Below is my article for BenchPress, the company newsletter, which outlined the plan for the auditions.
The Bench will continue to "push the envelope" in February with our production of Martin Crimp's avant-garde masterpiece Attempts on Her Life, which I am very excited about bringing to the stage. Those who heard my director's pitch for play selection in the summer will have a sense of what this production is about, but for the uninitiated...
The Bench will continue to "push the envelope" in February with our production of Martin Crimp's avant-garde masterpiece Attempts on Her Life, which I am very excited about bringing to the stage. Those who heard my director's pitch for play selection in the summer will have a sense of what this production is about, but for the uninitiated...
Attempts on Her Life is seventeen separate vignettes linked by a common intent - to explore and define the identity of Anne, a mysterious woman who seems to be all things to all people, a daughter, a lover, an artist, a terrorist, a car, a model, a particle physicist, an alien abductee and the girl next door. Through a series of surreal and bizarre snapshots, we start to piece together the notion of an everywoman, exploring perceptions of femininity, the modern world, personal identity.
Crimp has done away with most of the conventions of theatre, notably character and plot. There are no pre-defined roles, merely indications when a new character is talking, and the end results is an hilarious, shocking and poignant post-modern piece of theatre.
Intrigued? Well, good! Because now I need to assemble the creative team that will bring this piece to life. A play of this nature will require a very different way of working to what we are familiar with. Performers, designers and director will work in close collaboration, exploring the text through discussions, workshops and more conventional rehearsal methods to end up with a performance that we have all contributed to. And I would like YOU to be a part of that team!
As you can probably imagine, with such an unusual play, the auditions will be a little different as well. If you would like to be one of the performers in the show (I am ideally looking for between 10 and 20 actors, of any age, gender, sensibility), I would be very pleased if you could take part in a workshop audition on Sunday October 21st at Havant Arts Centre, from 11am. It will be different, but it won't be scary! There won't be any of the usual read-throughs of extracts to fit actors to parts. What I'm much more interested in is how a group of people responds to the play and is able to explore any ideas that people bring to the text. So there will be a mixture of text work, improvisation, discussion, hopefully a lot of laughs and some interesting results.
I have booked the space until 4pm, but the day won't necessarily last that long, it will depend on how many people come along (we will stop for lunch!). If you don't feel you can commit to the whole day, but could manage a couple of hours or so, that would be great. Please let me know if you are hoping to come along, so that I get an idea of numbers. I hope there will be something for everyone at the audition, and also in the production itself, so come along and see if this is the sort of thing you want to get stuck into!
No comments:
Post a Comment