Auditions in Round Rock for 'It Could Be Any One of Us' by Alan Ayckbourn, Sam Bass Theatre, November 26 and 27

Sam Bass Theatre announces open auditions for It Could Be Any One of Us, a comedy murder mystery by Alan Ayckbourn.

Auditions will be held from 7 PM - 9 PM on November 26th & 27th at Sam Bass Theatre's Old Depot Stage at 400 N. Lee Street, in Memorial Park, in Round Rock, TX (click for map). This production will be directed by Frank Benge. Auditions will consist of cold readings from the script. 

Production will run February 8, 2013 - March 2, 2013.

In a remote and dilapidated country house, three siblings share an antagonistic life together. All are artists who have failed to live up to their own, let alone anyone else’s, expectations. The older brother Mortimer is a composer who has never realized his youthful potential, his sister Jocelyn is a writer of thrillers who has never completed a novel and Brinton is a painter, who does not even let his family see his work. When Jocelyn’s partner, Norris – an insurance investigator with aspirations to be a real detective – arrives home and interrupts a recital by Mortimer, a row breaks out in which Mortimer reveals he intends to disinherit the family and give the house to a former student, Wendy Jones.

Wendy, now a married mother, visits the house and promptly survives three attempts on her life. With most of the family away for the evening, Mortimer goes to bed and Wendy – with Norris watching over her – also attempts to sleep.

A storm and the old house conspire to terrify Wendy and Norris, their terror compounded when Mortimer enters with a mortal blow to the head. With the police unwilling to take Norris’s claims of murder seriously, he attempts to solve the murder pinpointing three suspects: Jocelyn, Brinton and Jocelyn's 16 year old daughter, Amy.

Note: The killer is decided randomly during a card game at the end of Act 1, scene 1. For each of the three possible suspects (Jocelyn, Brinton or Amy), there is a slight variation of scenes at three points in the play.

Roles Available:
Mortimer Chalke (MALE) A composer; mid-fifties -- Jocelyn Polegate (FEMALE) A writer, his sister; late forties -- Brinton Chalke (MALE) A painter, his brother; early forties --Amy Polegate (FEMALE) Jocelyn's daughter; sixteen -- Norris Honeywell (MALE) A detective; mid-forties -- Wendy Windwood (FEMALE) Mid-thirties

Upcoming: Round and Round the Garden by Alan Ayckbourn, Red Dragon Players, Austin High School, October 18 - 27

present

Round and Round the Garden
by Alan Ayckbourn

You can purchase tickets for ROUND & ROUND THE GARDEN from the theater or online. Visit www.showtix4u.com to buy your tickets online.

You will not want to miss this fun evening of comedy, music, dancing, and lots of fun!

Show dates and Times

18^th, 19^th , 24^th , 26^th , & 27^th @ 7:00 PM

21^st @ 2:30 PM

$7 per adult / $5 per student 

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn, Red Dragon Players at Austin High School, December 3 - 12

Their institution is ancient by Austin standards, with 80 years of theatre history under its present name, but the Red Dragon Players themselves are younger than most thespians in the town. They perform at Stephen F. Austin High School, at 1715 W. César Chavez near Mo-Pac, in the Praes Theatre, an impressive and well-equipped space with stadium seating three-quarters of the way around the playing area.

The Red Dragons' Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn played the first two weekends in December. It was an impressive, crisp and bittersweet comedy, delivered under the direction of Billy Dragoo with the snap and assurance of professional theatre.

High school players are necessarily young in years, but as this piece proves, through the consensual make believe of theatre they can transform themselves convincingly into characters of any age without the guignol of heavy makeup or caricature. For example, Brian Schwartz became Harvey, the sour 60-year-old uncle of this English family, with little more than a cursory touch of white in his hair for the first act. He inhabited that misanthropic, distrustful personality throughout with concentration and fierceness, providing the audience with moments of delighted laughter in the second act when he was repeatedly roused at night by untoward goings-on in the downstairs living room.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Season's Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn, Austin High School Red Dragon Players, December 3 - 12

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, December 15


Found on-line at the site for Austin High School's Red Dragon Players:

Our December offering is Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings. It's a wonderfully clever play about a dysfunctional British Christmas.

This show, which features a nine-actor ensemble, concerns half a dozen friends and relatives who are celebrating Christmas at the home of Belinda and Neville. Squabbles -- some petty, others not so -- break out and lead to an apparent tragedy. As in all Ayckbourn plays, the humor is sometimes gentle, sometimes hilarious, yet always tempered with cynicsm and just a little darkness.

It runs two consecutive weeks, Thursday through Sunday (December 3, 4, 5 and 10, 11, 12). The curtain time for all shows is 7:00 p.m.

Tickets are $7. Seating is general admission; the house opens at 6:40 p.m. Those wishing to purchase tickets may call 414-7311.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .