GENERAL AUDITION INFORMATION
Too Much Water
A new play by KJ Sanchez
In collaboration with Jenny Mercein and the University of California, Santa Barbara
Ensemble
Directed by Jenny Mercein and Joyelle Ball
PERFORMANCES:
May 6-15, 2016
PERFORMING ARTS THEATER
GENERAL
AUDITIONS:
Monday, March 14
6-10pm
PAT
CALLBACKS:
Monday, March 28th
6pm – 10pm
PAT
Note: Callback information will be posted in the Production Office or on the door of
1507.
1ST REHEARSAL:
Tuesday, March 29th
6pm – 10pm
TBA
REHEARSALS: Typically 20-25 hours per week until tech rehearsals
begin. This play will rehearse Monday – Friday between the hours of 6-10
until tech week. There will be some Friday afternoon rehearsals and
occasional Saturday. There are additional hours for techs and dress
rehearsals leading to performances including a Saturday.
CREDIT: 3 units of THTR 49 and/or 149 will be given to cast members.
AUDITION REQUIREMENTS:
Any full time UCSB student is welcome and encouraged to audition.
The audition sign-up list is posted inside the Production Office. Please sign
up for one 3-minute audition slot and arrive ten minutes prior to your
appointment to fill out audition forms in hallway. Please be prepared to
stay longer than your allotted 3-minute slot should it run long or should
auditions run a little behind schedule.
AUDITION INFORMATION:
SYNOPSIS of Too Much Water
TOO MUCH WATER follows Ophelia's ghost as she revisits Elsinore,
guided by a chorus of contemporary students who double as characters
from Hamlet as well as famous suicides. Shakespeare’s Ophelia is the
quintessential "good girl" who does everything she's told, obeys her family,
and is kind to all. In a play about madness, where everyone is preoccupied
with Hamlet's sanity, on the periphery is someone going truly mad and no
one sees her. Combining found text, transcriptions of interviews with young
people, and highly theatrical movement, TOO MUCH WATER explores the
lives of "good girls,” the social taboos of madness, and the repercussions
and reverberations of suicide. The play, a work-in-progress, received a
workshop in the summer of 2015 as part of UCSB’s summer Launch Pad
series. The cast of the 2016 production will contribute to the development
of the piece.
THE UCSB PRODUCTION TEAM:
Playwright:
Directors:
Scenic Design Consultants:
Lighting Design Consultant:
Sound Design Consultant:
Assistant Director:
Dramaturg/Production Coordinator:
Stage Manager:
Asst. Stage Manager:
PLAYWRIGHT’S BIOGRAPHY:
KJ Sanchez
Jenny Mercein and Joyelle Ball
Jonathan Burman
Melissa Hartman
Mitchell Jakubaka
Peter McMaster
Sophie Carty
Ryder Thornton
Vanessa Guzman
TBA
KJ SANCHEZ is founder/ CEO of American Records Theater Company. KJ
Sanchez and Jenny Mercein co-created the play X’s and O’s, a docudrama
about football and traumatic brain injury, which premiered at Berkeley Rep in
January of 2015 under the direction of Tony award-winning director Tony
Taccone. X’s and O’s received national attention, including feature stories in
The New York Times and NPR’s Weekend Edition. Sanchez and Mercein
received the Rella Lossy Playwright Award from the San Francisco
Foundation. X’s and O’s played at Baltimore Center Stage in December of
this year. As a playwright, she has been produced (select lists) at Asolo Rep,
Actors Theater of Louisville, Two River Theater, Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE,
Berkeley Rep, Round House Theater, Working Classroom, Cornerstone and
Off-Broadway at Urban Stages. She has directed plays by Heather Raffo,
Jose Rivera, Quiara Hudes, Kristoffer Diaz, David Ives and Noel Coward. As
an actress she has been on stages at The Humana Festival (originating the
role of Thyona in Big Love) The Goodman, Berkeley Rep, Long Warf, New
York Theater Workshop and BAM. She is the voice of many characters in the
cartoons Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go. She is a former member of
Anne Bogart’s SITI Company. KJ has taught at UBC, UW, Emerson College,
Bard and Juniata. She is a Fox Fellow, the 2012 Douglas Wollop Fellow, an
Albert Award Nominee and an NEA CDP for directors recipient. As the
producer, director and co-author of ReEntry, KJ has contracted with the
Department of Defense, utilizing the play as post-deployment training for
service members at over thirty military bases and sites throughout the US
and Internationally.
COLLABORATION: We are fortunate to have the playwright in residence
during parts of the rehearsal process to continue the work on the play.
AUDITION PREPARATION:
Please prepare:
- One short monologue from Shakespeare. You are welcome to choose
one from Hamlet, but any Shakespeare piece will do.
AND
- One of the monologue options below from the workshop script. Men
can feel free to do any of the three choices below, including Ophelia.
If you are a singer, please prepare 16 bars of a song of your choice. No
accompaniment is necessary. However, if you play an instrument, feel free
to accompany yourself (provided your instrument is portable).
Ophelia
(Not sure why she doesn’t know) If she died just a few years ago, then…
it’s still fresh enough that I can remember how much I need her… every
once and a while I’ll still forget she’s gone and want to run to her and say,
“Mom, Laertes says I should be careful with Hamlet cuz his responsibility is
to the crown and so even if he does love me, he may have to marry
someone else because I’m not, you know, good enough”
Or if she died a long time ago – if she died in childbirth – if she died giving
birth to me - then all I’ve ever known is dad and brother. Who told me about
clothes? And how to do my hair? And sex and my period and who held me
that first time my heart was crushed in the third grade when I made a card
for that boy and he laughed at it and threw it in the trash and I wanted to
run to my mom… who was there? Who was there to tell me I’m gonna be
fine?
Sarai
I remember when it happened to me. I was dating a guy named Dwayne
and all of a sudden it was like we didn’t even know each other anymore. I
still loved him but it was like he was always mad at me for something. I
didn’t want to hurt him – or didn’t want him to hurt as much as I was hurting
– and the whole thing was just getting so bad that I told him I thought we
should just be friends. And yeah, I think I was hoping he’d say, no things
will get better, I’ll stop doing, you know, all that stuff, I thought he’d change.
But he said ok, let’s break up. And I wanted to still be friends so a couple of
months later I saw him at a party and I was friendly, I cared about him and
well, just wanted to say hi. He looked at me like… and turned away,
wouldn’t say a thing. The next day I had a letter taped to my door. It wasn’t
folded or anything so anyone who walked by could read it. And it was a
long letter, typed, single-spaced. And it went on and on about what a
horrible person I was. He brought up things I had said in private and used
them against me. Like I had said some stuff about my family and in the
letter he called me a traitor to my family. And we hadn’t even slept together
and he called me a slut. This was somebody I trusted, somebody who
made me laugh and who I felt safe with and overnight I didn’t know who he
was.
Austin
I bet that’s not the case if you’re Juliet. I bet for Juliet, it’s harder to fall in
love with Romeo. She does, eventually. Eventually she falls hard. But at
first? She doesn’t. Why would she? Juliet is practical and clever and has a
great sense of humor. And Romeo is impulsive, irrational - he panics, he
has this super sappy ‘romantic’ view of love and zero sense of humor. He’s
humorless. When he looks at her, he’s not really looking at her, he’s
looking at his ideal of her. And at the end? He freaks out. Doesn’t even
take a minute to look at Juliet, check to see if she’s not dead, no, he panics
and goes right for the poison – which by the way is a pretty easy way to go.
Not Juliet. She’s gotta do it the hard way. Do you know how painful it would
be to pull a dagger into your own chest? You gotta break through your own
sternum, pull the blade right into your own lung – every neuron in your
brain screaming in pain and you gotta keep pulling till that dagger reaches
your heart.
If you have questions or need more information contact Jenny Mercein at
jmercein@gmail.com.