AUDITIONS

CASTING NOTICE

 

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans is seeking non-union performers to compose an ensemble for its Season 8 Productions: Kingdom of Earth, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Penny Dreadfuls: The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame Le Monde. Please read the complete notice for dates and audition instructions.

 

Performers of all ethnicities, races, backgrounds, exceptionalities, abilities, experience levels, gender identities, and forms of expression are encouraged to submit.

 

 

Auditions will be BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. No phone calls or emails, please. Slots are limited.

 

 

Kingdom of Earth (in collaboration with The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival) will rehearse January 15-30 and February 15-March 7, 2024 and will run March 8-24. All rehearsals and performances will be held at Loyola University New Orleans. The rehearsal process will reasonably accommodate for Mardi Gas activities. Directed by Augustin J Correro.

 

A Streetcar Named Desire will rehearse May 15-July 11, 2024 with breaks for Juneteenth, New Orleans Pride, and Independence Day. Streetcar will run from July 12-Mid-August. Directed by Augustin J Correro.

 

Penny Dreadfuls: The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame Le Monde will be paired with two other one-act plays and will rehearse August 4-September 5, 2024, running September 6-28. All rehearsals and performances will be held at Loyola University New Orleans. Please see special notice about this production below. Directed by Augustin J Correro.

 

 

Local hires only. 

 

Pay for all roles: $800 stipend paid at the completion of the contract + 2 complimentary tickets.

 

Performances and rehearsals will be held in the Lower Depths Theatre at Loyola University New Orleans on St. Charles Avenue uptown. Reliable transportation will be needed for prompt arrival at all rehearsals.

 

TWTC rehearses using an artist wellness informed model with 4 rehearsals a week until opening week. Therefore excessive rehearsal conflicts cannot be accommodated during the rehearsal period.

 

CALLBACKS for select roles will be held on June 8th.

 

 

INSTRUCTIONS:

 

Please sign up for ONE audition slot below. Please prepare a 60-90 second monologue appropriate for the role based on the breakdown. Be prepared to stay for 30 minutes to be read against other performers or due to delays. 

 

A resource of Tennessee Williams monologues will be made available at www.twtheatrenola.com/season8selections if you would like to use one of the monologues there. Using one of these monologues is not required.

 

Callbacks will be held June 8th.

 

If you have to cancel for any reason, please remove your time slot booking. If you do not appear without having cancelled (no cancel/no show), or cancel on the same day as auditions (same day drop), you will not be permitted to audition for future TWTC productions.

 

Auditions will be held by appointment only on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans May 21-23. Please sign up for ONE audition slot only and make necessary changes and corrections through the sign up website. 

 

Auditions will take place on the 6th floor of Monroe Hall (not to be confused with the Monroe Hall dorm on Tulane's campus) located along Calhoun St between Marquette Pl and Loyola Ave in acting studios 602 and 603.

 

Please arrive in time to fill out an audition form.

 

Bring a hard copy of your acting resume headshot or recent photograph.

 

 

BREAKDOWN OF ROLES:

 

KINGDOM OF EARTH

Kingdom of Earth deals with racial prejudice. To honor the material, we ask that only actors descended from more than one racial group audition for Chicken.

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Lot - 20s/early 30s. White. Dying of tuberculosis, Lot has returned to his family home to stake one final claim over his illegitimate half-brother Chicken, who lives on the estate. He has brought his brand-new wife Myrtle, whom he despises already as a pawn in their twisted game. Obsessed with his mother.

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Chicken - Mid-20s/30s. Mixed race. Embittered by years of being thrown literal and figurative scraps, Chicken is as much a part of the estate as the studs in the walls. He can be affable if treated kindly, but never fully trusts. Must be of a physical frame that could be perceived as dangerous.

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Myrtle - Late 20s/early-to-mid 30s. White. A chorus girl retired by tragedy and absent of any real talent, Myrtle is nevertheless charming in her way. She talks a mile a minute and fears silence. She met Lot on a game show, where they were immediately wed. She’s in over her head and is completely oblivious.

 

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

Blanche DuBois - 29 (turns 30 during the play). A fading belle worn thin from a parade of traumatic horrors at her home in the Mississippi Delta. She has lost almost everything, maintaining only her charm, her looks, and her familial bond with her younger sister Stella. She contains multitudes and might have been one of the most explosive of the world’s poets, artists, or innovators, but her Mississippi upbringing and family responsibilities have constricted her to the point of breaking. The passion inside her spills out in volcanic, unpredictable, and unadvisable ways. Deeply disturbed, but excellent at concealing it.

 

Stella DuBois-Kowalski - Mid-to-late 20s. Blanche’s sister who has chosen a less fraught life in New Orleans with Stanley over the cascade of repression and trauma of the Mississippi Delta. She is willing to forgive Stanley and New Orleans for their bad features, since they make her happy more often than they hurt her. Of the months eclipsed in the play, she is pregnant for all but one of them.

 

Stanley Kowalski - Mid-to-late 20s. Fiery-tempered and extremely passionate, he is as much a man’s man as he is a hurt boy and even a beast at times. Stanley and Blanche have a magnetic attraction from the outset. Stanley also loves and yearns for Stella—her affection as much as her approval and her support. He is a complex character, not a brute.

 

Mitch - Mid-to-late 20s. Stanley’s coworker. Naive, concerned for his mother, and willing to see the best in anyone. 

 

Eunice - 30s-50s. A stay-at-home landlady with plenty of moxie, but who knows how to tend to her own business. 

 

Steve - 30s-50s. A working man and avid bowler. And drinker. Lives upstairs of the Kowalskis.

 

Paper Boy - Should be able to read as a teen. Arrives at the Kowalski home to collect, gets more than he was expecting from Blanche. Innocent.

 

Ensemble Members - Many ages. Will have roles with lines such as neighbors, poker players, doctor, nurse, etc. Will also play dual roles as a part of a greater framing device. Dynamic skills welcome. Please list on your resume.

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PENNY DREADFULS: THE REMARKABLE ROOMING-HOUSE OF MADAME LE MONDE

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Please note this production contains graphic sexual content and some characters engage in simulated fetishization and rape. Auditioners prone to discomfort with material may not wish to be seen for this production.

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Mint - late 20s/30s. A poor wretch renting from Madame Le Monde. He is mysteriously paralyzed from the waist down from a traumatic psychic or emotional episode. He swings from ceiling hooks to get around his attic room. He’s a optimistic masochist by necessity, finding the glass half full even when suffering. Must be something of a wilting flower. British accent.

 

Madame Le Monde - 40s-60s. Pernicious and practical as the world is cruel, the landlady of the rooming-house is a representation of all that is ambivalent in the universe. To her, a crime’s only a crime if you get caught, and an advantage left untaken is a missed opportunity. She is somehow private while also being a burlesque show person. British accent.

 

Hall - Mint’s robust and healthy former classmate. Hall hasn’t a sensitive nerve or notion contained in his person. He has come to visit Mint but seems blissfully unaware of Mint’s paralysis or anything that does not directly affect him. His being parodies the blithely complacent individuals in the world who benefit systemically from the hardships of others. British accent.

 

The Son - Madame Le Monde’s muscular, lumbering spawn. He is equal parts Ubermensch and Cro-Magnon. Vaguely British accent. Strong grunting and physical comedy ability required. Performs simulated acts of violence and sexual violence.

 

Lily - 20s/early 30s. Anxious, expressive. She hears voices. Chain smoker. A living Erté rendering. She smokes and paces because she is so full of life and creativity, but is unable to live authentically in her time and place. Must be able to dance (modern dance preferred). NON-SPEAKING, all dancing. Prepare 60-90 seconds of dance.

 

Ms. Dorothy Simple - 20s/30s. A prim and proper woman from New England who has never had an impure thought…but when the notion of impurity is introduced, her mind will wander. She is cartoonishly strait-laced. She hides her heart and her body behind rows of petunias outside her window.

 

The Young Man with the Size 11 D - 20s/30s. Crusher of petunias, turner of heads. Emissary from “LIFE INCORPORATED”. He has come to Ms. Simple’s shop to convince her of the promise of the world outside her windows, and with seed to sow for heretofore unsniffed flowers. Shoe size 11-D.

 

Some characters may be doubled.

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TO BOOK AN AUDITION:

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https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0e4fa4ae2aa0fcc70-season#/

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Video Auditions 

(Deadline 5/23)

(Must be available for in person if called back on 6/8)

(Include what show/s and role/s your submitting for)

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