Auditions for Department of Theatre and Dance shows are open to UT Austin students in any major, though Theatre and Dance majors will receive casting priority. General auditions are held in October and February for the following term (auditions in October for Spring productions; auditions in February for productions the following Fall). Information will be posted here in advance of those auditions.
Announcing General Auditions for Spring 2024
Friday and Saturday, October 13 & 14, 6pm-10pm; Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
Callbacks will be October 15-18, location and time TBD
Audition material – please prepare 2 1-minute monologues, 1 contemporary and 1 Shakespeare
(But if you only have one, we still encourage you to audition with what you have prepared.) Audition form will follow next week.
UTNT 2024
February 29-March 3, 2024
Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
1st Rehearsal: January 16, 2024
Productions:
Watkins or the Playground Play
Written by Emma Watkins, Directed by Jenny Lavery
Playgrounds are designed to be dangerous enough to allow for experimentation, and safe enough to allow those experiments to fail without serious injury. But when Arthur is asked to design a playscape for his daughter’s old elementary school, he must come to terms with the fact the unsettling reality that the world does not operate by the same rules as playgrounds. This is a story about the persistence of hope despite the overwhelming strains being placed on the American educational system. It is a play about learning, growing up, and grown-ups learning to play.
CASTING BREAKDOWN
Austin, 2022.
ARTHUR – 40s. White, masc. Arthur is a single dad, an architect. When his daughter was in third grade, she fell off a piece of playground equipment and got a concussion and had to be in the hospital for two weeks and he really wasn’t sure if she was gonna be OK. Which is why, when she got home safe, he started a side-business creating custom playscapes, with heightened safety parameters.
CLARA – 14. Femme. Arthur’s daughter. Clara is an eighth grader. She has not had her first kiss yet. She is good at Language Arts, History, Art, and Gym. Math less so. She has run cross country for two years in middle school, but now she’s going to audition for the musical instead. Her best friends are Courtney and sometimes Emilia and Zoe. They are all pescatarian.
JEN – 30s. Femme. Jen is a teacher, as of four years ago. Her mom is also a teacher, as of thirty-five years ago. But the last two years haven’t been great years to be a teacher, and all the things that seemed special and sacred about the profession while Jen was growing up seem a lot further away now. Jen wishes people would stop viewing her as soft and kind and altruistic, cause she isn’t really, if they could hear what she’s thinking about them, they would know that. Her mom is those things. Jen isn’t.
The roles of Arthur and Jen may involve intimacy work.
Choreomaniac 1518
Written by Malena Pennycook, Directed by Caley Chase
It's 16th century France and everything is horrible. There's bubonic plague, major agricultural collapse, mass starvation and the leadership is completely corrupt. In the midst of all this, a potato farmer named Mika gets up and begins to dance. She writhes, she shimmies and she shakes as if she has no control over her body. Meanwhile in the Black Forest, a failed labor rebellion leads to the beheading of a child. Suddenly, others begin dancing too. When the clergy tries to contain them, it leads to 400 people dancing in history’s first ever recorded club. Cue techno music. These are the choremaniacs. This is their story. (And it is completely true. Seriously, you can look it up. It's amazing.)
CASTING BREAKDOWN
FRAU BETTY - 20s, femme, a potato farmer and sex worker
FRAU MIKA - 20s, femme, a potato farmer and the first to be afflicted by choreomania
FRAU SEVALLIA - 20s, femme, a potato farmer and devout Christian
FRAU THERA - 20s, femme / NB, a potato farmer and “Fritz” secret leader of the labor rebellion
TYBEE / FEUDAL LORD’S SERVANT - 15, masc, son to Sevallia, a rebel in the forest
MARCUS - 15, masc, a rebel in the forest
FATHER / DOCTOR / FEUDAL LORD - 30s, White, Masc. An infinite power loop.
CHORUS OF DANCERS - members of the town afflicted by the choreomania
Content Warnings: beheadings, sex
The roles of BETTY and FATHER involve intimacy work
Readings:
Tastebuds: The Adventures of Cake and Broccolli
Written by Claire Derriennic
spayce boys
Written by mateo hernandez
Romeo y Juliet
Adapted by KJ Sánchez and Karen Zacarías
Based on The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Directed by Anna Skidis Vargas
April 10-21, 2024
Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
1st Rehearsal: February 19, 2024
Romeo y Juliet is a bilingual adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play of (almost) the same name. The Mexican-American war is coming to a close and peace is tenuous. Two young women from feuding families, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love with one another in a violent place and time.
Setting: 1848, Verona de Alta California
CASTING BREAKDOWN
Benvolio: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. Romeo’s cousin and friend. Tries to keep the peace.
Tybalt: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. Juliet’s cousin. Violent and full of rage.
Capulet: Bilingual, Eng/Esp - Juliet’s father, married to Lady Capulet. Quick tempered. Loves his daughter.
Romeo: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. A romantic. Smart, sensitive, idealistic. Falls in love with Juliet.
Paris: Monolingual, Eng. Juliet’s suitor.
Lady Capulet: Bilingual, Eng/Esp - Juliet’s mother, married to Capulet.
Nurse: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. Nursed Juliet as a baby, and continues to take care of her–vulgar, sentimental, chatty, loyal.
Juliet: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. Young and naïve. Grows up quickly after meeting and falling in love with Romeo.
Mercutio: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. Romeo’s friend. Witty and brooding.
Friar Laurence: Bilingual, Eng/Esp. Knows about potions and herbs. Marries Romeo and Juliet.