A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Audition Information

AUDITION INFORMATION

FOR GUNN’s

which will perform at:

Gunn High School, Spangenberg Theatre

on March 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, & 26,  2016;

Auditions were either/both: Wednesday, Thursday January 6 & 7, 2016 after school in the Studio Theatre. You could have auditioned both days, or just one! Callbacks were Friday January 8^th.
Read the whole play online at: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html

We will be using the ARDEN SHAKESPEARE Edition

For Auditions:

Please memorize one (or two) ten-to-fifteen line chunks from the following monologues. If you would like to pick another monologue from the play that is not listed below, that is FINE. On audition days (Wednesday or Thursday, January 6 or 7, after school in the Studio Theatre), come ready to show us that you

1. have memorized your lines,
2. know what they mean, and
3. can HAVE FUN with these old words!

The auditions should be a really good time. Also, come ready to move (we might turn on some music and have people do some movement/shaking/shimmying to the beat. Don’t wear shoes or clothes you can’t move in!)

CHARACTER LIST:

Athenians

Theseus	The Duke of Athens, has recently won a war against the Amazons, and to reward himself for his victory is going to marry their queen Hippolyta, whether she likes it or not.
Egeus	a courtier at Theseus’s court and his master of revels.
Philostrate	Theseus’s Master of the Revels. The Duke sends him to encourage everybody in Athens to celebrate his wedding and have a festive time during the four days leading up to the ceremony.
Hippolyta	Queen of the Amazons. Having been defeated in battle by Theseus, she is now betrothed to him.
Lysander	a young man of Athens, of good family and fortune.
Demetrius	Not the most admirable of young men. Having wooed Helena and won her heart, he shifts his attentions to Hermia, who will have none of him, but whose father favors him.
Hermia	Egeus’s daughter. In love with Lysander, she refuses to marry Demetrius despite the threat of death for her refusal.
Helena	A young lady of Athens. She was wooed by Demetrius and remains obsessively, even masochistically in love with him.

Rude Mechanicals/Roadies

Peter Quince	A carpenter with literary pretensions who organizes some fellow workers into preparing a play he has written to present to Theseus and Hippolyta on their wedding day (in which he presents the Prologue).
Nick Bottom	The weaver, a take-charge sort of fellow, and a great stage ham who wishes to play all the parts he can in Quince’s play.
Francis Flute	A bellows-mender, a young man whose facial hair is only just beginning to grow. His voice may be unbroken.
Tom Snout	A tinker cast as Pyramus’s father and the Wall in Quince’s play.
Snug	The joiner is not the most quick-witted of fellows, and is therefore cast as the lion to avoid his having to learn lines.
Robin Starveling	This tailor portrays Moonshine in Quince’s play.

The Fairies

Oberon	King of Fairies. Proud, angry, and vengeful, he quarrels with Titania for the sake of a changeling boy, and on being refused decides to humiliate her into obedience.
Titania	Queen of Fairies. Her quarrel with Oberon disturbs nature, but in memory of her votaress, she still refuses to give up the boy who is at the quarrel’s root.
Puck	Also known as Robin Goodfellow, is an amoral prankster of a spirit. Oberon’s jester, he delights in practical jokes, transforming Bottom for a lark and making him the object of Titania’s love.
Peasebottom	A fairy of Titania’s court. Commanded by Titania, it is one of the ones to attend on Bottom.
Cobweb	A fairy of Titania’s court. Commanded by Titania, it is one of the ones to attend on Bottom.
Moth	A fairy of Titania’s court. Commanded by Titania, it is one of the ones to attend on Bottom.
Mustardseed	A fairy of Titania’s court. Commanded by Titania, it is one of the ones to attend on Bottom.
Dustbunny	One of Titania’s backups.
Floss	One of Titania’s backups.
Lint	One of Titania’s backups.

The First Fairy sings a charm to keep Titania’s sleeping place safe.

The Second Fairy sings a charm to keep Titania’s sleeping place safe.

AUDITION MONOLOGUES (if you like another monologue from the play, by all means memorize that one!):

THESEUS

[N]ow, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue.

[G]o, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.

[H]ippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

EGEUS

[F]ull of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of strong prevailment in unharden’d youth:
With cunning hast thou filch’d my daughter’s heart,
Turn’d her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,
Be it so she; will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.

LYSANDER

[A] good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,
Steal forth thy father’s house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.

HELENA

[C]all you me fair? that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue’s sweet air
More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I’d give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart.

HELENA

[H]ow happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

DEMETRIUS

[I] love thee not, therefore pursue me not.
Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?
The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me.
Thou told’st me they were stolen unto this wood;
And here am I, and wode within this wood,
Because I cannot meet my Hermia.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

[D]o I entice you? do I speak you fair?
Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth
Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?

[T]empt not too much the hatred of my spirit;
For I am sick when I do look on thee.

[Y]ou do impeach your modesty too much,
To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not;
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place
With the rich worth of your virginity.

BOTTOM

[W]hat is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?

[Quince: A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.]

[T]hat will ask some tears in the true performing of
it: if I do it, let the audience look to their
eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some
measure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for a
tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to
tear a cat in, to make all split.
The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks
Of prison gates;
And Phibbus’ car
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.
This was lofty! Now name the rest of the players.
This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein; a lover is
more condoling

[A]n I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I’ll
speak in a monstrous little voice. ‘Thisne,
Thisne;’ ‘Ah, Pyramus, lover dear! thy Thisby dear,
and lady dear!’

[L]et me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will
do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar,
that I will make the duke say ‘Let him roar again,
let him roar again.’

PUCK

[T]he king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.

PUCK

[T]hou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

TITANIA

[S]et your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip’d by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,–her womb then rich with my young squire,–
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.

OBERON

[M]y gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest
Since once I saw where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

[H]aving once this juice,
I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep,
And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.
The next thing then she waking looks upon,
Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,
On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,
She shall pursue it with the soul of love:
And ere I take this charm from off her sight,
As I can take it with another herb,
I’ll make her render up her page to me.