Masquerade Theatre Company’s The Women, directed by Anthony Bezzina, will be held on: 15th & 16th September from 5pm @ M Space – Msida. Please call on 7979 3737/2124 6619 or info@masquerademalta.com for an audition time.
Masquerade Theatre Company is holding open auditions for The Women, a play by Clare Boothe Luce on Monday 15th or Tuesday 16th September. They are looking for a large cast of women ranging in age from 18 to 60 (no male characters at all). There are approximately 20 roles to be cast – depending on doubling and/or combining some smaller roles.
Actors will be asked to read from the script so it is recommend that you are familiar with the play. All parts are up for grabs. Please take a headshot and your CV/biography.
The Women will be performed in November 2014 at Blue Box at M Space in Msida.
Synopsis
Clare Boothe Luce’s social satire The Women was a smash hit when first performed on Broadway in 1936 and has enjoyed several revival productions during the 1970s and 1990s. This brilliant play has assumed the status of a modern classic. It is set in the world of high society wives in New York City during the height of the Great Depression – an immensely entertaining panorama of our modern metropolitan world from the feminine viewpoint. The author carries us through a number of varied scenes – and digging under the surface, reveals a human understanding for, and sympathy with, some of its outstanding figures.
The plot involves the efforts of a group of women to play their respective roles in an artificial society that consists of vain show, comedy, tragedy, hope and disappointment. Mary Haines, the protagonist, learns from a gossipy manicurist that her husband, Stephen, is having an affair with a shop-girl named Crystal. After the news of Stephen’s affair is published in a gossip column, Mary decides to divorce him. To obtain her divorce, she travels to Reno, Nevada, where liberal divorce laws attracted many society women wishing to downplay any potential for scandal. While she is in Reno, Mary learns that Stephen has married Crystal. Two years later, Mary, now living back in New York with her children, learns that Crystal has been unfaithful to Stephen. With the help of her friends, Mary sets out to expose Crystal’s infidelity in order to win Stephen back.
Cast
Mary (Mrs. Stephen Haines): the “heroine,” as nice and as sweet as can be – she does not buy into the cattiness (and in some cases maliciousness) of her “friends,” and is very reluctant to believe that her husband is cheating on her… which it turns out he is.
Peggy (Mrs. John Day): pretty, sweet, a young married about whom the author says: “Peggy’s character has not, will never quite “jell.” Almost immediately has marital problems because she has money and her husband has not.
Nancy (Miss Blake): The one unmarried member of Mary’s immediate circle. “Sharp but not acid, sleek but not smart… a worldly and yet virginal 35.”
Sylvia (Mrs. Howard Fowler): “Glassy, elegant, feline.” As catty as they come; purports to be Mary’s closest friend, but is not above causing her tumult and hurt through her gossip, innuendo and “advice.” Cheats on her husband, whom she believes to be impotent (which he’s not…)
Edith (Mrs. Phelps Potter): “A sloppy, expensively dressed (currently by Lane Bryant) ‘matron’. Indifferent to everything but self, Edith is incapable of either deliberate maliciousness or spontaneous generosity.”
Crystal Allen: Stephen Haines’ mistress – the classic, cold, calculating, gold-digging, beautiful, sexy, younger “other woman” – a shopgirl-turned-society woman after snatching Stephen; one pretty nasty “bitch.”
Miriam Aarons (first appears as “Mud Mask”): a Broadway starlet and (as it turns out) mistress to one of the husbands. Not the cold-hearted bitch that Crystal is, by comparison.
Countess de Lage: “An amiable, silly, plump and forty-ish heiress type.”
Other smaller but important, non-doubling roles include:
Mary’s mother who has quietly seen and dealt with marital trouble herself – to Mary’s surprise; advises Mary based on her own experience
“Little Mary” (Mary’s daughter, 11)
Jane (Irish-American), Ingrid and Sadie – domestics in the Haines household
