New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Your Theatre, Inc. director, Stephen R. Kay will hold open auditions for actors to fill eight roles in Dracula, adapted by John L. Balderston and Hamilton Deane. The highly successful thriller is based on the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker.
Auditions will be held Tuesday and Wednesday, May 26 and 27, 2015 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the wheelchair accessible Your Theatre, Inc. Playhouse located at 136 Rivet St. (corner of County St.), New Bedford, at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church complex. Parking and entrance located at rear of church on County St.
Known for successfully directing a variety of top stage plays at venues throughout southern New England, Stephen R. Kay’s auditions will consist of a cold reading from the script. Acting experience is not necessary, but role seekers should have a desire to share the experience of and commitment to live theatre and the enjoyment of collaborating with other talented individuals.
Mr. Kay is seeking actors to play the following characters:
- Count Dracula: age 50s, a tall, mysterious, polished, and distinguished man.
- Prof. Abraham Van Helsing: age 45 to 60-plus, medium height, clean-shaven, alert and resolute man of action who speaks incisively and always to the point.
- Dr. John Seward: age 45 to 60-plus, an intelligent medical specialist who lives in a world of text books and patients, not a man of action or force of character.
- Lucy Seward: age 20s to 30s, beautiful, pale, graceful.
- John Harker: age 25 to 35, handsome, English public school type, direct, incisive, excitable.
- Renfield: age 20s to 30s, a mental patient who has come under the power of the vampire and who swings back and forth between reality and insanity.
- Martin Butterworth: a man of indeterminate age who is the sanatorium attendant.
- Miss Lucy’s maid: an attractive woman of indeterminate age.
Listed ages of characters are not set in stone, but actors seeking the roles of Dr. Seward, Lucy, Harker, Renfield, and the maid should be capable of handling English dialect. Actors seeking the roles of Dracula and Van Helsing should be capable of handling a dialect depicting Continental European ethnicity. The character of the attendant Martin Butterworth requires an ability to handle a working-class British cockney dialect.
The play follows Lucy Seward, daughter of the physician in charge of a sanatorium near London, who is mysteriously anemic. Doctor Van Helsing, a family friend, suspects a vampire that roams the earth by night sucking the blood of victims to sustain its earthly life. With the help of Lucy’s father and her fiancé, Harker, they search for the fiend among the sanatorium patients. They widen their search to include the new occupants of the estate next door, not wanting to leave any stone unturned in their quest to rid the world of the supernatural terror.
The show will go into rehearsal beginning shortly after Labor Day with performances scheduled for Thursdays through Saturdays November 12 to 14 and 19 to 21, 2015 at 8 p.m. with matinee performances Sundays, November15 and 22 at 2:30 p.m. Actors must be available for all performances.
For further information about the audition, call Your Theatre, Inc. at 508-993-0772, or send an email to info@yourtheatre.orgThe theatre’s web site is www.yourtheatre.org
