The first auditions for The Tempest by William Shakespeare, adapted and dramaturged for a Bahamian setting by Nicolette Bethel, Travis Cartwright-Carroll, Reva Sharma, and Toni Francis, will be held tomorrow, Saturday, August 1st.

The Tempest is the signature piece of this year’s Shakespeare in Paradise theatre festival (October 5th – 12th, 2009).

Auditions will be held on Saturday, August 1st beginning at 11:00 am at The Hub, Bay Street and Colebrook Lane.

The parts that are available can be found here.

Information about the directors of this production can be found here.

You are asked to come with a prepared piece of no more than two minutes in length. You will also be asked to read either a monologue or a part of a scene from the play.

You can download those pieces here.

Future auditions will take place for Music of The Bahamas and we will post that information as soon as it becomes available.

If you have any questions you can email us at admin@shakespeareinparadise.org ]]> http://nicobethel.net/ringplay/2009/07/31/the-tempest-goes-into-production/feed/ 0 http://nicobethel.net/ringplay/2008/09/06/the-childrens-teeth-in-guyana-i-georgetown/ http://nicobethel.net/ringplay/2008/09/06/the-childrens-teeth-in-guyana-i-georgetown/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:53:36 +0000 Nico http://nicobethel.net/ringplay/?p=284 When I attended the meeting of the Regional Cultural Committee in Georgetown in April, Guyana’s CARIFESTA Secretariat promised us that each segment of every contingent would perform four times in Guyana — twice in Georgetown and twice outside the city. The regional Directors of Culture (who comprise the RCC) were not surprisingly sceptical. But I have to give props to Guyana — they kept their word. Everyone who could be was scheduled four times — not everyone performed four times, as not every venue was suitable. But the cast and crew of The Children’s Teeth rose to the occasion, and performed.

Queen’s College, Georgetown

QC Auditorium from the outside

Queen’s College, we were told, is the second best school in Guyana, the best being the Anna Regina Multilateral School in Essequibo.  The thing is, though (we were told) Queen’s College attracts the best students, because it’s a day school, it’s in Georgetown, and children can live with their parents.  Anna Regina is a boarding school and is up the Atlantic Coast at the mouth of the Essequibo River.  That being said, Queen’s College has an auditorium with a lot of seating capacity and a great big stage.  As a result, the QC Auditorium was the main staging site for The Children’s Teeth in Georgetown.

A view of the sound equipment, at the back of the hall, with a bit of the hall included

When we arrived there, we had to build the set.  It was raining that morning, pouring down, and the auditorium has a tin roof that leaks sometimes.  We got there, picked our way through the mud outside, and began working on the set.  The stage was big, bigger than the Dundas stage, but had no backstage or dressing rooms.  Someone had set up a tent outside (shades of the Centre for the Performing Arts) for a backstage, but the rain had battered that to the earth and the ground underneath it was soggy and impossible to use.  So Philip and Terrance set about creating a backstage using the set itself.

A view of the stage before the set was built

The first thing they did was reassemble the set.  It made it, having been rescued from the container and having been sent on the cargo plane, and Terrance and Philip and I arrived at QC at 8:00 (a.m.) to begin building it.  The morning was wet — underwater, I said on Blogworld — with intermittent heavy rain.  The roof of the auditorium is corrugated iron, so that when the rain fell heavily it was deafening, so as Philip built the set he muttered that if it rained that night the show would not go on.  A little rain wouldn’t hurt — the play takes place in August rainstorms, and the roof of the house in question is leaking — but a lot would make it impossible for the actors to be heard.  

Below are shots of the set being assembled.

Terrance putting the house together, with the auditorium in the background

Philip and Terrance put the walls together

The rain stopped by mid-morning, leaving mud and a soggy ground behind.  Georgetown, I learned later, is below sea level, and is surrounded by rivers — the Demerara to the west and the Berbice to the east.  Its fertility — so good for growing sugar cane, hence the rum and the Demerara Gold sugar (the real thing is so much better than the fake, reprocessed, molasses-infused variety) — comes from being on a river delta (New Orleans comes to mind) but the ground is boggy, and water is never very far away.  Every parcel of land is surrounded by ditches, drainage to keep the land dry and the water where it’s wanted.  Even the auditorium at QC is surrounded by a drainage gutter, which would be fine if the rain hadn’t fallen all day long.

View of the grounds through the stage door

The set was finished by midday, when the sun came out and shone weakly — thankfully, otherwise the hall would get too hot — and I went out and picked up a quick lunch for myself and the set builders.  The cast arrived at 2 for their first rehearsal on the set.  The afternoon heated up, but the rain held off, and the run-through took place in steamy heat.  The technicians arrived around 2 as well, and set up the lighting system — two trees with two lights each, and a spot high up on each side platform, run by a lights-up-lights-down board (fading was possible but caused feedback with the sound system, so was used sparingly) — and the sound system — a CD player, a mixer, and a couple of free-standing speakers.  I ran the lights from the script in the computer, and didn’t actually run them until the evening came.

Running the lights from the computer script

There were no dressing rooms, only a bathroom that was part of the school and auditorium complex, and while there was decent water pressure earlier in the day, it faded in the evening to a mere trickle that dripped onto fingers and took forever to refill toilet tanks.

But the audience came out nevertheless.  The night was hot, and Derek Walcott was speaking elsewhere, and we were in a high school auditorium, but the Guyanese people came out to the play.  And the hall was so live that it was hard to understand what people said — especially those people whose voices are already big, like Kennedy or who are so very natural on stage that all their words slurred into one another by the echo, like Leah and Dion — but the people came out to the play, and they got it.  And the next night, even more people came, and were moved, some of them, to tears by the play.  Guyana TV filmed it and replayed it during CARIFESTA, and the producer interviewed us as well.

 All in all?  The experience was an excellent one.

Anyway, watch this space.

Photos by Peter Ramsay

Driving Miss Daisy is a 1987 play by Alfred Uhry about the relationship of an elderly Southern Jewish lady and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, from 1948 to 1973. The original off-Broadway production starred Dana Ivey and Morgan Freeman. The first production took place at Playwrights Horizons Theatre on 42nd Street in New York. It later moved down the street to the John Houseman Theatre. Ivey’s performance garnered her an Obie Award as Best Actress. The play was the first in Uhry’s “Atlanta Trilogy” dealing with Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century. The play was Uhry’s most successful, winning him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was performed in London’s West End in 1988, with Dame Wendy Hiller as Miss Daisy Werthan.

In 1989, the play was adapted for a Warner Brothers film with Morgan Freeman reprising his role and Miss Daisy played by Jessica Tandy. The story defines Daisy and her point of view through a network of relationships and emotions by focusing on her home life, her synagogue, friends, family, fears, and concerns. Hoke is rarely seen out of Miss Daisy’s presence, although the title implies that the story is told from his perspective.

The film won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Picture. It is also, as of 2008, the last PG-rated film to win that title.

There will be THREE PERFORMANCES ONLY!
at The Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts:

Thursday, July 3rd – 8:30 p.m.
Friday, July 4th – 8:30 p.m.
Saturday July 5th – 8:00 p.m.

The play runs 90 minutes, without an intermission.

This production features, in order of their appearance:

Daisy Werthan – Jane Poveromo
Boolie Werthan – David Jonathan Burrows
Hoke Coleburn – Anthony “Skeebo” Roberts

The play is directed by Philip A. Burrows

Because there are only three performances, seats are limited for this production. Ticket sales information will be released to the general public in few days.

Advanced bookings are available to the readers of this blog, members on our Ringplay mailing list and subscribers to the Ringplay discussion board.

Tickets are $20 (Purchased by 4:00 p.m. on the day of the performance) or $25 if purchased at the door.

Ask about our group rates for groups of 20 or more.

There are no student discounts available for this production.

For further information, you can email us at onstage@ringplay.com or admin@artsbahamas.com.