Flux Seeks Fine Thespians

Got this email today from Gus Schulenberg of Flux Ensemble:

Hey friends,

Flux is in the process of casting our 2009-10 season, and we're holding invited auditions this Saturday the 7th from 10AM to 6PM. If you see a role for you or any fabulous actor you know, please contact our casting director Christina Shipp at fluxcasting@gmail.com. All shows will be under the Equity Showcase contract. Space is limited, so please only forward this to actors you would highly recommend.

We're looking to cast roles in the following plays:

Pretty Theft
by Adam Szymkowicz
directed by Angela Astle
Rehearsals begin March 24th
Runs at the Access April 23rd through May 16th

The Lesser Seductions of History
by August Schulenburg
directed by Heather Cohn
Rehearses in September, plays in October, location TBD

J.B.
by Archibald MacLeish
directed by Kelly O'Donnell
January - February of 2010

For Pretty Theft, we are casting the following roles:
Suzy, 18, the attention-seeking bad girl at school, any ethnicity, a charismatic disaster
Ballerina 1, 30's, plays many roles, most notably the Waitress, any ethnicity, must be a versatile actress with solid ballet training
Ballerina 2, 20's, plays many roles, most notably the Supervisor, any ethnicity, must be a versatile actress with solid ballet training

For The Lesser Seductions of History, we are casting the following roles:
Martha, 20-30: deeply spiritual woman who is transformed by the events of the 60's from secretary to radical activist, African-American
Barry, 20-30: former baseball pitcher turned soldier, only feels safe in the middle of a fight, white
One, 20-30: a Goddess of history, charismatic, lonely and dangerous; must be able to play many roles, any ethnicity

For J.B., we are casting the following roles:
Job, 30s-40s: successful banker who has everything taken away, must project confidence and power, actor with wide wide emotional range needed, any ethnicity.
Zuss: 30s to 60s: an out of work actor who plays God, any ethnicity or gender.
Nickles: 20s to 50s: an out of work actor who plays Satan, any ethnicity or gender.
Sarah, 30-40's: Job's wife, a deeply pious woman who turn against God, actress with wide emotional range needed, any ethnicity.
Messengers, any age: angels of God's will who take on troubling human form, funny and versatile actors of any ethnicity or gender.
Comforters, any age: representatives of science, history and religion who attempt to comfort Job in his suffering, any ethnicity or gender.
NOTE: This is a verse play that requires actors very comfortable with heightened language.

Sphere: Related Content

Flux Ensemble Flexes

Received this email tonight -- I'll be very excited to see this.

FLUX THEATRE ENSEMBLE PRESENTS
The Angel Eaters Trilogy

THREE PLAYS IN REP BY JOHNNA ADAMS
Angel Eaters directed by Jessi D. Hill
Rattlers directed by Jerry Ruiz
8 Little Antichrists directed by Kelly O'Donnell

Begins November 3, 2008

Flux Theatre Ensemble concludes its 2008 Season of Transformation with the world premiere of Johnna Adams' epic Angel Eaters Trilogy. The Trilogy follows three generations of a family cursed with the gift of raising people from the dead. The three plays of the Trilogy, Angel Eaters, Rattlers, and 8 Little Antichrists, will run in rep beginning November 3 at The Wings Theatre, 154 Christopher Street. The production will run through November 22. On Saturdays, intrepid audiences will be able to catch all three shows in chronological order.

In Angel Eaters (the first in the trilogy), Joann, a slow girl growing up poor in 1930's Oklahoma, claims to talk to angels and raise animals from the dead. But when her father dies, the angel's message takes a darker turn. As her mother hires a pair of carnies to raise her dead husband, Joann struggles to understand if her growing power is good or evil, and whether she should fight God to bring her father back.

The cast of Angel Eaters is Tiffany Clementi, Ken Glickfeld*, Ian Heitzman, Catherine Porter*, Marnie Schulenburg, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Gregory Waller*, and Cotton Wright.*

Rattlers, set in the 1970's, follows the children of the survivors of Angel Eaters. Unwilling to accept her sister Kate's death, Ernelle kidnaps Osley, her ex-lover and uses dark methods of persuasion to convince him to raise Kate from the dead. Meanwhile, Kate and Ernelle's mother, believing her daughter was murdered, seeks revenge, while the two men who may have killed her share memories of the woman they loved. This hauntingly intimate play examines how love can drive good people to acts of unspeakable violence.

The cast of Rattlers is Matthew Crosby, David Jackson, Becky Kelly, Jason Paradine, Amy Stewart*, Jane Lincoln Taylor*, and Richard Watson.*

Set 20 years in the future, 8 Little Antichrists (the final play of the trilogy) imagines a dystopia where Disney Corporation runs jails and SONY clones workers. Skipping ahead two generations, 8 Little Antichrists follows Osley's (from Rattlers) grandchildren - Jeremy and Melanie - in their quest to stop the apocalypse and save the world from the antichrists. This story is the thrilling conclusion to a three play battle between good and evil, love and loss.

The cast of 8 Little Antichrists is Jake Alexander, Candice Holdorf*, Felicia Hudson*, Nora Hummel*, Elise Link, Joe Mathers, Rebecca McHugh, Zack Robidas, and August Schulenburg.

The scenic design for The Angel Eaters Trilogy is by Caleb Levengood; costume design is by Emily DeAngelis; lighting design is by Jennifer Rathbone; sound design is by Asa Wember; original composition is by Gerard Keenan; dramaturgy is by Kay Mitchell, and fight direction is by Shannon Michael Wamser.

Johnna Adams' play, Sans Merci, won the 2008 Reva Shiner Award and was a 2006 finalist for both the Princess Grace Award and the Abingdon Theater Company's Christopher Brian Wolk Award. This play was also a semifinalist for the O'Neill and Playlabs Festivals. She has twice won the OC Weekly's Best New Play Award (2006: The Sacred Geometry of S & M Porn, 2002: Cockfighters). Cockfighters won a silver medal in the 2003 Pinter Prize and was a finalist in the 2002 playwrights First Award.

Director Jessi D. Hill (Angel Eaters) was most recently Artistic Director of Stage Left Theatre Company in Chicago where she directed and/or produced over 40 world premiere new plays. While living in Chicago from 1997-2004, she worked at some of the city's finest theatres including About Face, A Red Orchid, Chicago Dramatists, Court, Factory, Famous Door, Irish Repertory, Live Bait, Lookingglass, Mary Arrchie, Organic, Shakespeare Rep., Steppenwolf and Victory Gardens. She recently served as a Director-in-Residence at The Ensemble Studio Theatre. Jessi received her MFA in Directing from Yale School of Drama.

Director Jerry Ruiz (Rattlers) recently directed Under the Skin at Theatre 54 and Chicano Sketches at Yale School of Drama. Other credits: (NYC) Bohemian Lights (Repertorio Español), Translation of Signs (HERE Arts Center), Perfectomundo (EST); (Regional) Blood Wedding, Labyrinth of Desire, Murder of Crows, 4h Club. Upcoming: Waiting for the Hearse (Mixed Blood). Jerry is a two-time recipient of the Van Lier Director's Fellowship and is a Directing Fellow at Second Stage. Jerry received his MFA in Directing from UC-San Diego.

Director Kelly O'Donnell (8 Little Antichrists) recently directed August Schulenburg's Riding the Bull which won the New York Fringe Festival's Village Voice Audience Favorite Award. With Flux, she has also directed Life is a Dream and Rue. Kelly has worked at the Pennsylvania, Orlando and Utah Shakespeare Festivals, the Walnut Street Theatre, Arden Theatre, Alchemy Theatre, the Cape Playhouse and the Orlando Fringe Festival. She is a graduate of DeSales University's theatre program.

Flux Theatre Ensemble, founded in 2006, has already proved to be a vital force in the New York Independent Theatre community. Flux's mission is to use the transformative power of theatre to re-imagine the boundaries of human connection. Through new, classical, and community-based work, Flux explores the surprising evolution of the human spirit. Its plays are character-driven, globally-engaged and uniquely theatrical. Through continuous collaboration, Flux will grow an ensemble of multi-faceted theatre professionals whose work will challenge, delight and transform its community.

Flux currently consists of seven core members, six associate members, and continues to expand its base of affiliated artists through programs like Flux Sunday, a weekly play development series, and Have Another and Food:Soul, public performances sharing the progress of that development.

Flux is the proud recipient of two NYC Fringe Festival Awards, in 2007 the Village Voice Audience Favorite Award for August Schulenburg's Riding the Bull and in 2008 for Heather Cohn's direction of Other Bodies. Nytheatre.com calls Flux "a smart company, unafraid of challenging material, and they make a point of engaging their audience at every turn. I left the theatre excited to see what they offer up next."

The Angel Eaters Trilogy plays Monday through Thursday at 8:00pm, Friday at 7:00pm & 9:30pm, and Saturday & Sunday at 1:00pm, 4:00pm, and 8:00pm. Tickets are regularly $18 and may be purchased online at www.fluxtheatre.org or www.theatermania.com. For a great deal, audiences may purchase a 3-Show-Package for only $40. Visit www.fluxtheatre.org for details.

Sphere: Related Content

Three Cheers for Gus Schulenberg's Other Bodies

So last night I started seeing Fringe productions that friends of mine either wrote or directed or are in (or some combination thereof). Gus Schulenberg is rather a new friend -- I was knocked out by his Riding the Bull in last year's Fringe, which is how I became friends with the talented Will Ditterline and Liz Dailey, who are expecting twins (!!) in about a month. (Gus' company is Flux Theatre Ensemble.)

Anyway, together with Will and Liz, we took in Gus' Other Bodies last night -- and wow! Really terrific piece with some extraordinarily gorgeous moments and equally gorgeous language. It's a hard play, perhaps, to follow and to swallow -- the surrealism, the mixed messaging, the strong current of seeming unsurety in terms of where Gus is going, though I thought Heather Cohn, who directed, always made sure the piece seemed as if it was definitively headed somewhere even when the script was strongly hinting otherwise. That's a nice tension to have and it turned out to be pretty gripping from an audience's point of view.

In the second act there was, I thought, one of the most beautiful monologues I'd heard in a dog's age. After the play I asked Gus if he'd mind me posting it here because I felt his dramatization of agony, and his use of imagery, metaphor, and emotional gradients was magnificent. Gus sent me the speech in question this morning and so I am indeed posting it. Don't ask me for the context of the play -- you'll have to see it for yourself. And I know there'll be another run of Other Bodies very soon.

DOCTOR
This isn’t theology, Terry, this is fact. This is science, for every cause, an effect. And what cause would effect such suffering? Life can create an infinite variety of feathers and microbes and marsupials but can’t keep its own cells from failing? That is the simplest of tasks, why should it fail? And why should we be created so deeply aware of the suffering that comes from the failing? If that is the effect of life, and in the end, it always is; what on earth could be the cause? A grand device that desires suffering, that is the only cause that God can be; and can you picture Him up there, quivering on his greasy throne, salivating at all the suffering he’ll be dining on every day? He must have the subtlest of palettes to appreciate each nuance of despair.

The thrashing gristle of the car accident, the grey meeliness of lung cancer, the brittle wafer of bone cancer, the faded bouquet of Alzheimers’, the sour chew of Multiple Sclerosis, the hot buzz of malaria, the tequila shot of a stroke, the sweet pate of diabetes, the long cabernet of blood cancer, the warm beef of a heart attack, and that’s just the individual courses, he has the all you can eat buffets of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and we even give him the dessert of war on the house; and yet each and every one of us comes to that final gate and God says, “yes, yes, I know, so sorry about the sickle cell sarcoma, but wasn’t the monarch butterfly pretty good work? Aren’t you grateful for all the late summers and girls in skirts and water falls and good friends and board games I gave you? And how about love, huh? What’s a little cancer to true love?”

And from the beginning of time we have bought it, because he made us nostalgic, he made us sentimental, he made us remember pleasure better than pain. And so this judge pretends that there is a moral to the story, when there is only his mouth gorging into the wreck of our lives.

Terry, I won’t make that mistake. When death comes for me, I won’t bargain away a thing. I will take each and every betrayal that I have cataloged and I will call him to account and when I do…oh, look, breakfast, are you sure you’re not hungry?

Sphere: Related Content