Student Auditions

Audition information for fall 2012 productions

Auditions for the productions are held at the beginning of each semester. Students are active in all aspects of production - everything from performing to stage-managing to working backstage. Everyone is welcome.

You do not have to be a theater major or minor to audition for productions and freshmen are often cast. If you have an interest in technical theater or stage management, please let us know and we will try to find a way to accommodate your interest.

Auditions will be held Tuesday, Sept. 4, from 5:00-10:00 p.m. in Palmer 202, with call backs on Wed. Sept. 5th, spaces TBD.

Sign-up sheet on the call board outside the theater office, Palmer 203.

Prepare the following: a NO LONGER THAN TWO-MINUTE monologue of heightened text (maybe Shakespeare, Greeks, or any other speech that lifts beyond everyday language), 16 bars of a rap (your own writing or an established song) if you’re auditioning for the Q Brothers project, and 16 bars of a song sung in normal voice.

Faculty notes about the Q Brothers Project: Students who are not cast in the piece will still have opportunities to connect with the Q Brothers and company through class visits and workshops that will be open to everyone.

As this piece is being written during the rehearsal period, production elements will be bare-boned; we will place an emphasis on the language and the performers’ work.

This semester’s two productions are intended to ask a great deal from the student companies. Exploration and creativity, as well as discipline and commitment will be the cornerstones of the work processes, leading to highly dynamic events. Enjoy!

Q Brothers Shakespeare Project:
A Hip Hop Experience
Performance October 4-7, 2012

Info from the Q Brothers and Company:
We will develop a hip hop musical with 10-12 students that we cast from two rounds of auditions. We will work in such a way that the material is created with and/or includes writing from the students. We will also take our own pens to the project outside of “student time” to hone, shape, and direct the piece, with musical construction, lyrical revision, and structural development.

Our ultimate goal is to create a full story with a technical arc, and be a true ensemble piece. We are interested in filtering our stories through a Shakespearean lens, and would like to focus loosely on “Romeo and Juliet”. Our focus will be on language and performance, and the entire piece will be in rhyme, over music.
The first week of rehearsal will be devoted to ensemble work, writing, and skill development in rapping theatrically. We will also use the students’ personal skills, talents, and stories to develop the shape of the piece. The rest of rehearsals (before tech) will be dedicated to putting the project together on its feet, always leaving room for evolution through new writing and ideas.

Sound abstract? Well good, because it is. Abstract with a purpose equals ART. And ART is what we will make.

Four Dead in Ohio:
Antigone at Kent State
Performance November 15-18, 2012

Info from Director David Jaffe:
This project will be a collectively adapted performance based on Sophocles’ Antigone, using the version by Seamus Heaney, Burial At Thebes, as our core text.

I will cast an ensemble of 8-10 students who will approach this core text and the incident at Kent State University in 1970 in which four students, protesting against the War in Vietnam, were shot and killed by the National Guard. Through research into this tragedy, and exploration of the core text, we will create our own chorus sequences, re-configure the text, and define the world in which this story is told. The student ensemble will have a powerful creative hand in the making of this piece. You may see John Filo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by googling “Kent State Photo” and listen to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song, “Ohio,” to gain more perspective on the event.

From my early notes: “Perhaps our version of this Greek tragedy is a group of Kent State students, meeting to share the Antigone story as a way to cleanse themselves, or as a wake, or as a memorial to their fallen friends, who stood up for what they believed in, and died for it. Were shot and killed. Can it be celebratory? Is it a ritual? Can it be not a ‘play?’ this event must be a true thing.”

These are truly open questions, to be answered by the ensemble. We will begin meeting weekly as a company in September, and move into full rehearsal after Fall Weekend.