Audition details

Below are the details of auditions and backstage help required for House of Bernarda, adapted from Federico García Lorca by Margaret Lawless. 

Please do get in touch with the director, Jerome Joseph Kennedy, to express an interest in these auditions and with any questions you may have by emailing Jerome at jeromejosephkennedy@hotmail.com

Auditions will take place at Putney Arts Theatre.

Audition dates

• Sunday 10 October 2021, 6pm
• Monday 11 October 2021, 7.30pm

Recalls

• Wednesday 13 October, 7.30pm

Production details

The play will be performed on the main stage at Putney Arts Theatre.

Performance dates

• 25 to 29 January 2022

Rehearsal period

Rehearsals will take place from end of October 2021.

PLEASE Note

We are committed to improving diversity in our casting and, unless stated for artistic reasons, we aim to actively adopt an inclusive casting policy.

This is an amateur production. You do not need to be a member of PTC to audition, but actors and crew will need to become members for £25 a year by direct debit, or £30 otherwise. A £25 show fee will also need to be paid by all actors in the production. We encourage you to become a member of PTC anyway, even if not cast.

Our company is run by volunteers and we expect all actors cast in a play to volunteer for Front of House duties at least once a year. Our shows could not go up without our Front of House volunteers.

Synopsis

Forbidden from too much interaction with the outside world, especially with members of the opposite sex, four daughters are kept in an ever-tightening grip of control by their violent, domineering mother. However, the youngest, most rebellious of them, Adela, is covertly involved in a passionate affair with “the most handsome and well-bred man in the county”. Meanwhile, Marta, embittered after a sabotaged romance years before, knows her sister’s secret and threatens to bring down their mother’s full wrath upon her.

Audition preparation

Please prepare ONE extract from the FIVE provided below – you do not have to commit the lines to memory, just be prepared to present the most fluent imaginative performance as possible even with the script in your hand.

An attempt at the relevant accent (see List of Characters) is not at all essential in the audition, just be aware that you’ll be working on them during the rehearsal period if you’re successfully cast.

ONE: BERNARDA (also suits potential Martas and Madeleines)

ENOUGH!

Hold your spiteful tongue!

We are not friends. You work for me, I pay you! Nothing more!

I didn’t ask for your estimations, I wouldn’t ask for your estimations, so you just mind you keep your estimations to yourself about my family! I will raise my daughters as I see fit, and it is nobody else’s business how I raise them, least of all… a servant.

TWO: ADELA (also suits potential Evelyns)

If Momma catches me in this dress she’ll drag me inside by the hair and be fixing to tear it to shreds.

I’d fight her for it though. I would! I love this dress so much, I’d wait until she came right up to me and then I’d smash her with a surprise right…

…then run away like a gazelle and never come back.

It is a lovely dress though, don’t you think? It suits me very well. The chickens didn’t have anything to say about it, but they passed on some of their fleas and the fleas bit my legs, so I’m going take that as a compliment.

Tomorrow I’ll dance a ballet for them: Romeo and Juliet.

But they never appreciate me, to be honest, Amelia, I’m forever upstaged by fucking bird feed. I try not to take it personally, but I can’t say it doesn’t bruise my self-esteem.

THREE: MARTA (also suits potential Harpers)

Momma may well have been better off alone. I sometimes think we may all be better off if we never even laid eyes on a man.

When I was little, I was afraid of them.

There was the time I stood by my window in my nightgown till dawn, all because Freddie Harrison’s farmhand’s daughter told me he was going to stop by, but he never came. It was all just… talk. I felt such a fool.

Then, by and by, he married another girl with more money than me… and uglier than the devil! It seems all they want in the end is money and a submissive little lapdog to fetch their food, clean their house, wash their clothes. One way or the other, a woman always becomes… a servant.

Well, it ain’t going to happen to me.

FOUR: GRACE (also suits potential Prudences)

Well, that’s real sweet, honey, but it ain’t getting the fucking floor clean. She’s going to sail back in here any minute and we both know you’re all set for an awful long earful of paternoster about how great this job is and how much of a shit-sack you are.

High strung like she is right now, she’ll be pissed and you know she’s got a pair of lungs on her like a whale stubbed its little toe when she’s pissed. Just get that floor done and make yourself scarce as quick as you can, darling. Like I said, I would help you if I could, but I got to get back down there.

FIVE: AMELIA (also suits potential Adelas)

I do things I have no faith in, but I do them like clockwork.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy in there. I was looking at the pictures grandmother embroidered, you know, that little poodle and the Negro fighting that lion. I loved them so much when I was a little girl.

But when I was took with fever, I thought the Negro was taking the lion’s jaws and pulling them backwards until the lion’s skull was inside out. And I thought the poodle was just staring out at me, like it was rabid and fixing to bite my face off. I sure don’t think of grandmother anymore when I look at them.

Characters

Unless marked otherwise, the characters have Appalachian accents - Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore in “Ozark” is the exemplar for this – do look her up on YouTube.

• BERNARDA an imposing matriarch – (f) 40s + - Southern US accent (i.e. Atlanta, Georgia)
• GRACE her housekeeper, a classic Columbina – (f) 30s+
• ADELA youngest daughter, the rebel – (f) teens/early 20s
• MARTA second eldest daughter, the enforcer - (f) mid 20s
• AMELIA third eldest daughter, a peace maker – (f) early 20s
• MADELEINE eldest daughter – (f), late 20s
• HARPER a long-serving maid – (f) 30s/40s+
• PRUDENCE a visitor to the house – (f) 40s+
• EVELYN a visit to the house – (f) 30s+ - Southern US accent (i.e. Atlanta, Georgia)
• plus non-speaking Male Dancer

Backstage

Opportunities available include:

• Stage Manager
• Set Designer
• Set Builders
• Hairdressers
• Backstage Crew

Please get in touch with jeromejosephkennedy@hotmail.com or info@putneyartstheatre.co.uk if you are interested in getting involved.