HURT VILLAGE - Equity Principal Auditions
Signature Theatre Company Off-Broadway Expected salary: $544/week minimum.
Artistic Dir: James Houghton
Assoc Artistic Dir: Beth Whitaker
Author: Katori Hall
Dir: Patricia McGregor
GM: Adam Bernstein
Casting: Telsey + Company
1st reh: 1/10/12. Announced run: 2/7 – 3/18/12.
Equity Principal Auditions:
Friday, October 21, 2011 Actors’ Equity Association Audition Center
9:30 AM – 5:30 PM 165 West 46th Street, 2nd Floor
Lunch from 1 - 2. New York City
Please prepare a contemporary monologue, 2 minutes or less.
Please bring a picture & resume, stapled back-to-back.
It’s the end of a long summer in Hurt Village, a housing project in Memphis, TN. A government HOPE Grant means relocation for many of the project’s residents, including Cookie, a 13-year-old girl, along with her mother Crank and great-grandmother Big Mama. As the family prepares to move, Cookie’s father Buggy unexpectedly returns from a tour of duty in Iraq. Ravaged by the war, Buggy struggles to reconnect with his disappearing community and find a place in his daughter’s wounded heart.
Seeking (all roles are available):
Cookie:
African American girl, 13 (casting personnel will consider an actual teen or a very young-looking adult actress). Cookie is a precocious and gifted, flat-chested woman-child, 13 going on 30. Must be able to rap as rapping is an act of defiance -- a way to make space for her voice in the world, and dream her way out of her current circumstances. This is a major acting role.
Crank:
African American woman, mid 20s-30. Hairdresser. Former drug addict. Stubborn, independent, often cranky; her smiles are hard-won and surprising. Crank is Cookie's mother, struggling to prepare her daughter for a seemingly futile future.
Big Mama:
African American woman, mid 50s - mid 60s. The matriarch of the family, and respected, hard-working pillar of the community. With a sharp tongue and an iron fist, she is the ruler of the household. Buggy’s blood grandmother.
Buggy:
African American woman, mid 20s - mid 30s. The one who got out, he is a soldier returning home from the Iraq War with a haunting secret. Muscles popping out of his tight-fitted “wife-beater”, he has rugged model looks. Looking to right wrongs. Powerful, dangerous and deeply vulnerable.
Toyia:
African American woman, late 20s - early 30s. Sexy; works as an exotic dancer at the local “shake junt”. Loud-mouthed, gossipy; often speaks in huge breathless chunks. Declares herself a feminist. Cornbread’s girlfriend.
Cornbread:
Mixed-race or “high yella” man, mid 20s - mid 30s. Small-time drug dealer and FedEx employee. A big dreamer. Sensitive about his lack of “blackness”. Buggy's best friend.
Ebony:
African American male, late teens - mid 20s. The king of the “checkers”. Neighborhood comedian and small-time gangster whose careful adherence to the “G-code” belies a deeper insecurity to belong. Longs to be a “kang” like Tony C.
Skillet:
African American male, late teens - mid 20s. Socially inept boy; his slow speech makes him appear dumb. Yet underneath his scars – both emotional and physical – is an intelligent, sensitive and vulnerable soul who has surprising nerve.
Tony C.:
African American man, late 30s - late 40s. Terrifying and charming. An original gangster, he is the “kang” of the Doughboys, and controls the crack houses in Hurt Village. Fighting to hold on to his kingdom and the “G” crown.
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