THE HUDDERSFIELD THESPIANS ARE BACK – AND WE NEED YOU!!!
With the anticipated lowering of restrictions, and the return to a more recognisable pattern of life, the Huddersfield Thespians will be returning to the stage of the LBT this autumn, and we need your help to bring life to our first two productions.
Before the pandemic, the Thespians were deep into rehearsals for TEECHERS by John Godber, and it is with this production that we intend to start again where we left off. However, life has changed for two of the three members of the cast, and so we are looking for:
2 FEMALE ACTORS – preferably aged under 30, and with a playing age that they must look like teenagers.
They will play the parts of Gail and Hobby respectively (the part of Salty has been carried over from the cancelled 2020 production.)
Teechers is a play within a play in which three students (Salty, Gail and Hobby) put on a performance to their teachers. Everything in the play is reduced to the bare essentials, with very little set and the three actors playing twenty other parts. Each character is a student acting the part of a teacher, dinner lady etc so you are in fact playing two characters at any one time. As a result the style of acting has to be exaggerated and energetic.
This production will go into rehearsal in early August for performance at the end of September 2021.
Our second #Season102 play will be ABIGAIL’S PARTY, Mike Leigh’s renowned satirical look at 1970s surburbia.
For this we’re looking for:
Beverly Moss
An ex-department store cosmetics demonstrator, who despite her “sophisticated” tastes and carefully groomed appearance, was described by critic Michael Coveney as; “undoubtedly a monster. But she is also a deeply sad and vulnerable monster… The whole point about Beverly is that she is childless, and there is a sense in which that grotesque exterior carapace is a mask of inner desolation.” Leigh describes Beverly as “an aspirational working class girl who is totally preoccupied with appearances and received notions of behaviour and taste. A bundle of contradictions, she espouses the idea of people freely enjoying themselves, yet endlessly bullies everybody into doing what she wrongly thinks they’ll enjoy, or what is good for them. But, while she may be perceived as monstrous, she is in fact vulnerable, insecure and sad”.
Laurence Moss
An estate agent with “Wibley Webb”. Laurence is Beverly’s husband, and the pair frequently argue. He aspires to the finer things in life: leather-bound Shakespeare, prints of Van Gogh and Lowry paintings, and Beethoven, which he forces on his guests at unfortunate moments. He seems powerless to compete with Beverly’s more flamboyant persona, and compensates by working too much. While Laurence starts off behaving normally during the party, as he becomes increasingly hen-pecked by his wife, he begins to act in a more neurotic manner, to the point where he too becomes an annoyance to his guests. While Susan welcomes the increasing “cosmopolitanism” of the area, Laurence does not.
Tony
Tony works in computing—merely as a computer operator, his wife twice points out—and used to play professional football for Crystal Palace but it “didn’t work out”. Tony is quiet throughout most of the play, usually appearing uneasy and giving one-word answers, but towards the end he becomes somewhat irate and quick-tempered, particularly with his wife. At one point, Beverly asks Angela if he is violent. “No, he’s not violent. Just a bit nasty. Like, the other day, he said to me, he’d like to sellotape my mouth. And that’s not very nice, is it?” “It certainly isn’t, Ange!” replies Beverly. Leigh later attributed Tony’s aggression to an underlying shyness and self-consciousness.
Angela
Tony’s wife. A nurse, Angela appears very meek and somewhat childlike, unintelligent and tactless. She cannot drive; Tony does not wish her to do so. Interested in the mundane and commonplace, much to her husband’s annoyance, she comes into her own when Sue feels queasy and after Laurence suffers a heart attack. Leigh noted that “underneath Angela’s apparent silliness is the tough, practical reliability of an experienced working nurse.
Susan
Sue was getting divorced at the same time the other characters were getting married, as pointed out by Angela. A quiet character who does not really have the courage to say no, she is the only woman visibly not “dressed-up” for the gathering; clearly, she would rather be elsewhere. Sue’s 15-year old daughter Abigail is holding the party from which the play’s title is derived. Her 11-year old son Jeremy has gone to stay elsewhere. Sue appears to be anxious about the party, and at one point is sick in the bathroom.
All the characters are friends or partners of the others, so they would ideally be of a similar age to each other, within an age spread of 35-55.
This production will be performed in late November 2021, with rehearsals beginning in late September/ early October.
If you are interested, please email casting@ huddersfieldthespians.co.uk as soon as possible. The deadline for registering an interest is FRIDAY 9TH JULY 2021 for Teechers and FRIDAY 23RD JULY 2021 for Abigail’s Party.