AUDITION NOTICE
(Non-union, non-paying.
We do not cast full equity or ACTRA members.)
THE GLASS MENAGERIE
by Tennessee Williams
Show dates: September 6 to 28, 2019
Director: Victoria Shepherd
Producers: Julie Rush, Diane Kuipers
AUDITIONS will be held at the Village Playhouse, 2190E Bloor St. West (around the corner from Runnymede subway station) at the following dates and times:
- Saturday, June 22, 2019: 10:00am to 5:00 pm
- Sunday, June 23, 2019: 12:00pm to 5:00pm
- Monday, June 24, 2019: 7:00pm to 10:00pm
- Callbacks (if necessary) will be on Wednesday, June 26, 2019: 7:00pm
REHEARSALS: will be held at the Village Playhouse. We will start full rehearsals in early July. Rehearsals will be Tuesdays and Thursdays 7-10 pm, and Sundays 1-5 pm. Tech Weekend is Sunday September 1 (the Labour Day weekend) and every night of tech week beginning Monday, September 2.
PLAY SYNOPSIS: Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor (or, as she puts it, a “gentleman caller”) for Laura, her daughter, whose crippling shyness has led her to drop out of both high school and a subsequent secretarial course, and who spends much of her time polishing and arranging her collection of little glass animals. Pressured by his mother to help find a caller for Laura, her brother Tom invites Jim, an acquaintance from work, home for dinner. And so the play unfolds.
For more about the play, click HERE.
CHARACTERS (2 men; 2 women):
* (ages given are character ages, not actor’s ages)
- Amanda Wingfield – mid/late 50s. Her Mississippi accent has not left her. She is a great beauty, the quintessential Southern belle. She had a magical youth full of doting parents and many beaux. However, reality and time have not been kind to Amanda. The husband she adored abandoned her to the humiliation of single parenthood and eking out a living with her limited skill set. She desperately wants her children to have the life she craves, and it is this desperation that overwhelms them, and her.
- Tom Wingfield – mid/late 20s. His accent is much more subtle than Amanda’s, but traces exist. He is the unwilling “man of the house”; a poet working at a factory to support his family. Tom temporarily escapes to the movies and permanently escapes to the merchant marines. The play is his memory. He adores and accepts his sister and is dutiful to and frustrated by his mother.
- Laura Wingfield – mid/late 20s; older than Tom (and older than a single woman ought to be). A more subtle accent than Amanda’s but more pronounced than Tom’s, given her terror of the outside world. Laura has struggled with ill health and is self-conscious about her limp. Like her favourite member of the titular Glass Menagerie, Laura is fragile and ill-suited for the real world.
- Jim O’Connor – High school star athlete, ambitious, confident and comfortable in himself. He embraces life and the future with passion and excitement.
PREPARATION: Please ensure that you have read the play. Please prepare a contemporary dramatic monologue (not from the play). Accent not required. A redirect of the monologue will likely occur. You may be asked to read/play your monologue with accent.
Cold readings/accent will be reserved for call-backs, if they are held.
A script is available upon request from the audition coordinator and may be available at the Toronto Reference Library.
TO BOOK AN AUDITION: Please email a copy of your headshot and resume to villageplayersauditions@gmail.com with your preferred date, time, interested role(s), and contact information. Please also bring a hardcopy of your resume and headshot (photocopy is fine) to your audition.
“If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you’re given a free chance to practice your craft.”
~ Philip Seymour Hoffman on auditioning
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