Meet the Cast of "Five Women"!!!!

Or some of the cast, anyway. I'm going to spread these out some over the next few weeks.

Let's start with our lone guy (poor Felipe, he came to rehearsal on Monday night and had to sit through a LOT of us girls talking about all sorts of stuff with regard to our characters -- sexual promiscuity, weight issues, Mommy issues, Daddy issues, all sorts of stuff ... he was a very good sport, but I felt really bad for him).

Typically I like to post headshots of the cast, but I don't have any of today's featured cast members. I did, however, find a cast photo from LTA's The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, in which Felipe played Comet and Laura played Blitzen. So here's that:

Felipe would be the sullen-looking reindeer in the green shirt in the lower left corner. Laura is in the beige suit, with curly black hair.

Name: Felipe Cabezas
Role: Tripp

Favorite roles you’ve played already: Wallace in Women and Wallace; Graham in Cleansed

Roles you’d like to play someday: Jules in Boom; the frat dawg in Red Light Winter; and others whose names I can’t remember right now.

What are some of your non-theatre hobbies? Playing sports, photography, watching stand-up comedy.

What is your dream job? Astronaut

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? Anything chocolate. In fact, the more vicious the name, the better. If some company made a “Lethal Fudge Injection Chocolate,” I would be ALL OVER that.

What was your very first email address and/or IM screen name? Why did you choose it? YpshnaAfro. Ypshna was a nickname (which was only really used for a month or two), and I had a 'fro when I made the screen name.

Who’s your celebrity cheat? You know, the celeb you heart so much that your significant other says “Okay, fine, if you ever meet that person, you can hook up once just to say you did it, and I won’t get mad.” Manuela Martelli. Google her. (Erin says: I did, and her pic is below. She's cute.)

Name: Laura J. Scott
Role: Mindy

Favorite roles you've played already: Favorite role was Veta in Harvey, favorite production was Saturday Sunday Monday at LTA.

Roles you'd like to play someday: Volumnia in Coriolanus

Least favorite thing about your character in Five Women: She's a graceful klutz like me, a little too close to home.

What are some of your non-theatre hobbies? Raising my daughter Hannah. Training my cats to leash walk. Pretending I'm foreign when an annoyingly stupid (American) tourist in DC asks me for directions.

What is your dream job? To be part of a rep acting company where I have the luxury of being paid/getting benefits to act every day.

If you had to live for a month off of either corndogs or Big Macs, which would it be? I'd starve first.

What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey

Who's your celebrity cheat? David Strathairn (Erin says: Just for kicks, I'll give you guys a pic of him too.)

2009 Season and Director Applications

Happy Monday, all! I think this may be the first time in history that I have updated EARLY.

But we have exciting news that must be shared!!!

CCT with 2nd Flight Theatre Company has announced its 2009 season! You all know that we're kicking off with Five Women Wearing the Same Dress (or you should, since it's all I've been blogging about for weeks), but we have chosen the rest of our season and are ready to begin looking for directors who are interested in working with us on these two shows.

Our second show of the season, going up after Five Women... in late spring, is Flight of the Lawnchair Man by Peter Ullian and Robert Lindsey-Nassif, a fun and slightly campy musical about Wal*Mart employee Jerry Gorman who, with the help of his girlfriend Gracie, achieves his dream of flight by suspending a lawnchair from 400 helium balloons. (Side note: Some Guy in Oregon actually did this.)

Rounding off our season in the fall will be John Guare's award-winning Six Degrees of Separation, a story about a con artist and the relationship he develops with an older couple he's scammed. The original Broadway cast included Stockard Channing and Anthony Rapp (best known for originating the role of Mark in Rent), and the film version starred Ms. Channing and Mr. Rapp (reprising their roles from the stage production -- Channing was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for this film), Donald Sutherland, Ian McKellan, Anthony Michael Hall, Heather Graham, and Will Smith as the con artist, circa The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

If you're interested in directing one of these two shows for us, submit the director application package by December 31, 2008!

And for all you actors, put us on your audition radar.

This promises to be a particularly fun season ... you know you want to be a part of it!!!

Rehearsal Numero Uno

So on Monday night we had our first read-through at Susan's house, prefaced by the Best Brunswick Stew Ever (thanks to Donna Naybour for the recipe!) and an estrogen-laden conversation about babies and the like that probably made poor Jeff the sound guy want to put his head through a wall, being the only male in the room (the only male in the cast, Felipe, was unable to be there, so poor Jeff was on his own. Sorry Jeff.).

The read-through went well. We talked some about our characters, some about the impact of the play's events on each woman, and touched on some ways we can play with the meanings of and reactions to some of the script's more major happenings. I think we're on our way to a rockin' good show.

On a more personal note, I went into this a little apprehensive about playing the funny Georgeanne (even though it was my most coveted part in the show), as my only truly comedic role to date is Brooke in Noises Off, which is supposed to be over-the-top silly. I was afraid of doing Georgeanne a disservice by trying too hard either to be funny, or not to be funny, but in the car on the way home I realized that out of all the characters in this play, I am the most like Georgeanne, and her experiences are experiences I can actually identify with personally, unlike the other characters. So I'm feeling a lot better about that. I can't speak for the others, but I at least am going to have a LOT of fun getting inside this woman's head. I'm so excited!

Next week's agenda for the blog: begin cast interviews!!! Check back and see who I decide to put on the spot :)

The cast list is out!

Sorry to all who were hoping for an update earlier in the week ... I didn't have anything exciting to report earlier. Callbacks for "Five Women Wearing the Same Dress" were Wednesday night, so if I'd tried to do my Tuesday update, it would have just said "Callbacks are tomorrow, and that is all."

We had a really, really strong turnout for auditions and callbacks (I think everybody in that callback walked out thinking "Wow, I rocked out my callback, but so did everyone else, so that's gotta be a tough call for the director to make!!"). But, after what I assume was much deliberation and banging her head against the wall, director Susan Devine has announced the cast as follows, in order of appearance:

Frances: Betsy Eames
Meredith: Lauren Feliz
Trisha: Melissa McConnell
Georgeanne: Erin Anderson King
Mindy: Laura Scott
Tripp: Felipe Cabezas

Congrats to the cast -- it's gonna be an exciting ride!!!

Rehearsal updates and cast interviews will be posted over the next few weeks, as usual. I'm hoping to have some ugly bridesmaid dress costumes to post soon -- at least a couple of the cast and crew members have discussed taking a trip to David's Bridal to take pictures of each other in ridiculous dresses to post up here ... if that happens, you'll be the first to know :)

Auditions are TONIGHT and TOMORROW!

In the Waddell Conference Room (114) from 7:30 - 9:30 pm.

Actors will be brought into the audition space 2-3 at a time to read sides from the script.

Synopsis: During an ostentatious wedding reception at a Knoxville, Tennessee, estate, five reluctant, identically clad bridesmaids hide out in an upstairs bedroom, each with her own reason to avoid the proceedings below.

Characters:
Frances, the painfully sweet but sheltered fundamentalist cousin of the bride
Mindy, the cheerful, wise-cracking lesbian sister of the groom
Georgeanne, whose heartbreak over her own failed marriage triggers outrageous behavior
Meredith, the bride's younger sister whose precocious rebelliousness masks a dark secret
Trisha, a jaded beauty whose die-hard cynicism about men is called into question
Tripp, a charming bad-boy usher to whom there is more than meets the eye

Characters' age ranges are early 20s through mid 30s.

You do NOT have to be a NOVA student to audition.

Actors will be asked to read both with and without a Southern accent. If you can't do a Southern accent, don't let that stop you -- director Susan Devine told me that she's more concerned with actors being able to pull off the timing and comedy, and that she'll work with them on the accent if need be.