Audition dates: August 15 - 16, 2010
7:00 pm each evening
The director, Marcie Warner, is looking for five women (playing ages 20-65) and six men (playing ages 28-65).
Following are more in-depth descriptions:
Elwood P. Dowd (mid-40s) is the central character of the play, a friendly eccentric, whose best friend is Harvey, an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit. Elwood is a charmer, always pleasant, elegant, polite and inviting.
Veta Louise Simmons (late 40s-mid-50s) is Elwood’s sister. Veta joins the play’s two opposing forces, logic and imagination. She is embarrassed with Elwood and afraid that his eccentricities are keeping her daughter, Myrtle, from landing a suitable husband. Veta is a comic character and is just as unstable in her own way as is her brother.
Myrtle Mae Simmons (early-mid 20s) is the daughter of Veta. Myrtle is less charitable about Elwood’s odd behavior than Veta, making arrangements to sell the house as soon as he is taken off to the sanitarium. Myrtle is mainly concerned with her own prospects to find a man, which Uncle Elwood and Harvey keep her from doing.
Dr. Lyman Sanderson (late 20s-early30s) is a young psychiatrist, but very qualified. He is infatuated with Nurse Kelly but insists that his interest in her is purely as a doctor.
Ruth Kelly (mid-20s) is a sympathetic character, a sweet, pretty young woman and good nurse who appears to have some sort of love/hate relationship with Dr. Sanderson.
Dr. William Chumley (mid 50s – 60s) is 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 their mistakes. His experience with Elwood and Harvey bring out a different side of him.
Betty Chumley (50s) is Dr. Chumley’s wife (Act I). She is a pleasant, likeable person. Like Veta, she is more concerned with socializing than with science.
Judge Omar Gaffney (late 50s – 60s) is kind and concerned, an old family friend of the Dowds as well as their lawyer, a representative of the people in town who are accustomed to seeing Elwood talking to Harvey and who do not think anything of it. (Act II)
Ethel Chauvenet (60s) is an old friend of the family. She is a member of the town’s social circle, and is delighted to see Elwood, whom she has not seen in a while, until he introduces her to Harvey: then, suspecting his sanity, she hastily apologizes and leaves. A fun, character cameo role. (Act I)
Duane Wilson (late 20s – 30s) is the muscle of Chumley’s Rest, a devoted orderly responsible for handling the patients who will not cooperate voluntarily. He is crude but completely devoted to Dr. Chumley, and flirts with Myrtle who seems interested in him.
E. J. Lofgren (35 – 50) is the cab driver who appears at the end of the play and makes Veta realize that the treatment that is supposed to make Elwood stop seeing Harvey might drain him of his kind personality. His brief appearance is very significant.
Production dates: October 21 - 31, 2010
Click here to download an audition form. |
