SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
THEATRE AT PENN STATE BEHREND
Welcome to our small but lively theatre program! We are looking for curious, creative, resourceful, hard-working, and energetic students who are interested in acting, stage construction and/or stage management. No experience necessary. In addition to taking interesting, fun, and informative courses in acting, production, and theatre history/dramatic literature, you have the opportunity to participate in our fall and spring productions. Here you will learn about a play and playwright in-depth, meet new friends and colleagues, enhance your technical and/or performance skills, and gain invaluable experience in communication and creative collaboration that will aid you in future classes on-campus as well as everyday life off-campus.
AUDITIONS FOR FALL THEATRE PRODUCTION AT BEHREND!
Elizabeth: Almost By Chance a Woman by Dario Fo (pending rights)
Synopsis: Elizabeth I is frazzled: her servants deploy zany beauty treatments (including leeches and bees) on her while she frets about Shakespeare’s newly written play, Hamlet. Convinced that Shakespeare is a traitor who has written the tragedy as a critique of her and her advisors, she lashes out at everyone around her. Meanwhile she can’t discern her friends from her foes. Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright Dario Fo wrote the play in the late 1980s as a response, in part, to the refusal of the American government to grant him a visa. Ronald Reagan’s administration saw Fo’s work as subversive and did everything it could to keep him out of the US. In the play, then, Fo’s not-so-subtle critique of Elizabeth spills over into 20th-century American politics. This fast-paced, smart, tightly woven play speaks to the power of theatre in Elizabethan England and the United States today.
Auditions: Wed, Aug 31 and Thurs, Sept 1 from 6-8 pm in the Studio Theatre
No theatre experience or advanced preparation necessary! You’ll have sections of the play from which you can choose to do a cold reading. You’ll then be paired up to read short dialogue scenes together.
Email Dr. Joanne Zerdy (jxz173@psu.edu) for a 20-min. audition slot or stop by her office (#9 Carriage House Annex 2) to access the sign-up sheet.
Characters
Elizabeth: English monarch afraid of losing her looks and her power
Martha: Elizabeth’s dutiful, if fed-up, servant
Eggerton: The Queen’s chief of police, all-business
Big Mama: Wacky Mistress of Herbal Medicine (played by a man)
Thomas: Elizabeth’s young, naïve lover who meets an early death
Assassin: A fanatic out to kill the Queen
Guards (2-4): Palace soldiers who serve & protect Her Royal Majesty
**We’re also looking for crafty, resourceful, hard-working crew members interested in working on sets, lights, costumes, props, and/or sound!! Send Dr. Zerdy an email and tell her what you’re interested in doing.**
Theatre at Behrend: http://behrend.psu.edu/academic/hss/theatre/index.htm
And check back here later this semester for information on our spring production…