she once suspects that you are defying her, out you go. If you quarrel with the family, I never can marry you. It’s the same as if you

quarrelled with me! You don’t know the power such high people have over the like of you and me when we try to rise out of our poverty against them. Look at me, ten years in their service. Do you think I know no secrets? I know things about the mistress that she wouldn’t have the master know for a thousand levas. So, you take my advice, and be respectful; and make the mistress feel that no matter what you know or don’t know, they can depend on you to hold your tongue and serve the family faithfully. That’s what they like; and that’s how you’ll make most out of them. I know!

SERGIUS AUDITION MONOLOGUE

How can you think to ask if I’m sorry. I am never sorry! And how can you ask if I am a brave men? Yes, of course, I am a brave man. But--my heart jumped like a woman’s at the first shot. But in the charge I found that I was brave! Yes: that at least is real about me. Well, they all slashed and cursed and yelled like heroes. The courage to rage and kill is cheap. I have an English bull terrier who has as much of that sort of courage as the whole Bulgarian nation, and the whole Russian nation at its back. But he lets my groom thrash him, all the same. That’s your soldier all over! No, Louka, your poor men can cut throats; but they are afraid of their officers; they put up with insults and blows; they stand by and see one another punished like children and help to do it when they are ordered. Oh, give me the man who will defy to the death any power on earth or in heaven that sets itself up against his own will and conscience: he alone is the brave man.