New Line Seeks Cast For PASSING STRANGE

Auditions for New Line Theatre's production of the St. Louis premiere of the rock musical PASSING STRANGE, will be held on two successive Monday nights, June 13 and 20, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. at the Washington University South Campus, 6501 Clayton Road (formerly CBC High School), just east of Big Bend, in the second floor theatre. This is not on the Washington University main campus. Performers need to come to only one of the dates. The show will run for twelve performances over four weeks, Sept. 22-Oct. 15, 2011.

For more details about the show, visit New Line's Passing Strange webpage at http://www.newlinetheatre.com/strangepage.html. The show has been filmed (by Spike Lee!) and is available on DVD.

New Line is looking for a cast of seven African-American actors, four men and three women. We will not cast anyone under 17. We are looking for intelligent singing actors who are willing to take risks onstage. Performers are asked to bring a prepared song from a musical, preferably in rock or pop style, with printed piano music for our pianist (no tapes and no a cappella, please). There will not be a dance audition. Performers may also be asked to sing from the score.

The role of the narrator has been cast. All other roles will be cast through the auditions.

New Line's 21st season opens in September with this funny, powerful, emotional, all-black Broadway musical about a young man searching for meaning and authenticity in our contemporary world. Conceived and written by singer-songwriter and performance artist Stew and his collaborator Heidi Rodewald (who were just here in St. Louis recently with their band The Negro Problem), loaded with soulful lyrics and overflowing with passion, this daring, often hilarious new musical takes us from Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Berlin and beyond, on a journey towards personal and artistic authenticity, across boundaries of place, identity and theatrical convention.

A popular performer at Joe's Pub in New York, Stew was commissioned by The Public Theater to develop this quirky tale of a young bohemian who charts a course for "The Real" through sex, drugs and rock and roll. The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score, and it won the Tony for Best Book of a Musical.

NEW AUDITION POLICY: If you have performed with New Line Theatre during the last eighteen months, you don't have to audition. Instead you just have to contact artistic director Scott Miller at info@NewLineTheatre.com before the last night of auditions to tell him that you want to be considered. On the other hand, if you want to be considered for a role that's very different from what you've done for New Line before, then you are more than welcome to audition and show us how perfect you are for that role.

Rehearsals will begin in late July, on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 10:00 p.m., plus every night the week the show opens. Rehearsals are at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Hills. Performances are at the Washington University South Campus Theatre, 6501 Clayton Road. Performers will share a guaranteed 20% of box office receipts. Call 314-773-6526 or email info@NewLineTheatre.com for more information.

No appointments are necessary. All performers should arrive for the audition before 7:00 p.m. New Line is a non-union professional theatre company and is always very eager to find multi-racial casts.

To read New Line's Diversity Statement, go to http://www.newlinetheatre.com/diversity.html

To learn more about New Line, go to http://www.newlinetheatre.com/contact.html

ABOUT NEW LINE THEATRE

New Line Theatre, "The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre," was created in 1991, at the vanguard of a new wave of nonprofit musical theatre being born across the country during the early 1990s, offering an alternative to the commercial musical theatre of New York and Broadway tours. New Line was created to involve the people of the St. Louis region in the creation and exploration of provocative, alternative, politically and socially relevant works of musical theatre - daring, muscular, intelligent theatre about politics, race, violence, drugs, sexuality, religion, art, obscenity, the media, and other contemporary issues.

New Line has given birth to several world premiere musicals over the years and has brought back to life many shows that did not do well in their original New York productions. Altogether, New Line has produced 60 musicals and 5 concerts of theatre songs since 1991. New Line Theatre was recently given its own entry in the latest edition of the prestigious Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. New Line receives funding from the Regional Arts Commission, the Fox Performing Arts Charitable Foundation, and the Missouri Arts Council.

The last show of New Line's current season, BARE, runs June 2-25, Thursday through Saturday evenings, at 8:00 p.m., at the Washington University South Campus Theatre (formerly CBC High School), 6501 Clayton Road, just east of Big Bend. Tickets are on sale now through Metrotix outlets, including the Fox Theatre box office and the Edison Theatre box office at Washington University, or by calling 314-534-1111. BARE contains mature content and language. For other information, visit New Line Theatre's full-service website at www.newlinetheatre.com. All programs are subject to change.

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