Thirteen Roles (9 Women – 4 Men) – All Open
Audition Dates:
Tuesday, June 23, 6:30 -9:30 pm and Thursday, June 25, 6:30-9:30 pm
Call-Backs (if needed and by invitation): Tuesday June 30th 6:30 -9:30 pm
At the James Lee Community Center- 2855 Annandale Road Falls Church, VA 22042 – In the Urbanites Room (to the left in the main lobby)
The Providence Players of Fairfax is a non-profit community theater troupe. All participation is on a volunteer, non-compensated basis.
DOWNLOAD AND PRINT AUDITION ANNOUNCEMENT, FORM AND PRODUCTION CALENDAR HERE
Calendar Girls
By Tim Firth Directed by Michael Donahue 
In this delightful comedy, Annie and her best friend Chris belong to the Women’s institute – a do-good organization in the heart of Yorkshire. When a member’s husband dies of leukemia, the best friends resolve to raise funds, but donations are tight. They persuade fellow Institute members to pose for an “alternative” calendar that attracts media, fame and funds. Based on a true story, Calendar Girls is an uplifting, feel-good story of friendship, ingenuity and triumph. Later made into a popular film, Calendar Girls received the British Comedy Award for Best Comedy and several Golden Globe nominations.
Performance Dates and Times
Preview: October 1 7:00 pm Curtain
Evening Performances: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays; 7:30 pm Curtain
October 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 & 17
Matinees: Sundays; 2:00 pm curtain October 4 & 11
AUDITION PROCESS AND INSTRUCTIONS
- PLEASE RSVP to providenceplayers@cox.net with the date you plan on auditioning.
- DOWNLOAD THE FULL ANNOUNCEMENT AND FORMS HERE
- HOW WE WORK: Most PPF auditions have actors up and down to read multiple times in multiple combinations and scenes. Most actors find this fun. As space allows, you will be able to watch all the auditions. You may be asked to go into the hallway with audition partners and work a bit on a scene. We will do our best to get you up multiple times reading for parts you are interested in. You will also be asked to read for other parts you may not be auditioning for. The Providence Players strives to make our productions open to interested and engaged actors & actresses, regardless of their level of experience. We try and make our auditions as relaxing and fun as possible.
- AUDITION PROCESS: Auditions will consist of readings from the script – No monologue required.
- AUDITION SIDES: Sides for the audition process will be supplied at auditions.
- AUDITION FORM: Resumes and headshots will be accepted, but are not required. Please ALSO complete the attached PPF Calendar Girls Audition Form and bring it with you to the audition. This will also be available on our website.
- MEMBERSHIP: The Providence Players of Fairfax is a membership organization. Membership is not required to audition. If cast, actors in addition to production team members will be asked to become members of the Providence Players ($10) for the season (if they are not already).
- RSVP: Please send us an RSVP if you plan to audition to providenceplayers@cox.net (or email us any questions you may have).
Rehearsal Schedule: A copy of the preliminary stage rehearsal schedule is included in the audtion package announcement and is available, separately HERE. In addition to the stage rehearsal schedule, additional full cast readings of the play and some selected scene study and character work will scheduled based on actor availability prior to or in addition to the stage schedule. The schedule for these will be finalized after auditions. Unless indicated otherwise, all rehearsals will happen at the James Lee Community Center. Rehearsals will be held in the evenings roughly from 6:30/6:45 to 9:45 pm. and on Saturdays and Sundays as indicated (note that times noted on the calendar are theater access times and not the specific rehearsal schedule) Please come to auditions prepared to list any availability conflicts over this time period.
CALENDAR GIRLS ROLES
Character Summary – 9 Women – 4 Men – All Open – There may be some flexibility in age range
Calendar Girls Female Roles (9)
CHRIS – 50s. You want Chris at your party. She will talk to people she doesn’t know, and things to say to all silences and generate laughter. Part of this is because Chris is at home in crowds, holding court, being the center of attention. Without Chris in her life, Annie would be better behaved, her life less fun. The two of them are like naughty schoolgirls. Ideal car — who cares, as long as it’s a cabriolet. Ideal holiday — Algarve.
ANNIE – 50s. Annie will join in mischief but is at heart more conformist and less confrontational than Chris. After Chris has put a waiter’s back up in the restaurant, Annie will go in and pour calm. The mischievousness Chris elicits saves Annie from being a saint. She has enough edge to be interesting, and enough salt not to be too sweet. Ideal car — who cares, as long as it’s reliable. Ideal holiday — walking in English countryside.
CORA – around 40. Cora’s past is the most eclectic, her horizons broadened by having gone to college. This caused a tectonic shift with her more parochial parents. She came back to them pregnant and tail-between-legs, but Cora has too much native resilience to be downtrodden. She is the joker in the pack, but never plays the fool. Her wit is deadpan. It raises laughter in others, but rarely in herself. Her relationship with her daughter is more akin to that between Chris and Annie. Cora doesn’t need to sing like a diva but must be able to sing well enough to start the show with Jerusalem and sing the snatches of other songs required. The piano keyboard can be marked up to enable her to play basic chords should she not be a player. Ideal car — who cares, as long as the sound system is loud. Ideal holiday — New York.
JESSIE – late 60s/70s. Get on the right side of Jessie as a teacher and she’ll be the teacher you remember for life. Get on the wrong side and you will regret every waking hour. A lover of life, Jessie doesn’t bother with cosmetics — her elixir of life is bravery. Jessie goes on rollercoasters. Her husband has been with her a long time and is rarely surprised by her actions. Jessie bothers about grammar and will correct stallholders regarding their abuse of the apostrophe “s”. Ideal car — strange-looking European thing which is no longer manufactured. Ideal holiday — walking in Switzerland or Angkor Wat.
CELIA – age anything 35-50. The fact that Celia is in the WI is the greatest justification of its existence. A woman more at home in a department store than a church hall, she may be slightly younger than Chris or the same age, but she always feels like she’s drifted in from another world. Which she has. She is particularly enamored of Jessie, and despite the fact Jessie has very little time for most Celia’s of this world, there is a rebelliousness in Celia to which Jessie responds. It’s what sets Celia apart from the vapid materialism of her peer group and made her defect. Ideal car — Porsche, which she has. Ideal holiday — Maldives, where she often goes.
RUTH – 40s. Ruth’s journey is from the false self-confidence of the emotionally abused to the genuine self-confidence of the woman happy in her own skin. Ruth is eager to please but not a rag doll, and despite being Marie’s right-hand woman she is desperate to be the cartilage in the spine of the WI and keep everyone happy. She has spine herself — if she was too wet, no-one would want her around. But they do, and they feel protective of her because they sense there is something better in Ruth than her life is letting out. They are proved right. Ideal car — at the start, whatever Eddie wants; at the end, whatever she wants. Ideal holiday — at the start wherever Eddie is, at the end wherever he isn’t. The Rabbit Costume: Ruth made this last night. It should be a cocktail of good intention and not enough time.
MARIE – 50s. Marie has gradually built the current ‘Marie’ around herself over the years as a defense mechanism. She went to her Oz, Cheshire, and found Oz didn’t want her. She came back scorched. The WI is a trophy to her, which justifies her entire existence. There is a lingering part of Marie that would love to be on that calendar. Ideal car — something German and well-valeted. Ideal holiday — a quasi-academic tour of somewhere in Persia advertised in a Sunday Supplement which she could then interminably bang on about.
LADY CRAVENSHIRE – 60s. Lady Cravenshire really doesn’t mean to be so patronizing. But the WI girls seem from another world. The world of her estate workers. Dress: when she makes an entrance, she must make an entrance. Largely white or cream to outplay the others, with a bigger hat than Marie. She is not a tweed-wearer. She must glide in like a galleon.
ELAINE – 20s. Elaine really doesn’t mean to be so patronizing. But Jessie seems from another world. The world of her gran. Dress: her clinical whites slice through like a knife. You feel you could cut yourself on that dress.
Calendar Girls Male Roles (4)
JOHN (Annie’s Husband) – 50s. John is a human sunflower. Not a saint. Not a hero. Just the kind of man you’d want in your car when crossing America. When he dies it feels like someone somewhere turned a light off.
ROD – Chris’s husband, 50s. You have to be a certain kind of guy to stick with Chris and Rod loves it. He can give back what he gets, and has a deadpan humor which has always made Chris laugh. He drinks a lot but never so much as to have a problem. He would work every hour to make his shop a success. And John was his mate, even though the relationship was originally channeled through their wives.
LAWRENCE – late 20s. Hesitant without being nerdy, Lawrence is a shy young man with enough wit to make a joke and enough spirit to turn up at the WI hall in the first place. When he arranges the shots he is close to female nudity but sees only the photo.
LIAM – late 20s. Liam would like to be directing other things than photoshoots for washing powders. He’s not so unprofessional as to let it show, but we can sense a slight weariness at having to deal with these women. There’s a resigned patience to his actions and each smile he makes we feel is professional. For Liam, this photoshoot is a job. And not the job he wanted. Dress: Avoid wearing shades inside a building. If you’ve gone down that route, you’ve made the weary boy a wideboy.
From the Author: Accents
“The women of the real calendar in truth came from many parts of the country. Actors should resist the pressure to perform any kind of Yorkshire pyrotechnics. Nothing compromises the truth of comedy like a slavish attention to vowel-sounds and dipthongs.It will become a pebble in the shoe.If you can flatten the “a” so that giraffe no longer rhymes with scarf then that will be more than sufficient; but even that should not be championed over the intrinsic rhythm of the line. People travel.Communities are now gloriously multi-instrumental. We’ve had accents from Glasgow to Texas make the same part their own.” In view of the author’s perspective, the director intends to not use specific accents in this production.
About the Director Michael P. Donahue
Michael has been working with PPF since 2009. He has acted and worked backstage on many PPF productions and Directed PPF’s 2014 Winter production of “House of Blue Leaves”. He is also serves the company on the Board of Directors. Michael worked professionally in the theatre from 1984 – 2000. He has a MFA in Theatre Directing and was Artistic Director for Playhouse on the Square’s Professional Theatre for Youth in Memphis, TN. He was Associate Artistic Director for HITT Productions responsible for writing, directing and Fight Direction for large performance events. His other directing credits include: Merchant of Venice, VPStart Crow, Manassas VA., Nothing Sacred, Circuit Playhouse, Memphis TN., Tom Sawyer, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Magicians Nephew, Playhouse on the Square Professional Theatre for Youth, Memphis TN., The Tell Tale Heart, The Murders at the Rue Morgue, HITT Productions, Poconos PA., Glass Menagerie, Extremities, Lord Byron, original one man show, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN.
About the Providence Players: The Providence Players of Fairfax (PPF) proudly celebrates its eighteenth season in 2015–2016 our 12th year at the James Lee Community Center Theater where the company has mounted 40 of our 52 previous productions. None of the parents who first banded together to mount the comedy classic You Can’t Take It with You in 1998 could have imagined that PPF would emerge as one of the region’s leading community theater companies with hundreds of members and volunteers, over 200 individual and corporate donors, and nearly 500 season ticket holders. And, since the move to James Lee, PPF has entertained more than 38,000 theater patrons!
An award-winning company, PPF is proud to be a member of the Washington Area Theater Community Honors (WATCH) organization that presents annual awards recognizing artistic and technical excellence in Community Theater. Since becoming a member in 2004, PPF has been recognized with 95 WATCH nominations for twenty-two different productions including several Outstanding Play nominations (for Of Mice and Men, Rumors, Side Man, Auntie Mame, and The Shadow Box) and has been honored with twenty-two WATCH awards for quality theatrical performance and technical production. This past January, PPF was nominated for nineteen WATCH awards for last spring’s production of Rumors and this past October’s Of Mice and Men. PPF has also been honored by the British Players’ Ruby Griffith Awards program, including the award for All Round Production Excellence (the organization’s top honor) for All My Sons and the award for Outstanding Achievement in a Play for The Shadow Box.
PPF is also a member and grant recipient of the Arts Council of Fairfax County, and has been honored by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (sponsored by Supervisor Linda Smyth and then Chairman, now Congressman Gerry Connolly) for artistic excellence and community involvement. PPF is also committed to the diverse community it serves. PPF maintains the Theater Community Inclusion Project, a community outreach initiative that strives to increase participation among new audiences, particularly youth and under served populations, by providing free tickets to those who cannot afford the price of admission, a special free student/senior preview performance for each production and scholarships to college bound students who have demonstrated a strong commitment to theater arts.
PPF is a group of committed, member artists. It’s a “big tent” – big enough to include first timers to theatrical endeavors and those with significant theater experience. This includes you! Please join us as a member of the company on-stage, backstage, behind the scenes, or as an ongoing member of our audience. We sincerely welcome you!
Not auditioning? Plan On joining us in the audience next season!
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