THE BROKEN HEART Equity Principal Audition - Theatre For a New Audience Auditions
Theatre For a New Audience
LORT
THE BROKEN HEART – Equity Principal Auditions
Theatre For A New Audience (NYC) LORT; $566/week minimum
The Broken Heart by John Ford
Director: Selina Cartmell
1st Rehearsal: 1/2/12. Runs: 2/4 – 3/4/12, at The Duke Theatre
Equity Principal Auditions:
Thursday, June 23, 2011 at the Actors' Equity Audition Center
9:30 AM — 5:30 PM 165 West 46th Street, 2nd Floor
Lunch from 1 - 2. New York, NY. Studio B
Prepare a short classical monologue.
Bring picture and resume, stapled together.
Synopsis: Set in Classical Greece, the play recounts the story of AMYCLAS, King of Laconia, his daughter CALANTHA, and their court. The young Spartan general ITHOCLES, motivated by pride, interferes with his sister PENTHEA’S intended marriage to ORGILUS. ITHOCLES demands that she marry an older and richer nobleman, BASSANES. BASSANES proves to be a tyrannical husband, irrational and jealous, who keeps his wife a prisoner. ORGILUS pretends a journey to Athens but secretly remains in Sparta in disguise. ITHOCLES, victorious in battle, recognizes that he has wronged PENTHEA and ORGILUS, and supports a planned marriage between his friend PROPHILUS and ORGILUS’S sister EUPHRANIA. ITHOCLES himself seeks the hand of CALANTHA, the King's daughter—and she accepts him, instead of her cousin NEARCHUS, a prince of Argos. The unhappy PENTHEA starves herself to death; ORGILUS traps ITHOCLES in a mechanical chair and murders him, just before his planned wedding to CALANTHA. In the closing scene, CALANTHA dances at a prenuptial banquet, and keeps dancing as she is informed of the deaths of her father the King, her friend PENTHEA, and her fiancé ITHOCLES. The dance ended, CALANTHA, now Queen of Sparta, condemns ORGILUS for his murder of ITHOCLES, appoints NEARCHUS her heir and successor...and dies of a broken heart.
Casting Notes:
Actors must be experienced in working on classical texts, which demands searching intelligence and strong emotional instincts. Actors must also have a strong sense of music, dance and rhythm. THE BROKEN HEART has a strong choreographic and abstract pattern and is written almost like a chamber piece of music. It is important that the actors involved are up for embracing this stylized, poetic and
Greek mythic world. Ford’s characters are tragic and melancholic and pine and wither under sorrows
Seeking:
Calantha:
30 – 40. Princess. She is the daughter to King AMYCLAS, heir to the throne and briefly Queen of
Sparta. Calm, measured, courageous, regal, virtuous, stoic and impenetrable, CALANTHA has a fierce strength of mind and self control. She is almost super human especially during one of the most striking episodes of the play where CALANTHA continues to dance while she hears the news of the deaths of her father, her friend PENTHEA and of her betrothed, ITHOCLES. Ultimately she is the ordering principle of the play. Honorable, proud and dignified . She falls in love with ITHOCLES and dies of a broken heart. CALANTHA gracefully controls each scene in which she appears, and her decorum is perfect. Requires an actress with, poise, icy coolness and yet can show the complexity and depth of passions underneath this remote and distant mask
Euphrania/Philema (Double):
20s. Euphrania is daughter of CROTOLON and sister to ORGILUS. Innocent, pure and chaste she has a great love for her brother and the oppressive court to which she dedicates her existence She is a great believer in the Gods and appears fulfilled in her life. Ford nicknames her ‘joy’ and she is allowed to experience happiness and wed PROPHILUS (in contrast to PENTHEA and CALANTHA) her true love and survives. Philema is a loyal and devoted maid of honor to CALANTHA & PENTHEA, she is almost
child-like in her dutiful dependency of the women in the Spartan Court. PHILEMA is a small but integral part in the weave of the play and has a softness, sensitivity and affection towards her mistresses as she will sing all 3 songs throughout the play (Act III sc ii, Act IV, sc iv, Act V, sc iii) and will be part of the final closing dance sequence in Act V.
Orgilus / Aplotes:
late 20s to30s. He is the son of CROTOLON .. ORGILUS has been a man of love and peace until made
angry by the results of ITHOCLES ambition. OGILUS is a proud, tortured man wounded beyond pride or shame and is bitter towards the end. ORGILUS is obsessive, fuelled by his grief and loss of PENTHEA by the injustice of her brother ,ITHOCLES, marrying her to the older BASSANES. ORGILUS' grief is violent, and he is the prime instigator of the revenge storyline. Passionate and intense , he has to have a reasonable singing voice as he sings the bridal song for EUPHRANIA and PROPHILUS in Act III, sc iv. He needs to have an anarchic energy in contrast to ITHOCLES. ORGILUS is a thinker – he is always searching and and trying to find new ways to win his love PENTHEA back. He transforms and disguises himself and becomes the simple scholar APLOTES in Act I Sc iii .The actor needs to be a chameleon, shifting between flashes of brilliance and humor and a dark, twisted energy that is full of revenge, deception, intelligence and cold murderous glee. There is something primitive and earthy, almost childlike about ORGILUS. In the first act ORGILUS is intended to win our sympathy, and the murder he commits is seen as a ‘wild justice’. ORGILUS is a man deranged, nursing his murderous schemes under a cover of smiling affability. But there's no missing his rage and pain either.
Ithocles:
30 – 40. A high-ranking general in the Spartan Army and is referred to as a courageous hero of Sparta (‘death-braving ITHOCLES’). ITHOCLES’S ambition becomes refined into heroism on the battlefield and after that is glorified by love for a great princess (CALANTHA). Dutiful, proud, ambitious and quick-witted ITHCOLES moves through the play with an aristocratic confidence and sense of entitlement. He is a social climber who has used his sister for his own ends by ‘cunning’ and ‘threats’. There are two conflicting natures in ITHOCLES and it is suggested that ORGILUS and ITHOCLES have an unspecified longstanding feud based on possessive sexual jealousy.
Bassanes:
A wealthy nobleman and Courtier. Robust, obsessed, and insanely jealous with an epic, frantic and anxious energy he spies, bullies and manipulates his young wife. He changes from a man of extreme emotions of blind rage to a more inwardly tortured and isolated figure. In the first half of the play he is a mildly comic figure: the jealous husband. In the second half of the play he becomes a model of patience and repents, embarking on a journey of self-reformation. He follows the same path of self-realization and self-discipline as the others, and survives, along with NEARCHUS to serve his new king.
Phulus:
40+. He is BASSANES’S loyal servant. A great physical and comic actor he is satirical and sarcastic, scrawny, odd, shady and thin. He is grotesquely mocked by BASSANES as looking like a ‘son of cat’ and an ‘ill-looking hound’s head’. His life is intricately woven into BASSANES' world Phulus' pretended ignorance hides his great intelligence and realistic assessment of the Court and BASSANES as a cuckold.
Amyclas:
60s +. The regal, elegant old King of Sparta is the living embodiment of the old Spartan Political. He is also a father to CALANTHA. AMYCLAS has a great sense of humor, humanity and humility and yet a darkness of the soul in his instigation of the Spartan war with Messene
Crotolon:
50 – 60. Courtier. He is mostly a peacemaker and yet terrified of ORGILUS threatening the family
name with his plotting to take revenge on ITHOCLES. Loyal and dutiful player in King AMYCLAS Court.
Armostes:
60s. Courtier Old Counselor of State, confidant to King AMYCLAS and uncle to ITHOCLES. CROTOLON and AMOSTES represent the poles of flattery and dissent between which the King should strike the golden mean.
Prophilus /Nearchus (Double):
20 – 30s. Prophilus is a soldier. Loyal, confidant, idealistic and a great friend and supporter to ITHOCLES. He is a true romantic and innocent when it comes to passions of the heart. He is madly in love with ORGILUS’S sister EUPHRANIA. Nearcus is an idealized young Prince of Argos, heir to the throne and suitor for the hand of CALANTHA. He is as good as his word. When he discerns that ITHOCLES is ‘lord ascendant’ of CALANTHA’S devotions, he gracefully withdraws from exercising the pressure of his personal position to win CALANTHA from him. He is an outsider to Sparta but soon adopts the Courtly style of language. He is civilized, sensitive, just and brave. The prince magnanimously yields to his rival in love.
Technicus:
50 – 60. A grave Philosopher, gifted with prophetic powers, he foresees the calamities that befall
Sparta, and helps to interpret the oracles. His wisdom encompasses both public and private spheres of action and he attempts to guide OGILUS through the play by speaking in riddles and philosophies. He is a trusted member of the Court. Like FRIAR BONAVENTURA in TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE he offers philosophical guidance yet ultimately fails to save the lovers tragedy, taking flight to Athens to avoid disaster himself.
The following roles have been CAST.
Penthea : CAST.
Grausis: CAST.
