Monthly Archives: March 2020

Richard Zenk is excited to announce auditions for PYGMALION Livecast. PYGMALION “inspired” the musical – My Fair Lady. The production will be live cast and made available on YouTube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)

As easy as 3, 2, 1:
3 rehearsals (or less)
2 recordings (or one)
1 live performance

All auditions, rehearsals and the performance will be done from your home. To participate in auditions, rehearsals and performances, you must have a device (PC, Mac, cell phone) that fits the audio and video requirements of Zoom (www.zoom.us) and a room that is well-lit without glare from windows and quiet. Finally, you must audition and perform in one or more of the British accents referenced in the play.

The script is available to read (and reference during rehearsals and the performance) at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3825/3825-h/3825-h.htm

Have tech skills and/or sound effects skills? Contact me. 🙂

Patrons who view the show will be encouraged to donate to their favorite community theater.

Live Video Auditions: Saturday, April 4 and Sunday, April 5 from 4-5pm. Acting talent of any race, ethnicity, disability, size, sexual identity, age, and gender/gender identity are encouraged to audition.

Sign up at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0a4ea4ae29abfb6-pygmalion

Rehearsals are to be scheduled weekday evenings and weekends between April 8 to 17th. Live performance will be on April 18 or 19.

PYGMALION
George Bernard Shaw

Roles:

• Eliza Doolittle – a common flower girl, feral and feisty, all instinct, determined to better herself and not get kicked in the process. She is a strong-willed street urchin whose journey to a more refined young woman has many stops along the way, from the patina of elegance that hasn’t become inherent, to an educated, far-seeing young woman who suddenly discovers both longing, other ambitions, and appetite, along with a new understanding that far from being elevated and set free she has simply exchanged one kind of box for another.
• Professor Henry Higgins– He is a bachelor who specializes in phonetics and who is an acclaimed authority on the subject of dialects, accents, and phonetics.
• Colonel Pickering– A distinguished retired officer and the author of Spoken Sanskrit. He has come to England to meet the famous Professor Henry Higgins. He is courteous and polite to Eliza, and he shares in Higgins’ experiments in phonetics in teaching Eliza to speak as a duchess.
• Mrs. Pearce – the long-suffering housekeeper for Henry Higgins. Tart, can be intimidating, keeps his house running amid the chaos, but can also be charmed by her irascible, unpredictable boss. She waivers between horror and wild pity for the waif of a young woman who has been thrust under her roof.
• Alfred Doolittle – Eliza’s father, a dustman, a cockney rogue, cocky, brilliant in his own understanding of his own morality and code of ethics, exceedingly clever with language and the cat who always lights on his feet, proud of being one of the undeserving poor, and as a result, finds himself elevated to middle-class respectability with, to him, horrifying consequences..
• Mrs. Higgins – Henry’s mother, wise, intelligent, with a wry, dry sense of humor, she is herself broad- minded in her thinking, but likes to observe societal conventions and is constantly challenged by her son’s unconventional, occasionally boorish ways. Not above going against her son when his blind arrogance deserves it.
• Mrs. Eynsford Hill – financially of the middle-class, but perhaps used to belong to the upper class, and still behaving as though that’s her milieu. She longs to still be part of good society, and her financial strictures very much get in her way. The mother of Freddy and Clara, she is trying to do her best for her children, with great compassion for their youth and situation.
• Freddy Eynsford Hill – somewhat bumbling, ineffectual, but charming in an earnest, young gentlemanly British sort of way, henpecked a bit by his sister, eager to please, well-meaning, eventually bowled over and utterly charmed by the vision that is the new Eliza Doolittle.
• Clara Eynsford Hill – the daughter of Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, she feels the financial restrictions keenly and this constant need to grasp for what they can’t quite reach makes her shrill, occasionally unkind, and preoccupied with fitting in with the latest trends in both society and fashion. By turns petulant, yearning, snobbish, and gullibly charmed.
• Ensemble – two men and two women to play bystanders, servants, and others of various classes, ages – so facilities with accents and characters a plus.