Audition Information:
Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play intertwines the lives of characters grappling with love, loss, and identity amid the 1980s AIDS crisis. Complexities of human relationships, identity, and faith are confronted against a backdrop of political and social upheaval. Emerging from a mix of raw emotion and the supernatural is a rich portrayal of the pursuit of meaning in a turbulent time.
Please prepare a monologue of your choosing and/or one of the monologues provided from the script. Please familiarize yourself with the plot of the show and subject matter.
Our Production:
In the rehearsal room and text we will be dealing with topics such as spirituality, morality, grief, shame, community, politics, religion, sex, illness, regret, addiction, Ronald Reagan, racism, liberalism, conservatism, community, patriotism, death, gender issues, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS.
The rehearsal process will include a vast amount of table work, dramaturgy, explorative and sometimes challenging conversations, and collaboration. My idea is to present a theatrical experience many people in our community have never had. Bare bones, actors and stage crew on stage for most of the show. is a different type of play, and we will be presenting it as such.
Those unable to attend auditions can send a video submission to the director at the email address above.
Casting Breakdown:
ROY M. COHN / PRIOR 2 -Male, 50-60, Jewish; an influential and successful New York lawyer and powerbroker. Extremely smart, cunning, and tremendously vicious. Roy's disgust and denial of most everything in his life isolates him further the community around him. Closeted Homosexual and full of hate and bile. Dominant, manipulative, bombastic, and terrified. INTIMACY/SENSITIVITY NOTE: This role includes a short physical fight with Joe and uses explicit and derogatory language.
PRIOR WALTER / MAN IN THE PARK –Male, 25-40; Louis' uptight, bourgeois boyfriend, who is living with AIDS. He works as a club designer/caterer but otherwise lives off a trust fund. Extremely charismatic, resilient, witty, but also fragile, intense, and vulnerable. INTIMACY/ SENSITIVITY NOTE: This role includes physical intimacy with Louis.
LOUIS IRONSON –Male, 25-40, Jewish; Prior's boyfriend, works as a word processor for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Brooklyn. Intelligent, idealistic, neurotic, anxious, dealinG with self-loathing and guilt. INTIMACY/SENSITIVITY NOTE: This role includes physical intimacy with Prior and Joe and uses explicit and derogatory language.
JOSEPH PITT / PRIOR 1 / ESKIMO – Male, 25-40, Mormon; Married to Harper, a handsome, Republican lawyer working as the chief clerk for Justice Theodore Wilson of the Federal Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. Grapples with his suppressed homosexuality and religious beliefs. Rigid, yearning, and fractured. INTIMACY/SENSITIVITY NOTE: This role includes physical intimacy with Harper and Louis.
HARPER PITT / MARTIN HELLER - Female, 25-40, Joe's wife; agoraphobic with an addiction to Valium; perpetually fearful. To cope with her failing marriage, hallucinates and invents imaginary characters to escape her troubles. Imaginative in her isolation, she balances humor and despair. INTIMACY/SENSITIVITY NOTE: This role includes intimacy with Joe as well as Valium induced hallucinations.
HANNAH PITT / RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ / HENRY / ETHEL ROSENBERG - Female, 50s-60s; Joe's mother; chilly demeanor. Moves from Salt Lake City to New York after Joe calls with unsettling news. Also plays an orthodox Jewish rabbi, Roy’s doctor, and Ethel Rosebberg.
BELIZE / MR. LIES - Male, 25-40, African-American; Registered nurse, ex-drag queen, Prior's best friend and Roy's caretaker. Extremely stylish with a personality to match. Mr. Lies is a travel agent made up in Harper’s imagination. Witty, caring, and loyal. INTIMACY/SENSITIVITY NOTE: This role includes using explicit and derogatory language.
THE ANGEL / EMILY / SISTER ELLA CHAPTER / WOMAN IN SOUTH BRONX - She/Her/They, 30-50s, Imposing, terrifying, divine presence who descends from Heaven to bestow prophecy on Prior. A force to be reckoned with. Powerful, forceful, and full of intensity.