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Auditions

The Real Inspector hound
by Tom Stoppard

(sponsored by Steamboat Players, Steamboat Springs Arts Council and Colorado Mountain College; directed by Michael Brumbaugh)

When: Saturday or Sunday, Feb. 6 or 7 (6-9:00pm)
You may come for just part of the evening. Please call number below if you cannot make these dates / times.

Where: Arts Depot

IMPORTANT NOTES:
-- Needed are men and women (16+ years old)
-- Auditions: Read from the script
-- Only need to attend one night
-- Actors are paid a small stipend
-- Please see me if you want a perusal copy of the script

Rehearsals begin the week of Feb 8, and will typically be 3 evenings per week (based on actors’ schedules). Performance dates are currently planned for Thurs – Sun, March 25-28, at the Arts Depot.

SYNOPSIS:
This lengthy one-act play (around 80 minutes) is a comic spoof of the whodunits popularized by Agatha Christie, with the clichéd plot of a secluded English country manor house, ominous radio reports of a criminal on the loose, visitors behaving suspiciously, a relative with a shady past and an unidentified dead body. Constructed as a play-within-a-play, it opens with two competing theatre critics, Moon and Birdboot, ready to review the latest mystery. In time, both find themselves literally drawn into the comedy onstage, playing roles leading to the climax of the plot when the murderer’s identity is revealed to all.

Stoppard’s play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (1967), based on two minor characters in Shakespeare's play Hamlet, was hailed as a modern dramatic masterpiece. He has also written a number of screenplays including: “Empire of the Sun” (1987), “Billy Bathgate” (1991), his “Brazil” (1985) was nominated for an Academy Award, and he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for “Shakespeare in Love” (1998).

A lengthy (and somewhat academic) treatment is here in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Inspector_Hound

We may present this using the same cast with another short one-act comedy, “Black Comedy”, by Peter Schaffer (“Amadeus”, “Equus”).