Auditions

Audition Notice
"Cat On a Hot Tin Roof"
by Tennesee Williams

Audition Dates: 

Sunday, April 6th  (7:00-9:30)
Monday, April 7th  (7:00-9:30)

Director:  Sharon Veselic
Stage Manager: TBA
Set Design:  Dennis Canwright
Light Design:  Ana Petitt
Sound Design:  Wendy Bowman
Costume Design: Amy Schmidt

First Read Thru:  April 12, Location: TBA

Rehearsals:  Monday thru Thursday: 7-10
                  Some Saturday afternoons:  1-5

Performance Dates: 

May 23rd thru June 8th

Friday and Saturday at 8:00
Sunday: 3:00

"Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell of solitary where each is confined for the duration of his
life"……Tennessee Williams

Character Breakdown:

Margaret (Maggie)  30ish, attractive, seductive. The play's cat.
Maggie's loneliness and Brick's refusal to make her his desire, has made her hard, nervous, and bitchy. The woman constantly posing in the mirror, Maggie holds the audiences transfixed. The exhilaration of the play lies in the force of the audience's identification with its gorgeous heroine, a woman desperate in her sense of loneliness, who is made all the more beautiful in her envy, longing, and dispossession.

Brick  30ish, ex football player, the favorite son and mourned lover. Brick embodies an almost archetypal masculinity. At the same time, the Brick before us is also an obviously broken man because of his repressed homosexual desire for his dead friend Skipper.

Mae (Sister Woman)  30-40ish A mean, agitated "monster of fertility" who schemes with her husband Gooper to secure Big Daddy's estate. Mae appears primarily responsible for the burlesques of family love and devotion that she and the children stage before the grandparents.

Big Mama  60ish , Brick's mother, breathless, sincere, earnest, crude, and bedecked in flashy gems, Mama is a woman embarrassingly dedicated to a man who despises her and in feeble denial of her husband's disgust. She considers Brick her "only son".

Big Daddy  60-70ish,  Brick's father.  Affectionately dubbed by Maggie as an old-fashioned "Mississippi redneck," Daddy is a large, brash, and vulgar plantation millionaire who believes he has returned from the grave. Though his coming death has been quickly repressed, in some sense Daddy has confronted its possibility. In returning from "death's country," Daddy would force his son to face his own desire.

Reverend Tooker  40-?   A tactless, opportunistic, and hypocritical guest at Big Daddy's birthday party. As Williams indicates, his role is to embody the lie of conventional morality. Note especially in Act III his off-hand anecdote about the colors of his cheap chasuble fading into each other.

Gooper (Brother Man)  30-40ish  A successful corporate lawyer. Gooper is Daddy's eldest and least favored son.  He deeply resents his parents' love for Brick, viciously relishes in Daddy's illness, and rather ruthlessly plots to secure control of the estate.

Doctor Baugh  40-?  The sober Baugh is Daddy's physician. He delivers Daddy's diagnosis to Big Mama and leaves her with a prescription of morphine.

Lacey  and Sookey:   The plantation servants appear throughout the play. Note Williams's references to "Negro voices." In the birthday scene, they appear laughing at the edges of the stage, functioning to almost ornament the grotesque tableau

Children: 5 total.  Ages 8-?  These children must resemble their parents and be youthful looking.

Women: 4
Men: 6
Children: 5

Director's Notes:

We are producing the original version of this script.  You can find it at this time in:

1.  Tennessee Williams Plays, 1937-1955: The Library of America

2.  The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume 3: New Directions Publishing Corp.

This play will be mounted by everyone associated with the show.  If you are chosen to be an actor, you will also be asked to participate in the set construction and gathering of costumes.  Rehearsal space will be announced at a later date:  we will be rehearsing in different spaces in both Grapevine and Arlington. We will be going with just one intermission, not two.  When reading the script be sure to take notice of the original third Act.  We are not doing the Broadway version, we are staying true to the original script.  All language will remain, which means this is an R Rated Show: PARENTS;  PLEASE READ THE SCRIPT BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO BRING YOUR CHILD TO AUDITIONS.

Audition Readings:

All Actors will be asked to read the following excerpts from the script: From #1: Tennessee Williams Plays, 1937-1955

Margaret (Maggie):
Bottom of page 891 to Mid page 893.

Start:
"Well, sooner or later it's bound to soften you up, it was just
beginning to soften up Skipper when-----I'm sorry, I never could keep my fingers off a sore….

…Get dressed, Brick"

Group reading:  Act III, Sc. 1

Brick:
Page 950-951
Start:  "Great! The greatest!...

Mae:
Group reading:  Act III, Sc. 1

Big Mama:
Group reading:  Act III, Sc. 1

Big Daddy:
Page 928-929
Start: 
 "…We got that clock the summer we wint to Europe, me an' Big Mama on that damn Cook's Tour, never had such an awful time in my life,…

Page 949-942
Start:  "…Concentrate, but you can't because your brain's all soaked with liquor, is that the trouble?

Reverend Tooker:
Group Reading:  Act III, Sc. 1

Gooper:
Group reading:  Act III, Sc. 1

Doctor Baugh:
Group reading:  Act III, Sc. 1

Lacey:
Prepare monologue of your choice.

Sookey:
Prepare monologue of your choice

Maggie/Brick:
Bottom of page 889 to the bottom of 891
Start:

Maggie

  …Y'know what happened to poor little Susie McPheeters?...

Brick/Big Daddy:
Page 959-953
Start:
Big Daddy

  "Are you satisfied?"

Children:  Please prepare a short (30-60 sec) monologue