Job Description:
A play by Rick Elice
Based on the Novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
Music by Wayne Barker
Originally produced on Broadway by Nancy Nagel Gibbs, Greg Schaffert, Eva Price, Tom Smedes, and Disney Theatricals.
Presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI)
Directed by Kevin Fitzhenry
Audition Dates:
Saturday, September 16th – 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Sunday, September 17th – 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Performance Dates:
January 21, 25-28, February 1-3, 2018
Performance Location:
Pierce Auditorium
15430 Kercheval Ave, Grosse Pointe Park, MI 48230
Auditions will take place at Grosse Pointe Theatre’s Rehearsal Studio:
315 Fisher Road, Grosse Pointe, MI 48230
Phone: 313-881-4004 Website: www.gpt.org
Scripts are available prior to the audition dates at our office at 315 Fisher Road for a $20 refundable deposit.
For additional information, please contact Director Kevin Fitzhenry at kmfitz03@gmail.com
ABOUT THE PLAY:
Tony-winning Peter and the Starcatcher upends the century-old story of how a miserable orphan comes to be The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up (a.k.a. Peter Pan). A wildly theatrical adaptation of Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s best-selling novels, the play was conceived for the stage by directors, Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, and written by Rick Elice, with music by Wayne Barker. From marauding pirates and jungle tyrants to unwilling comrades and unlikely heroes, Peter and the Starcatcher playfully explores the depths of greed and despair… and the bonds of friendship, duty and love.
Featuring a dozen actors portraying more than 100 unforgettable characters, Peter and the Starcatcher uses ingenious stagecraft and the limitless possibilities of imagination to bring the story to life.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS
(Ages listed are approximations of the characters, not necessarily the actor)
BOY (PETER) (Male, 13-25 yrs old) – Lead. A boy who doesn’t miss much. Nameless, homeless, and friendless at the beginning of the play and a hero by the end. A survivor. More than anything in the world, he wants a home and a family. If he could grow up, he’d fall for Molly in a big way. But it’ll never happen.
MOLLY ASTER (Female, 13-25 yrs old) – Lead. A true leader at a time when girls are mostly followers. Will risk everything for the sake of Doing Right. Curious, intelligent, beginning to feel things she doesn’t yet understand – romantic longings that revert to childish tantrums under pressure – because, after all, she’s a thirteen-year old kid. She’ll be a great woman one day.
THE BLACK STACHE (Male, 30-50 yrs old) – Lead. Long after everyone else got out of the pirate business, The Black Stache continues to terrorize the seven seas in search of a hero worthy of his villainy. Famous for his face foliage, he started shaving at age ten, had a bushy handlebar by eleven, and the blood of twenty crews on his hands by twelve. Heartless and hirsute, suspiciously well read, partial to the poetical and theatrical and given to a ferocity from which no good shall ever spring. Has a hook in his future.
LORD LEONARD ASTER (Male, 40-60 yrs old) – Support. The very model of a Victorian English gentleman, loyal subject to the Queen, devoted father, faithful friend. Also – and not irrelevant to our story, Lord Aster is a Starcatcher – dedicated to protecting the Earth and all who dwell thereon from the awesome power of starstuff.
SMEE (Male, 25-55 yrs old) – Support. First mate to Black Stache. Single-mindedly dedicated to his captain’s every whim. His motto: “Tis good to be busy.”
MRS. BUMBRAKE (Male, 40-60 yrs old) – Support. Molly’s nanny. British to the bone. Still has enough of her girlish charm to turn a sailor’s head and leaven his dreams. Stiff in the lip, loose in the hip, fun on a ship. Will also double the role of TEACHER, formerly a salmon, now an ancient, knowledgeable mermaid.
FIGHTING PRAWN (Male, 40-60 yrs old) – Support. King of the Mollusks, son of Jumbo Prawn and Littleneck Clam. Kidnapped by British sailors and brought in chains to England, he served as sous-chef in a country estate in Derbyshire, where, for no good reason, he learned Italian wines and mastered Italian cuisine. Since returning to his island kingdom, he vengefully murders and English with the temerity to land on his Mollusk Isle domain. Will also double the roles of GREMPKIN, the mean and malodorous schoolmaster of St. Norbert’s Orphanage for Lost Boys, MACK, a very bad sailor who wants to be anywhere but under the thumb of Bill Slank and SANCHEZ a hardworking Spanish pirate with an identity crisis.
PRENTISS (Male, 13-25 yrs old) – Featured. One of the orphans; ambitious, hyper-articulate, logical; yearns to be a leader, even as he knows in his heart that he never shall be one. A bit of a blowhard with just the teeny-tiniest touch of cowardice.
TED (Male, 13-25 yrs old) – Featured. Obsessed with food: eating of, the fighting over, the dreaming about. A natural actor, an easy wit, perhaps a future poet. Called “Tubby” by Prentiss, though not due to girth, of which orphans, given their meager diets, have very little indeed.
BILL SLANK (35-55 yrs old) – Featured. The Neverland’s vicious captain, without that skill of quality to lead anyone but himself and always into disaster. A greedy bastard who’d sell his own mother for a ship to command and send boys to their doom for the favor of those who would use starstuff for personal gain, global domination, or worse. An orphan, too. Will also double the role of HAWKING CLAM, the son of Fighting Prawn and Sweet’n’Sour Shrimp. One day, he will ascend the Clam throne as head of the Royal Clam Clan.
ALF (Male, 50-65 yrs old) – Featured. An old sea dog. Something about him appeals to the feminine sensibility – might be his bowlegs, he saucy gait, or his kind heart.
CAPTAIN ROBERT FALCON SCOTT (Male, 35-45 yrs old) – Featured. Captain of Britain’s fastest frigate, the Wasp. Years later, he will lean an expeditionary team to the South Pole, freeze to death, and become the iconic British. Scott of the Antarctic.
*All actors will serve variously as sailors, seamen, seafarers, orphans, pirates, mermaids, Mollusks… and narrators.
