The Pennington Players are incredibly excited to announce auditions for our January 2020 production of Calendar Girls. The play will make its Kelsey Theatre debut January 3 - 12, 2020. Auditions begin this June. Here are all the details!
AUDITION SIGN-UP
Appointments are strongly recommended. Walk-ins will be accommodated as time allows.
Questions? E-mail us at sgalli33@gmail.com and we'll get right back to you!
PRODUCTION TEAM
COMPANY: The Pennington Players
PRODUCER: Frank Ferrara
DIRECTOR: Susan Galli
SET DESIGNER: Haley Schmalbach
STAGE MANAGER: Melissa Gaynor
ABOUT THE SHOW
When Annie's husband John dies of leukemia, she and her long-standing best friend Chris resolve to raise money for a new settee in the local hospital waiting room. With varying levels of encouragement, they persuade four friends and fellow members of the Women’s Institute (W.I.) to pose nude with them for an "alternative" calendar. They are assisted by hospital porter and amateur photographer Lawrence, who looked after John in his final days. This is much to the horror of the their local W.I. chairman, Marie. The success of the calendar goes beyond their wildest dreams and they have soon raised the money needed and much more. Their efforts also catch the attention of the national and international press, who soon descend on the small village of Knapeley in the Yorkshire Dales, England, where the play takes place. Although the calendar is a huge success, Chris and Annie's friendship is put to the test with their new-found fame and Chris is forced to question her real motivation behind doing the calendar. Tim Firth’s hilarious play takes place in the present day and is based on the true story of eleven W.I. members who famously posed nude for a calendar to raise money for the Leukemia Research Fund in 1999.
PERFORMANCE DATES
Friday, January 3, 2020 at 8pm
Saturdays, January 4 & 11, 2020 at 8pm
Saturday, January 11, 2020 at 2pm
Sundays, January 5 & 12, 2020 at 2pm
*Special Fundraiser Performance on Friday, January 10, 2020 at 8pm
Performances will be held at the Kelsey Theatre on Mercer County Community College’s West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, NJ 08550.
AUDITION DATES & TIMES
Saturday, June 22, 2019 from 11am-3pm
Sunday, June 23, 2019 from 12pm-3pm
Monday, June 24, 2019 from 6pm-10pm
INVITED CALLBACKS: Wednesday, June 26, 2019 from 7pm-10pm
Auditions will be held on the West Windsor Campus of Mercer County Community College, located at 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, New Jersey 08550. Check the Kelsey Theatre sign board for a room location on the day of the auditions.
AUDITION SIGN-UP
Appointments are strongly recommended. Walk-ins will be accommodated as time allows.
Questions? E-mail us at sgalli33@gmail.com and we'll get right back to you!
WHAT TO PREPARE
Please bring a headshot and resume to your audition, along with your completed audition form and conflict calendar.
Please prepare two monologues, one comedic and one straight between 1-2 minutes each. There may be cold readings from the script as well.
REHEARSAL DETAILS
We plan to begin rehearsals in the first weeks of October. We are casting now and asking for availability through the summer as we are creating a calendar and will be taking photos throughout the summer and fall. The calendar photo shoots and rehearsal schedule will be determined based on the availability of those cast and will be made available to you. A weekly rehearsal schedule will be sent out by Stage Management with any updates or changes.
ABOUT NUDITY
Those auditioning should be comfortable with the illusion of their nudity, including those not auditioning for one of the calendar ladies as all cast members will appear in the calendar. No person shall actually be nude either on stage or in the calendar, and individual choices as to the degree of exposure will be respected. From the Author: “As in the best tradition of Vaudevillian fan dances, the art of the play’s nudity lies in what is withheld. The choreography of this sequence is best described as ‘fabulous concealment’. Should we see anything we oughtn’t, the whole scene will deflate like a soufflé on which the oven door has been opened too quickly. “
ABOUT ACCENTS
“The women of the real calendar in truth came from many parts of the country. Actors should resist the pressure to perform any kind of Yorkshire pyrotechnics. Nothing compromises the truth of comedy like a slavish attention to vowel-sounds and dipthongs. It will become a pebble in the shoe. If you can flatten the "a" so that giraffe no longer rhymes with scarf then that will be more than sufficient; but even that should not be championed over the intrinsic rhythm of the line. People travel. Communities are now gloriously multi-instrumental. We've had accents from Glasgow to Texas make the same part their own.”
WHAT WE'RE CASTING
ALL ROLES ARE OPEN.
All roles are Non-Equity, unpaid.
CHARACTER INFORMATION
NOTE: All listed ages are stage ages.
CHRIS – (Female - 50s). You want Chris at your party. She will talk to people she doesn’t know, and things to say to all silences and generate laughter. Part of this is because Chris is at home in crowds, holding court, being the center of attention. Without Chris in her life, Annie would be better behaved, her life less fun. The two of them are like naughty schoolgirls. Ideal car — who cares, as long as it’s a cabriolet. Ideal holiday — Algarve.
ANNIE – (Female -50s). Annie will join in mischief but is at heart more conformist and less confrontational than Chris. After Chris has put a waiter’s back up in the restaurant, Annie will go in and pour calm. The mischievousness Chris elicits saves Annie from being a saint. She has enough edge to be interesting, and enough salt not to be too sweet. Ideal car — who cares, as long as it’s reliable. Ideal holiday — walking in English countryside.
The playwright notes that together, Chris and Annie are greater than the sum of their parts. They would be lesser humans had they not met each other.
CORA – (Female - around 40). Cora’s past is the most eclectic, her horizons broadened by having gone to college. This caused a tectonic shift with her more parochial parents. She came back to them pregnant and tail-between-legs, but Cora has too much native resilience to be downtrodden. She is the joker in the pack, but never plays the fool. Her wit is deadpan. It raises laughter in others, but rarely in herself. Her relationship with her daughter is more akin to that between Chris and Annie. Cora doesn’t need to sing like a diva but must be able to sing well enough to start the show with Jerusalem and sing the snatches of other songs required. The piano keyboard can be marked up to enable her to play basic chords should she not be a player. Ideal car — who cares, as long as the sound system is loud. Ideal holiday — New York.
JESSIE – (Female - late 60s/70s.) Get on the right side of Jessie as a teacher and she’ll be the teacher you remember for life. Get on the wrong side and you will regret every waking hour. A lover of life, Jessie doesn’t bother with cosmetics — her elixir of life is bravery. Jessie goes on rollercoasters. Her husband has been with her a long time and is rarely surprised by her actions. Jessie bothers about grammar and will correct stallholders regarding their abuse of the apostrophe “s”. Ideal car — strange-looking European thing which is no longer manufactured. Ideal holiday — walking in Switzerland or Angkor Wat.
CELIA – (Female - age anything 35-50). The fact that Celia is in the WI is the greatest justification of its existence. A woman more at home in a department store than a church hall, she may be slightly younger than Chris or the same age, but she always feels like she’s drifted in from another world. Which she has. She is particularly enamored of Jessie, and despite the fact Jessie has very little time for most Celias of this world, there is a rebelliousness in Celia to which Jessie responds. It’s what sets Celia apart from the vapid materialism of her peer group and made her defect. Ideal car — Porsche, which she has. Ideal holiday — Maldives, where she often goes.
RUTH – (Female - 40s). Ruth’s journey is from the false self-confidence of the emotionally abused to the genuine self confidence of the woman happy in her own skin. Ruth is eager to please but not a rag doll, and despite being Marie’s right-hand woman she is desperate to be the cartilage in the spine of the WI and keep everyone happy. She has spine herself — if she was too wet, no-one would want her around. But they do, and they feel protective of her because they sense there is something better in Ruth than her life is letting out. They are proved right. Ideal car — at the start, whatever Eddie wants; at the end, whatever she wants. Ideal holiday — at the start wherever Eddie is, at the end wherever he isn’t. The Rabbit Costume: Ruth made this last night. It should be a cocktail of good intention and not enough time.
MARIE – (Female - 50s). Marie has gradually built the current ‘Marie’ around herself over the years as a defense mechanism. She went to her Oz, Cheshire, and found Oz didn’t want her. She came back scorched. The WI is a trophy to her, which justifies her entire existence. There is a lingering part of Marie that would love to be on that calendar. Ideal car — something German and well-valeted. Ideal holiday — a quasi-academic tour of somewhere in Persia advertised in a Sunday Supplement which she could then interminably bang on about.
JOHN – (Male - 50s). Annie’s husband. John is a human sunflower. Not a saint. Not a hero. Just the kind of man you’d want in your car when crossing America. When he dies it feels like someone somewhere turned a light off.
ROD - Chris's husband, (Male - 50s). You have to be a certain kind of guy to stick with Chris and Rod loves it. He can give back what he gets, and has a deadpan humor which has always made Chris laugh. He drinks a lot but never so much as to have a problem. He would work every hour to make his shop a success. And John was his mate, even though the relationship was originally channeled through their wives.
LAWRENCE – (Male - late 20s). Hesitant without being nerdy, Lawrence is a shy young man with enough wit to make a joke and enough spirit to turn up at the WI hall in the first place. When he arranges the shots he is close to female nudity but sees only the photo.
LADY CRAVENSHIRE – (Female - 60s). Lady Cravenshire really doesn’t mean to be so patronizing. But the WI girls seem from another world. The world of her estate workers. Dress: when she makes an entrance, she must make an entrance. Largely white or cream to outplay the others, with a bigger hat than Marie. She is not a tweed-wearer. She must glide in like a galleon.
ELAINE – (Female - 20s). Elaine really doesn’t mean to be so patronizing. But Jessie seems from another world. The world of her gran. Dress: her clinical whites slice through like a knife. You feel you could cut yourself on that dress.
LIAM – (Male - late 20s). Liam would like to be directing other things than photoshoots for washing powders. He’s not so unprofessional as to let it show, but we can sense a slight weariness at having to deal with these women. There’s a resigned patience to his actions and each smile he makes we feel is professional. For Liam, this photoshoot is a job. And not the job he wanted. Dress: Avoid wearing shades inside a building. If you’ve gone down that route, you’ve made the weary boy a wideboy.
AUDITION SIGN-UP
Appointments are strongly recommended. Walk-ins will be accommodated as time allows.
Questions? E-mail us at sgalli33@gmail.com and we'll get right back to you!