EXTENDED AUDITIONS and CALLBACKS for
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY and HARVEY
7 pm on TUESDAY, MAY 28th 2013
Appleseed Productions
116 W Glen Avenue, Syracuse NY 13205
Call (315) 492-9766 for more information.
No preparation required.
The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter
Directed by John Brackett
(September, 2013 Production)
Character Profiles
Stanley - An emotionally troubled man in his thirties. Paranoid, dark, and very clever. Stanley’s disposition suddenly turns sullen at the news of new boarders in the boarding house where he resides. He claims to be an accomplished pianist who is trying to get back on his feet, but his reliability is unclear. It may or may not be his birthday.
Goldberg - An attractive, charismatic and charming leader. A man in his fifties. His past is vague, but he clearly has a dark history, and his presence brings a sense of menace. He is a brilliant manipulator, with a sinister and charming side.
McCann - Goldberg’s Irish henchman of thirty. He’s a bit of a thug, and an imposing figure who serves as the muscle of the operation. Good at what he does, but oddly nervous about it in anticipation.
Petey - A working class man in his sixties who owns a boarding house with his wife, Meg. Petey is a deck chair attendant at a nearby beach. He is a gentle man. When pushed, though, he will try to stand up for what-be believes.
Meg - Petey’s wife, a woman in her sixities. She is sweet, dotty, and deeply and inexplicably attached to Stanley. She appears to be oblivious to the underlying menace of the situation.
Lulu - Working class girl in her twenties. Pretty, common and extremely vulnerable.
Harvey
by Mary Chase
Directed by Roy Van Norstrand
(October, 2013 Production)
Characters Profiles
Ethel Chauvenet - an old friend of the family. She is a member of the town’s social circle, which Veta wants Myrtle to break into, and so they both flatter her and curry her favor.
Betty Chumley (the doctor's wife) - more concerned with socializing than with science: told that her husband has to examine a patient, she tells him, “Give a little quick diagnosis, Willie — we don’t want to be late to the party.”
Dr. William B. Chumley - an esteemed psychiatrist and the head of the sanitarium, “Chumley’s Rest,” to which Veta has Elwood taken. He is a difficult, exacting man, feared by his subordinates, unwilling to tolerate his mistakes.
Elwood P. Dowd - the central character of the play, a friendly eccentric who spends his days and nights in the taverns of his unnamed town. Elwood’s best friend is Harvey, an invisible six and a half-foot-tall rabbit. The play leaves open several possibilities regarding exactly what Harvey is, whether he is a figment of Elwood’s imagination, as the psychiatrists would like to believe, or he is, as Elwood asserts, a supernatural being known as a pooka.
Judge Omar Gaffney - an old family friend of the Dowds, a representative of the people in town who are accustomed to seeing Elwood talking to Harvey and who do not think anything of it.
Miss Johnson - listed in the Cast of Characters as “a cateress,” but her dialog in the play is tagged “Maid.” She only appears briefly in the first act: when Veta asks if she has seen the guest list, she says, “No, I haven’t Mrs. Simmons,” and leaves promptly.
Nurse Ruth Kelly - a sympathetic character, a pretty young woman who appears to have some sort of love/hate relationship with Dr. Sanderson.
Dr. Lyman Sanderson - young, for a psychiatrist, but very qualified — Dr. Chumley has picked him out of the twelve possible assistants that he tried. He is just as infatuated with Nurse Kelly as she is with him, but he only reveals his concern indirectly.
Myrtle - a young woman, the daughter of Veta. The main reason why she and her mother are concerned about their standing in the community is that they both are concerned that Myrtle find a man to marry.
Veta Louise Simmons, - Elwood’s sister. She joins the play’s two opposing forces, logic and imagination.
Wilson - the muscle of Chumley’s Rest, a devoted orderly responsible for handling the patients who will not cooperate voluntarily.
