Audition Notice
For StageWorks Staged Reading of
The Squirrels
By Robert Askins
Directed by Ruth Andrews
Time: Wednesday, May 15, 2024 at 6:30pm
For alternate audition time or questions, contact Ruth Andrews at rutabega@gmail.com
Place: Acting Ensemble on the Avenue, 602 E Mishawaka Ave, Mishawaka IN 46545
Auditions will consist of cold readings from sides provided by the director.
Rehearsals: . Please arrive at the audition knowing your conflicts.
One Performance: June 4, 2024 at 7:30 pm
Characters:
SCIURUS. Great old gray squirrel. Big. Fat-ish. The greatest gatherer of nuts the forest ever saw. Now gone to seed. Father to Chordata. Partner to Mammalia. Adopted father to Rodentia.
CHORDATA. Young gray squirrel. Squirrel sexy. Squirrel smart. She knows the forest is changing. She is in love with Carolinensis. She is perhaps a little too sentimental.
MAMMALIA. Older gray squirrel. The long-suffering partner to Sciurus. She loves him. Knows his faults. Has aided his schemes. She is dedicated to her daughter and wants only the best for her.
RODENTIA. Adopted daughter of Sciurus. Young fox squirrel. She swims with the tide that raises her boat.
CAROLINENSIS. Young fox squirrel. Firece. Strong. Idealistic but hungry. It is after all the dead of winter and mating season is coming.
SCIURIDAE/THE SCIENTIST. Gray squirrel. He is smooth. Too smooth. He stares too long. He’s creepy like an evil Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The scientist is not a real scientist. He’s a cartoon scientist. Make of that what you will.
SQUIRREL ENSEMBLE.
Casting blindly. Casting the rainbow. You should audition.
Genre: Dark comedy
Scurius, the patriarch of a family of gray squirrels, has collected enough nuts to last ten winters. When a group of starving fox squirrels begs him to share his hoard of food, animosity erupts into a ferocious war. THE SQUIRRELS is a boundary-pushing, darkly satirical look at wealth inequality in which no creature comes out unscathed.
“The fast-paced 90-minute play…is a witty black comedy about a mixed-race squirrel family decimated by prejudice and greed. Writ large, it’s an apocalyptic tale of America’s cultural divide…[Askins] drops a thought bomb…about our responsibility for the destruction of the environment and for the care of one’s fellow squirrel (and otherwise).” —San Diego Union-Tribune.
“Crazy? Of course. Crazy is what Askins does. Charming? Yes, that too, and thought-provoking…THE SQUIRRELS offers an amusing tale that challenges assumptions about good and evil, power and tribalism. This is an experience like no other.” —San Diego Local News.
