Archive for May, 2010

AVT announces auditions for THE INTERROGATION OF NATHAN HALE, by David Stanley Ford, on Saturday, June 19th from 9am to 1230pm.  The format will be cold reading.

There will be 6 shows during the run (Sept 17-26, 2010).  Two rehearsals per week of 2-3 hours each will be scheduled starting in July, time which does not include memorization and character work expected of all actors.

You must contact the stage manager in advance with your phone number and email if you intend to audition: juliana@avthespians.org.

It is the morning of September 22, 1776. Nathan Hale is waiting to be hanged as a spy. A British captain, John Montresor, invites him to spend his remaining time in the captain’s tent.  Hale, a rifleman and spy for the American Revolution, was captured and executed by the British almost exactly 233 years before our opening night.  What is freedom? What is courage? What is the value of a life? This is a play that seeks to understand the values of our nation—their flaws, as well as their wondrous virtues.  Mr. Ford has taken the circumstances of Hale’s last hours and used them to probe our country, using both points of view -that of cynic and idealist – to try to understand who we are.

There are two male roles available:

Captain John Montresor.  A character in his forties or fifties, Montresor is a jaded, darkly humorous, disillusioned officer in His Royal Majesty’s Expeditionary Forces.  He uses cynical sarcasm and needling wit to “play with his food” – simultaneously interrogating and taunting American rebel prisoners before their imminent hangings.  Montresor personifies the counter-argument to the romanticized ideal of our county’s birth.

Nathan Hale. A young and idealistic rifleman in his twenties.  Hale is full of fire and passion for the revolution, and embodies the traditionally American characteristics of daring, can-do spirit, and determined optimism, even in the face of execution.  His spirit is inspirational, despite a glaring streak of naiveté that makes him prime fodder for Montresor’s mind games.

Producing Director: Nalin A. Ratnayake
Artistic Director: Kara McCollum
Stage Manager: Juliana Katzman

Produced by special arrangement with THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY of Woodstock, Illinois.

Antelope Valley Thespians presents:

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, by Nathan Mayer.

Starring: Courtney Marietta, Derric Neal, and Joe Gruca.

Two dynamic lawyers are locked in a clash of wills and morality. Ruth Ballard is an embittered radical, now in jail, accused of participating in a bank robbery and a subsequent killing.  She chooses to represent herself as attorney. Kenneth Hayes is the assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute her. Once, they were classmates, and more,  in law school—now they are two lawyers with very different views on the nature of justice. Their conflicts, legal and personal, probe the nature of our criminal justice system.

Six shows:

Friday, June 4th, 2010 — 8pm [CLOSED]
Saturday, June 5th, 2010 — 8pm [SOLD OUT]
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 — 2pm [CLOSED]
Friday, June 11th, 2010 — 8pm [CLOSED]
Saturday, June 12th, 2010 — 8pm [CLOSED]
Sunday, June 13th, 2010 — 2pm [CLOSED]

Secure web ticketing via credit card is available through PayPal. A limited number of physical tickets are available at Sagebrush Cafe, coffee and art house, in Quartz Hill.

Location is in a black box theater built into a private residence in Quartz Hill.  Address and parking information will be sent to all ticket holders.

View photos from tech rehearsal on our Facebook Page.

Directed by Nalin A. Ratnayake.
Stage Manager: Karen Gruca.
Technical Director: Jeremy Bryon Gruca.

Produced by special  arrangement with THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY of Woodstock, Illinois.

Attention local playwrights!

AVT is looking for short works by local playwrights to be considered for limited workshop production to be held in the AVT Blackbox on July 24. Each scene or short selected for this Expo will be given a reading and limited staging by actors and AVT’s artistic director (all who will have had advance reading of the scripts to develop basic characters) followed by discussion to receive feedback from actors, techies, directors, fellow writers, audience members, and AVT’s dramaturg.

Submissions should have no more than 4 characters and be no more than 20 minutes long (typically 1 page of pure dialogue in standard type is about 1 minute of stage time).

Submissions are due to the dramaturg (anna@avthespians.org) no later than June 26th for consideration.  Please see our Playwrights Page for more information on our process for accepting original work for full production.