BERNARDA'S DAUGHTERS - Equity video submissions The New Group | New York, NY
Notice: Submission
Off Broadway
$1061 weekly minimum (Category CC)
Equity actors for roles in BERNARDA'S DAUGHTERS, a collaboration with National Black Theatre (See breakdown).
All stage managerial positions have been filled.
Please prepare a contemporary monologue, no more than 2 minutes in length. Videos should be shot in landscape (horizontally) in a well-lit (not backlit) space. State your name, height, and piece and show a full length shot of your body at the top of your recording then cut to your monologue shot from the chest up. Subject line should be formatted as follows: NAME - ROLE. Please submit your headshot, resume and audition video in a non downloadable format (private YouTube link, Vimeo, etc.).
Deadline: 12/15/2022
bernardasauditions@thenewgroup.org ,
Written by Diane Exavier
Director: Dominique Rider
Casting Director: Destiny Lilly CSA
The New Group:
Artistic Director: Scott Elliott
Associate Artistic Director: Ian Morgan (Viewing submissions)
Artistic Line Producer: Adrian Alea (Viewing submissions)
National Black Theatre:
Executive Artistic Director: Jonathan McCrory Creative Producing Manager: Maya Davis
1st Rehearsal: April 3, 2023
Tech: April 25, 2023
1st Preview: May 2, 2023
Opening: May 21, 2023
Closing: June 18, 2023
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 submit.
LOUISE - eldest (after Louise Glück) Age 35. Born in Haiti, but moved to Brooklyn around 1-2 yrs old. Has a different biological mother. Father remarried soon after her mother’s death, but has always known Bernarda as mom. This difference doesn’t really ever come up except in extreme conflict. Quintessential oldest sister. Loudest voice in the room. Business-minded. Hard-boned. The only sister who speaks Creole fluently. Dating Matthew, a white guy she’s known since college, but is not from her world. Her name relates to the poems of Louise Glück, in particular, A Fantasy, a pragmatic documenting of grief processes (i.e., what actually happens before, during, and after the funeral). Freedom to Louise is financial stability, owning something: land, a house, in order to secure a familial foundation.
HARRIET- second oldest (after Trumbull Stickney, son of Harriet Trumbull Stickney) Age 33. As the remaining sisters, born in Brooklyn. Sad/hopeless romantic. Loves soap operas, Jane Austen novels, sappy romance. Bernarda and her husband’s first child born in the States. A do-gooder, mommy’s favorite. Always does what she asks. Follows Louise’s direction. Has a secret crush (that mostly everyone, but definitely Louise knows about) on Louise’s boyfriend. What attracts her most to him is how devoted he is to Louise. She would never act on it, but longs for someone to dote on her in that way. Had fibroids surgery less than a year ago. Physically healing has only added to her melancholy. Her only “play” or “rehearsal” at “love” was an affair she was having with a man named Richard a few years ago. Her name relates to Harriet Trumbull Stickney, mother of 19th century poet Trumbull Stickney who wrote many love odes and decadent poems about desire. Harriet was the descendant of colonial governor Jonathan Trumbull. Freedom to Harriet is unbridled romantic love and fantasy, being free enough to feel everything about love.
MARYSE (MAR) [MAR pronounced like bar] - middle (after Mary Ruefle) Age 29. One half of the middle girls. Pretty easy going. Loves to gossip. Good natured and generally doesn’t take sides, which makes her easy to confide in. Has a mostly non-judgmental eye on everything. Stays out of drama. Used to be out in the streets: parties, hookups, fun drugs and drinking. As she approaches 30, has really slowed down, no doubt an effect of being in the house. Her name relates to poet Mary Ruefle and her poem, “Snow,” a determined, yet meandering ode to sex and the desire to stop everything to be with a lover for a moment. Freedom to Maryse is to indulge in her body’s carnal desires with total joy, pleasure, and wonder.
ADELVA (ADELA) - second youngest (after Erosmène Delva) Age 27. Other half of the middle girls. Also good natured and gets along with everyone. Has made a concerted effort to venture out into the world and out of the house in a much different way than her sisters. She’s gone away for college; and has recently rented an apartment in the same building (or maybe near it) where her parents first rented after moving to Brooklyn. What Adela imagines are big steps forward for her own independence are looked at as giant steps back in the eyes of her family. Adela feels the strain of gentrification in the neighborhood, well aware of the price she is literally paying to have a life of her own that is not stuck in the time of the house. She wants to figure out who she is in her own time and space. Her name relates to Erosmène Delva, a Haitian woman interviewed in Colin Dayan’s Haiti, History, and the Gods, who talks about intimate relationships based on exchange in a rural practice called plasaj (literally: placing). Freedom to Adela is feeling grounded in space, body, and time without the weight of gender, class, or geography.
MAGDALENA (LENA) - youngest (after Magdelene called Lena) Age 22. The baby. The least existentially “buzzing.” Not really pressed by anything, especially time. Not so much whiny as she is fully self-justified in her casual complaints. Is not so much concerned with some imagined life out of the house as she is with being left to her own devices. No one takes her seriously. She is slowly completing a bachelor’s degree. Lena doesn’t seem to be interested in dating, career building, homeowning (aside from HGTV marathons), or any “life moves” in particular. Lena’s name relates to Madgelene from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, the underestimated sister who by the end of the book tells off her brother Milkman for everything he’s done their entire lives. Like Magdelene, Lena has always been paying attention, even if no one thinks she is formidable. Freedom to Lena is being unbothered and unaggressed by patriarchal/gendered forces in her life and the world at large.
FLORENCE DELVA - grandmother (after Florence Miller) Age who knows? (probably late 70s, early 80s). The secret blueprint. Bernarda’s hold on the house (even in absentia) is in large part an incredibly strong reaction against her own mother. In reaction to Florence Delva’s own overbearing influence on Bernarda’s life, Bernarda overcorrected in the opposite direction, looking for freedom in her marriage. Florence now lives in the basement, between realms of human and creature, living and dead— which makes her unpredictable and illegible in the sisters’ eyes: “Grandma grandma-ing.” While the sisters think Grandma is “losing it,” she is absolutely clear in what she sees and hears and still has so much to teach this generation of women in her family, which Adela realizes and digs into. Florence’s name is related to Florence Miller, widow of Arthur Miller Jr, a Crown Heights resident of Caribbean descent who was killed by police in the 1970s. Freedom to Florence is being able to move between the worlds of humans and creatures and the living and the dead while making sound.
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