Contact O War Production Stage Manager Brett Mathews at

Transcription

1 O War Preliminary Audition Materials 1 Preliminary Audition Information O War by Holly Cate Directed by Troy Dwyer, Choreography by Jeffrey Peterson uabout the preliminary audition O War will be a movement-heavy production, with a lot of fight choreography as well as some dance. As such, the preliminary audition will include two components: (1) a group movement component, and (2) a solo monologue component. The only thing you need to prepare for the preliminary audition is the monologue. The content of the movement component will be given to you at the audition. Please select one of the monologue choices from pages 2-3 of this document. You may choose your monologue irrespective of the character s gender. That s right: gender does not matter for the preliminary audition; select the piece you like best. Please do not try to memorize the monologue. Instead, familiarize yourself with it well; prepare it so you can act it with spontaneity, while still reading from the page. And of course, if you don t know what a word means, or how it s pronounced, definitely look it up! You ll be expected to have read the play. Please be advised that the script is still in development, so the version of the play you ve been provided will inevitably differ from the final production script. Please do not duplicate or distribute the script. You should wear movement clothes (clothes in which you can freely move) to the movement component. You can wear whatever you like to the monologue component, though please don t feel any pressure to dress up. Also, students with limited dance/movement backgrounds should not feel discouraged from auditioning; we will be assembling a company of performers with a variety of dance/movement skill levels. The same holds true for the monologue component: if you ve never performed Shakespeare before, don t feel intimidated or unqualified. Translate the monologue into notions that make sense to you, that honor what you believe the character is probably saying. If you can see yourself in this production, we definitely want you to audition! u Questions? Contact O War Production Stage Manager Brett Mathews at owarpsm@gmail.com.

2 O War Preliminary Audition Materials 2 MONOLOGUE OPTIONS: PLEASE SELECT ONE. Monologue A: MARGARET I shame to hear thee speak. Ah! Timorous wretch, Thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me; And given unto the house of York such head As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance. ( ) To entail him and his heirs unto the crown, What is it but to make thy sepulcher, And creep into it far before thy time? The Duke is made Protector of the Realm; And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds The trembling lamb environed with wolves. If it were me, which am a silly woman, The soldiers should have tossed me on their pikes Before I would have granted to that act; But thou prefer st thy life before thine honour Monologue B: WARWICK When you disgraced me in my embassade, Then I degraded you from being King, And come now to create you Duke of York. Alas, how should you govern any kingdom That know not how to use ambassadors, Nor how to be contented with one wife, Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies ( ) Then, in your mind, be Edward England s king, But Henry now shall wear the English crown. For even as thou wilt, sweet Warwick 1, you said, For in thy shoulder do I build my seat, And never will I undertake the thing Wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting. Yes, do you remember? 1 Pronounced like War-rick, not War-wick

3 O War Preliminary Audition Materials 3 Monologue C: YORK: Would st have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will. These tears are my sweet Rutland s obsequies, And every drop cries vengeance for his death Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false French-woman. That face of his the hungry cannibals Would not have touched, would not have stained with blood; But you are more inhuman, more See, ruthless queen, a hapless father s tears. This cloth thou dipp d st in blood of my sweet boy, And I with tears do wash the blood away. Keep thou the napkin, and go boast of this; And if thou tell the heavy story right, Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears; There, take the crown, and with the crown my curse ( ) Monologue D: HENRY If murdering innocents be executing, Why then thou art an executioner. ( ) Hadst thou been killed when first thou didst presume, Thou hadst not lived to kill a son of mine. And thus I prophesy: that many a thousand, Men for their sons, wives for their husbands, Orphans for their parents timeless death Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born. The owl shrieked at thy birth an evil sign; Dogs howled; and hideous tempests shook down trees. Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born, To signify thou cam st to bite the world ( )

4 O War Preliminary Audition Materials 4 The Characters of O War The Clowns A corps of 9 mostly wide-eyed regular folks of all genders, races, ethnicities, and kinds of bodies, the Clowns are the hapless common people of the trilogy, and the vital glue that holds O War together. They re almost always on stage, weaving in and out of the nobles ugly and treacherous story, while trying to live their own lives as best they can, with humor. Sometimes they understand what s going on, and sometimes they don t. Sometimes they survive, and sometimes they don t. But they re irrepressible, occasionally bungling, and very, very human. And no matter how bad it gets and it gets very bad they endure. Henry Henry VI is the very young, religiously devout King of England. He is inexperienced and often tentative, and when he is decisive, he makes specious choices. Though he spent the better part of Glory being manipulated and pushed around by the people around him, he concluded the play with a surprisingly ruthless move having his wife s secret lover assassinated. Henry is growing a spine as he matures, but adapting to the cutthroat environment of his court is taking a profound emotional toll. Margaret Henry s wife, the passionate, resilient, calculating Queen of England. When O War opens, Margaret is 8 months pregnant with the heir the throne, and deeply embittered toward her young husband. Lost in mourning for the death of her true love Suffolk (whom Henry had killed at the end of Glory), Margaret s psyche is twisting with vitriol as she struggles to hold onto the power she seized in Glory Somerset An influential noble in Henry s court, the snide and biting Somerset was at the epicenter of the start of the so-called Wars of the Roses the unrest plaguing Henry s reign. In Glory, it was Somerset who, in a disagreement with his rival York, made the polarizing move of wearing a red rose as a symbol of the superiority of his family, the House of Lancaster. In turn, this caused York to wear a white rose in opposition. What followed was a chain-reaction that divided England, as people felt pressured to side with either the red roses of the Lancasters or the white roses of the Yorks. As Glory proceeded, the hatred between Somerset and York grew monumentally Clifford Another influential noble in the court, the proud, hawkish Clifford weathered Glory by remaining steadfastly loyal to Henry. The young, soldierly successor to the dukedom of his house, Clifford is particularly close with his father (whom we do not meet in O War), and though he s dedicated to defending the throne, he s even more stirred by defending the honor of his family. In O War, this puts him at odds with the House of York in a way that impacts the entire balance of power York The imperious and ambitious patriarch of the House of York, and Henry s challenger to the English throne. York is boastful and unrestrained, but his arrogance is justified: he is both mighty and resourceful. As his antipathy with Somerset grew across Glory, so too did his sense of injury and dishonor at the hands of Henry. As O War opens, York is mounting a multipronged coup d état to supplant Henry and claim the throne for himself and his heirs

5 O War Preliminary Audition Materials 5 Warwick A brilliant strategist and a powerful warrior, Warwick (pronounced WAR-rick) is York s lover, and the cool analytic intelligence behind his rise to power. Charismatic, deadly, and a bit shadowy (the Clowns are absolutely terrified of her), she is every bit as ambitious as York. However, instead of wanting to sit on the throne, her goal is an even truer power: influence over the crown. Because she loves York and he her and because he seems poised to take the country, Warwick s objective seems within reach at the onset of O War. Though things don t end up going according to plan Edward York s eldest son, Edward is brash and lustful. He fears and respects his father, and is enthusiastic about the verity of York s claim to the throne. Most unexpectedly, thanks to the vagaries of war, Edward finds himself in a surprising situation by the middle of O War: he s the King of England. Richard At first, Richard appears to be an archetypal middle child: he struggles to prove himself in the shadow of the cocksure Edward, and distinguish himself from the querulous, opportunistic George. But as the events of O War unfold, Richard begins to cultivate characteristics unlike any of the other noble characters in the trilogy: introspective adaptability and true ruthlessness. And it s those characteristics that will send him on the journey of becoming something no one anticipates: Richard III. (The traditional playing of this character is that he is a person with a physical disability and/or has shocking features. In O War, neither of these things is the case.) George Even though the six-year old Rutland is technically York s youngest child, George is, hands-down, the baby of the family. Rowdy, exuberant, and insecure, he s like a pit bull puppy who doesn t know how hard it s biting. Like his brothers, he is dedicated to his father s rise to power. Rutland A six-year old boy brandishing a toy sword, Rutland is York s youngest son. He will be played by a cisgender woman actor or a trans actor. Elizabeth Though it s an unexpected surprise that Edward becomes the King of England, it s even more of an unexpected surprise that Elizabeth, a widowed noblewoman, becomes his Queen. Beguiling, bright and enterprising, Elizabeth is the belle of Edward s coronation ball. Charles Charles is the flamboyant but canny King of France (a country at war with England throughout the trilogy). Triumphing over the defiant Charles would yield something that whoever sits on the English throne ultimately desires: a winning peace. But as O War continues, Charles becomes the influential ally that almost everybody wants on their side