Audition Scenes

I'm directing a new play, and auditions are tonight. The play had a well-received staged reading in New Hampshire a few months ago, but aside from the folks who attended that, nobody has ever seen this thing on stage in any way. And over the last week the playwright heroically rewrote several sections to address some logic issues that had come up, so what people are auditioning for tonight is something nobody has ever auditioned for before.

I spent part of the day printing out excerpts, bits of scenes that will allow us to focus on, say, an actor and actress presenting Jeff and Bridget in a tense romantic/combative scene, without having other people on stage holding scripts and feeling useless. I have a coded master document so I can keep track of my 9 audition scenes, and someone else has promised to bring copies of the standard form the actors will fill out (previous experience, days when you can't rehearse, what you've acted in recently).

By Thursday, with any luck, we will have a cast. Then we will have until opening night, May 1, to put it all together and rock the house.

I'll keep you posted.