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AUDITION
by Joe Hanrahan
August 2017
St Louis Fringe Festival

 
 

The St. Louis Theatre Crawl (which as far as I can find out is unique, we haven't stolen it from anybody!) gives a company a chance to offer an hors d'oeuvre of its theatrical fare to St. Louis audiences - 6 20-minute performances each of two nights to rotating audiences. And a company can do anything - a bit of previous work, a scene from an upcoming show, songs, whatever.
For last year and this, we've chosen to write and present a complete 20-minute script (which few companies choose to do.)
Last year was TONIGHT'S SPECIAL, a slice of behind-the-dining-room restaurant life. It received a strong response, and since, has been accepted to be performed in a one-act festival in Lawrence, KS this coming November.

For this year, spurred by the continuing controversy over open, color-blind, gender-blind, everything-blind casting, a new script was created entitled AUDITION.

In this slice of behind-the-casting-room theatre life, I was lucky to cast Colleen Backer as my theatre partner (I played a crazed theatre director) and Jennelle Gilreath (who had been in my cast when I directed THE FLICK for R-S Theatrics) as an actress with a very unusual resume.

The show played well (to theatre types and civilians). While we won't gloat about this, we received many comments that this was the best thing anyone saw during The Crawl (we think, no doubt, because it was a complete little play), and Jennelle, doing her offstage work as a bartender at the Muny, heard the same compliment many times.
If you want to see what they were on about, take a look at the script, on the Past Productions page.

 


St Louis Theatre Snob

AUDITION by Joe Hanrahan • presented by The Midnight Company with Colleen Backer, Jennelle Gilreath and Joe Hanrahan

A producer (Colleen Backer) and a post-modern theatre director (Joe Hanrahan) are auditioning actors for their upcoming production of Thornton Wilder's, Our Town. The producer wants to reflect societal changes with gender-neutral, color-blind casting, but the director has a vision for his deconstructed concept of Our Town, and is particular about who should play what. They call in an actress (Jennelle Gilreath) to read for the role of Emily Webb, and she's come a long way to audition. In fact, she's come all the way from outer-space. In Hanrahan's short play, it's been about three years since human/alien hybrids have been sent to earth after our own population started to decline. There's a little talk of government secrets, and apparently everyone's still getting used to the idea. The actress walks in sporadic movements, has a weird speech pattern, but wouldn't you know it, once she settles in to read for the part, she nails it. It's a great little play by Hanrahan, who also gives us a fine performance, along with Backer, and Gilreath as a mercurial, but talented actress.




 

 


 



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