Saturday, January 12, 2019

Richard III: Hour of the Tyrant (Auditions)

Auditions ahoy!

I've already put new of this into a Facebook event as well as Better Lemons and Backstage magazine.

Silly not to have it here as well!

Quite simply I have edited Shakespeare's Richard III down from a four hour length to under two.  I've reduced thirty six speaking roles (a good dozen of whom never reveal their names) to about fifteen.  Along the way, in keeping with my focus on what I see as the play's themes, scenes got re-arranged, some characters were cut, others fused together, and even lines as well as scenes from other Shakespeare plays.

So this adaptation/edit focuses essentially on the questions "What makes a Tyrant?" and "What makes a kingdom (or nation or group) that Tyrant's prey?"  Rather topical in my opinion. 

There are two days of auditions scheduled.  First is Saturday, January 26, 2019 from 11am to 3pm at Oh My Ribs, 6468 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038.  This location will also be where the production goes up.  Second is Sunday, February 3, 2019 from 12noon to 5pm at Studio 100, 900 East 1st Street Los Angeles, 90012. This is south of Union Station and east of the Little Tokyo Gold Line station.  We will be having a fair number of rehearsals here.

I am asking folks to bring a single one-or-two minute monologue from Shakespeare of some other forsoothly piece (Johnson, Webster, Poe, etc.).  Everyone does their monologue in a given hour-long bloc and then I lead everyone in that bloc in an exercise. 

Right now the only overtly open bloc is at 4pm on February 3.  However, I encourage anyone and everyone to simply show up at the top of each hour any particular day.  The fact is, there are always no-shows and I will struggle to fit in everyone.

Meanwhile you can contact me at zahir13@gmail.com.

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