2023 Season Auditions
The Ensemble Company is committed to bringing more diversity and inclusion to our stage. We encourage gender diversity and color consciousness in our casting methods and invite actors of all ethnic backgrounds and genders to audition.
A general call will be held on Saturday, October 8th, 2022, with appointments available from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. Callbacks will begin Saturday evening from 6:00pm to 9:00pm and continue on Sunday, October 9th, 2022 from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. Actors are requested to prepare a two-minute monologue and to bring a non-returnable headshot and resumé.
Please note that for the continued safety of actors and creatives, The Ensemble Company requires that all performers and staff be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
We will be casting the following productions:
MISERY
By William Goldman, adapted from the novel by Stephen King
Director: Ayó Demps
First Rehearsal: December 19th, 2022
Performances: January 20th-29th, 2023
SEEKING
Annie Wilkes (she/her) - 40s-50s - obsessed with Paul Sheldon, her favorite author, and willing to go to any length to have him resurrect her favorite character. She is a psychopath and capable of extreme violence.
Paul Sheldon (he/him) - 40s-50s - author, held captive by Annie after a car crash. Mostly bedridden, this role does require some physical versatility (crawling, falling out of bed, etc.)
Buster (he/him) - 50s-60s - the local sheriff who comes looking for Sheldon after finding his car near Annie’s house.
SPEECH AND DEBATE
By Stephen Karam
Director: Matthew MacDermid
First Rehearsal: TBA
Performances: March 3rd-12th, 2023
SEEKING
Solomon (he/him) - 18+ to play 16 - an ambitious, honest student working for the school newspaper, he is frustrated by the hypocrisy of the adult figures in his life and single-minded in his mission to expose their hypocrisy.
Diwata (she/her) - 18+ to play 17 - a frumpy, slightly overweight and slightly off-kilter theatre kid; she is fiercely determined to speak her mind, despite being ignored by the school’s establishment. Undeterred by her unpopularity, she understands she will never be an ingenue.
Howie (he/him) - 18+ to play 18 - an openly gay transfer student, he is frustrated by the conservative ideals and puritan attitudes of Salem, Oregon.
Teacher/Reporter (she/her) - 40s - the voice of the various adult figures in the play; the adults in this world are not caricatures seen through the eyes of the teenagers but real people shaped by the puritan ideals and family values of the small town they were reared in; seeking a versatile actor to play multiple roles.
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
By Edward Albee
Director: Matthew MacDermid
First Rehearsal: TBA
Performances: May 12th-21st, 2023
ALL ROLES IN THIS PRODUCTION HAVE BEEN CAST.
THE INHERITANCE
By Matthew Lopez
Director(s): Kenny Howard & Matthew MacDermid
First Rehearsal: TBA
Performances: September 8th-24th, 2023
SEEKING
Young Man 1/Adam McDowell/Leo (he/him) - 20s - to play Adam, a charming wide-eyed child of privilege. Physically attractive. Naturally seductive. He hides these qualities beneath a veneer of innocence and inexperience but beneath the surface, he’s calculating and methodical. He’s too skilled a manipulator to ever be caught at it. Underestimate him at your peril. Also plays, Leo, a guarded, damaged young man but underneath his messy exterior, he’s a young man aching for connection and kindness. A sex worker now, intermittently homeless and in the throes of addiction, Leo trusts no one because his life has taught him this is the only way to survive. Possessed of a first class mind that has been undernourished by years of neglect.
Young Man 2/Jason #1 (he/him) - 30s - to play multiple roles, including: Jason #1 – high school science teacher, bookish and sweetly nerdy. The kind of person who doesn’t speak at parties until they’ve had a couple of drinks and then you can’t shut them up. He has the ability to look at an argument from every possible angle. He is a steady ship on increasingly stormy seas. He often takes on the role of peacemaker.
Young Man 3/Young Henry (he/him) - late teens-20s - to play multiple roles, including: Young Henry, appears as a memory or the shadow of the adult Henry Wilcox. Traumatized by what he witnesses during the mid-1980’s, at the start of the AIDS epidemic, he moves through the world cautiously, with his emotional guard resolutely up. The only person who can pierce his defenses is Young Walter, with whom he has fallen hopelessly, desperately in love.
Young Man 4/Young Walter (he/him) - late teens-20s - to play multiple roles, including: Young Walter appears as a memory or the shadow of the adult Walter Poole. We also encounter him at the start of the AIDS epidemic. A deeply feeling, intensely loyal, innately principled young man. Outwardly, he is as gentle as a cherry blossom. Inwardly, he’s steel-spined and indestructible. Whereas the epidemic almost crushes Henry, it reveals Young Walter’s true strength and resolve.
Young Man 5/Toby’s Agent (he/him) - late teens-20s - to play multiple roles, including: Toby's Agent a budding young power agent at one of the big agencies. Thrives on protein shakes and hot yoga. Not without compassion for Toby but increasingly frustrated by his client’s erratic behavior. Knows how to gently pet with one hand and cut throats with the other.
Young Man 6/Tristan (he/him) - 20s-30s - as Tristan an ER physician who spends his days dealing with trauma of all kinds. He is calm under pressure and knows how to diffuse the most volatile situations. He can be droll and wickedly funny when he wants to (and he often does). He can also expertly dissect thorny, seemingly impossible problems with reasoned, blazingly intelligent thinking. His observations are never like speeches—instead, they are examples of a dazzling mind at work, working out problems in real time. Black/African descent.
Young Man 7/Jasper (he/him) - 30s - to play multiple roles including Jasper, a “social justice entrepreneur,” who works in the political realm as a movement influencer. He is wickedly smart if also a little selfrighteous and blind to his own privilege. He has a good heart and good intentions. When we meet him, he’s an amiable doofus with boyish charm who hasn’t really matured past the age of 22, which is the average age of most of his boyfriends. The 2016 election hardens him in unhealthy ways. He becomes prone to pronouncements over analysis and develops an ideological rigidity and inflexibility that causes his relationships to fracture.
Young Man 8/Jason #2 (he/him) - 30s - to play multiple roles including Jason #2, a first-grade teacher who often treats the world as if it were his classroom. Big-hearted, joyful, and deliriously idiosyncratic. Jason will often hijack a serious conversation with his decidedly out-of-the box thinking. The fact that he is able to coherently argue his somewhat baffling points of view is evidence not only of his fertile imagination but also his rock-solid intellect. Jason is a perceptive and compassionate man who possesses the ability to understand the emotional stakes of any situation—eventually.
Young Man 9/Eric Glass (he/him) - 30s - deeply compassionate. Tender. Loyal. Undervalues himself and doesn’t realize how special he is. Tested along the way by heartbreak and loss, he uses these disappointments as fuel to build the growing fire inside him. Doesn’t know that he’s the lead of this play. Once he does and makes a decision to act bravely and decisively, he discovers he has the ability to change the world to an extent far greater than anyone knows.
Young Man 10/Toby Darling (he/him) - 20s-30s - a raging whirlwind of ambition, sex appeal, self-regard, self-doubt, and ultimately self-destruction. Charming. Verbose. Funny. Sharp-tongued. A self-made man who charges through life as if he were indestructible—ultimately discovering that he is not. He knows the glory of tremendous heights and the devastating lows of self-annihilation. A star that burns too brightly and is extinguished too quickly. He can delight you and appall you, make you swoon one minute and break your heart the next. All of his bluster is to cover the fact that he is the most fragile character in the play.
Boy (he/him) - 9-10, to play younger - no dialogue
E.M. Forster/Walter Poole (he/him) - 50s - to play E.M. Forster, the eminent British author of Howards End and Maurice. A spiritual and literary guide to a group of young men attempting to tell the story of their lives. Straight-laced. Proper. Occasionally playful and even joyfully wicked. Having grappled with his dishonesty and cowardice in life as closeted gay man fearful of exposure, in death he is a teacher who learns just as much as his pupils about life in the modern world. And Walter Poole, Henry's gentle, honest, partner. A haunted man possessed of tremendous compassion but also tremendous emotional caution. He survived the AIDS epidemic by sacrificing himself to the needs of others and now he seems to be half in this world, half in the spirit world—in the process, it seems, of becoming a ghost. His friendship with Eric, temporarily revives him, and gives meaning to the end of his life. Note: As this doubling covers both British and American characters, the role(s) requires an actor extremely deft with both accents.
Henry Wilcox (he/him) - 50s - a gay billionaire Republican real estate developer. Walter’s partner. Charming, fiercely intelligent and emotionally inaccessible. He survived the AIDS epidemic by closing himself off to the needs of others. In trying to ignore his trauma he has lived a life completely divorced from his emotions, from joy, from connection to others. But the desire for happiness does not come without cost—and he is forced to finally face his past.
Margaret (she/her) - 60s-80s - a haunted woman. The mother of a young man who died of AIDS in the mid-1980 and who she was estranged from, she has spent her life atoning for her personal failings. Flinty, pugnacious, no-nonsense. She is tasked with caring for Walter’s house and, by extension, all its secrets as well as some of her own.
HIR
By Taylor Mac
Director: Beth Marshall
First Rehearsal: TBA
Performances: November 3rd-12th, 2023
SEEKING
Max Connor (he/him–SEE NOTE) - 18+ to play 17 - transgender masculine child of Paige and Arnold; sibling to Isaac. Max is now homeschooled by Paige and is extremely isolated in this suburban town. Max wants to escape hir hometown and forge a life in a more progressive environment. Max attempts to stand up to Arnold, a formerly abusive father who sent Max to the emergency room three times. Max does this through intellectual means and (for the most part) following Paige’s anti-orthodox rules. NOTE: The actor playing Max should be someone who was born a biological female and now identifies as transgender or gender-queer.
Isaac Connor (he/him) - 20s - cisgender (identifying as your biological gender) son of Paige and Arnold; Max's brother. Neither popular nor a complete outcast in high school, Isaac could not find a job or afford to go to college after graduating. Isaac has just returned from two years in the Afghan war, where he worked in Mortuary Affairs caring for the body parts of marines killed in combat. He was dishonorably discharged after getting caught using a methamphetamine. Isaac seeks to reassert his father's values of order and cleanliness, despite Paige's wishes. He's overwhelmed by Max's transition, but does his best to understand. He was looking forward to coming home to his family, but home is not at all as he left it.
Paige Connor (she/her) - 50s - cisgender (identifying as your biological gender); Max and Isaac's mother and Arnold's wife. After years of suffering abuse from her husband Arnold, Paige revels in the liberation from her oppressive marriage and housekeeping obligations after Arnold's stroke. She sees freedom in losing the label of wife, and enforces house rules that are the direct opposite of Arnold's (he demanded order, she thrives on mess). She dresses Arnold in old nightgowns and puts heavy make up on him every day to fully assert her dominance. She perceives herself as hip (she's not), and truly attempts to understand and also to co-opt Max's transition to forge her own ideals for the future.
Arnold Connor (he/him) - 50s - cisgender (identifying as your biological gender); Isaac and Max's father and Paige's husband. Arnold was an angry and violent man, but has had a stroke, which has affected his ability to communicate verbally and care for himself. His home used to run entirely by his iron fist, but now he is dependent on Paige and Max to care for him and they don’t. He often tries to escape from the house, but never succeeds. When he feels something, he feels it with no censor. Like a young child, he easily switches from complete joy to complete sorrow and back again within the course of a brief moment.
THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO
By Alfred Uhry
Director: Sarah French
First Rehearsal: TBA
Performances: December 8th-17th, 2023
SEEKING
Adolph Freitag (he/him) - 50s - brother of Boo and brother-in-law of Reba, funny and sarcastic at times, supports everyone, but doesn’t resent it.
Boo Levy (she/her) - 50s - mother of Lala, sister to Adolph, sister-in-law to Reba, very no nonsense woman, a bit resentful of others she deems had it any easier than her.
Lala Levy (she/her) - 20s - very anxious and socially awkward, doesn’t see her worth and is very jealous of her cousin Sunny.
Reba Freitag (she/her) - 40s-50s - mother of Sunny, sister-in-law to Boo and Adolph, sweet and simple, can appear ditzy, but colorful and wise in her own way.
Sunny Freitag (she/her) - 20s - smart beautiful blond woman, finishing up college, liberal, daughter of Reba. cousin to Lala, falls in love with Joe.
Joe Farkas (he/him) - 20s-30s - a smart hard working Jewish man from NY, takes a job working in the Freitag family business, enjoys his Jewish heritage, falls in love with Sunny.
Peachy Weil (he/him) - 20s-30s - red haired son from a wealthy Southern family, very Southern with an off-beat sense of humor, takes Lala to Ballyhoo.
While some roles will be offered singly, it is the goal of The Ensemble Company to cast a repertory company of actors with the ability to play multiple roles in a season.