THE CHERRY ORCHARD Equity Principal Auditions - Theater Emory Auditions

THE CHERRY ORCHARD

- Equity Principal Auditions by APPOINTMENT in Atlanta

Theater Emory Atlanta GA SPT (approval/salary level pending. 2011-12 weekly minimum: $490).

Artistic Dir: Janice Akers

Author: Anton Chekhov

Adaptation / Dir: Tim McDonough

Managing Dir: Rosalind Staib

Casting Coordinator: Robert Schultz

1st reh: 2/26/13. Runs 4/4-14.

Equity Principal Auditions by APPOINTMENT:

Saturday, August 18, 2012 Theater Emory Administrative Offices

10 AM - 6 PM Emory University Campus, Rich Building

Lunch from 1 – 2. 1602 Fishburne Drive, Room 205

Atlanta, GA 30322

Parking in Fishburne Parking Deck.

For an appointment, call 404/712-9118 (M-F, 9-4) beginning Monday, 8/6. Equity Members without appointments will be seen throughout the audition day, as time permits.

Sides will be provided at the audition, and available at the theater and online in advance. Please bring a photo and resume, stapled back-to-back.

Callbacks, if needed, will be held on Monday, 8/20.

Full title: GRIM, GRIMMER, GRIMMEST: TALES OF A PRECARIOUS NATURE.

Shocking, forbidden and magical stories of the Brothers Grimm and tales from other cultures travel to places of disequilibrium and transformation.

Seeking (three or four Equity contracts are available; listed roles are available unless otherwise specified):

Note: No housing is available to out-of-area performers.

Casting note: The production will not be traditional in certain respects. The stage will be defined by imagistic elements rather than by period furniture. The performance style, while grounded in believable characters and relationships, will have an expanded expressive vocabulary, particularly with respect to movement and use of space. The rehearsal process will also explore the play’s rapid alternation of comic and serious energies, with every mood ephemeral and soon undercut by a change in energy.

Semyonov-Pishchik:

50s-60s. Has high blood pressure – he’s had two strokes already, he says – and Chekhov often has him speak in short, breathless phrases. At the end of the play he seems quite death-haunted. He has borrowed money everywhere to pay the interest on his mortgage and thinks only about money, as “a hungry dog thinks about meat.” Chekhov has him fall asleep right in the middle of a sentence and immediately wake up – he is that sort of broadly conceived comic character, with several scenes of physical shtick – but his last scene ends with a heartfelt, moving farewell. His talk is a hodgepodge of old-world courtesy, newspaper tidbits, stuff he’s heard from his daughter, and pleas for a loan. He is given to expressions of irrational optimism grounded in his experience of somehow always pulling through – as he does, once again, at the end of the play. Seems to live in a world of unreality and wonder, like a great child. He is characteristically astonished, his mouth wide open. A “pishchik” is a squeaking sound or chirp, and a small whistle used to make the squeaking voice of a traditional Russian puppet character, a kind of Punch. “Semyonov-Pishchik” combines an ancient aristocratic name with a silly one, something like De Monfort-Tweet, or Fitzwarren-Chirp.

Gayev:

51. Has three uncontrollable habits: playing imaginary billiards shots, sucking on boiled candies, and making sentimental speeches. His name suggests a Russian word for buffoon, but he has moments of insight, and he seems sadly aware of his absurdity. He is a dreamer at heart and quite childlike – or perhaps a grown-up child, with a child’s capacity for wonder, sensitivity and sorrow. Like his sister, he reacts not rationally, but physically and instinctively; and his sensitive nose repeatedly reacts to smells he finds offensive. He thinks of himself as a man of liberal convictions and a friend of the peasants, but he is a privileged and pampered landowner to the bone, a prude and a bit of a snob, and he is just as out of touch about economic and social realities as his sister. In respect to practical matters, he is hapless as a child, and it is ironic that at play’s end he is working in a bank.

Lopakhin:

Mid - late 40s. Rich study in contradictions. A peasant who has risen to become a wealthy merchant, he is suave in certain respects and socially gauche in others, sure of himself and self-critical, soft and hard, humble and overbearing. When he announces that he has bought the estate, he is both embarrassed and triumphant, remorseful and ruthless, sympathetic and pitiless, proud and bitterly in touch with the humiliations of his childhood. His relationship with Ranevskaya is equally conflicted: he has idolized her since he was a boy, but he is also resentful of her and infuriated by her hapless refusal to accept his advice and take action. Trofimov, the student radical who opposes the capitalist future that Lopakhin embodies, tells him: “Don't wave your arms so much! You should break this habit of waving your arms and flapping your hands.” But Trofimov also can’t help but like him: “You’ve got fine, sensitive fingers like an artist. And you’ve got a fine, sensitive soul.” Chekhov made clear that Lopakhin is not to be played as a money-grubbing boor: “Lopakhin is a merchant but he is a decent man, intelligent, not petty or a trickster…” In one of Chekhov’s greatest scenes, Lopakhin fails to propose marriage; why is a complicated question, to be answered (if in fact it can be) in rehearsal.

Firs:

CAST. Auditioning performers will be considered as possible (emergency) replacements, should any become necessary. 87 years old. Head servant of the Ranevsky household. In the script, he is dressed in tails, a white waistcoat, and wears white gloves. He is hard of hearing – perhaps selectively at times – and his non-sequiturs often undercut the tone of what has just been said or done. His health is failing. He has never accepted the emancipation of the serfs, which he refers to as “the disaster.” He is preoccupied with his serving responsibilities, and is particularly obsessive about making sure that his 51-year-old master, whom he speaks to as if he were a careless boy, is properly dressed. His characteristic putdown of others is – in this translation – to refer to them dismissively as “good for nothing”. His last scene seems a flash forward to Samuel Beckett.

Ranevskaya:

CAST. Auditioning performers will be considered as possible (emergency) replacements, should any become necessary. Mid 40s - early 50s. Has just returned from five years in Paris. She fled there, leaving behind her 12-year-old daughter, after the death of her son, a traumatic loss that she sees as punishment for a love affair – which turned out ruinously and plunged her into a despair from which her family rescued her. Subject to wild swings of mood, she reacts to events instinctively and passionately, not rationally, and is skilled at ignoring what she finds unpleasant. She is also preoccupied with her losses and her “sins.” She seems incapable of coming to terms with the impending sale of her estate, and everyone laments how she throws money about. But if she is scatterbrained about money, she is clearer than anyone else about sex, and at times she uses her sexuality as a tool – her first name means “love.” She is something of a performer, and plays her part for a largely adoring audience. Like many others in the play, she is comically childlike at times, self-centered and irresponsible. At play’s end, for all the sadness of leaving her ancestral home for good, she is happy about the prospect of returning to Paris and her scoundrel lover, with a wad of cash that will support her for an indefinite while. She is both a comic and a serious character.

EPA for another Theater Emory production (GRIM, GRIMMER GRIMMEST) will be held on the same day, in the same building, in a separate room (Room 210). See separate notice.

www.theater.emory.edu/proauditions