Equity Principal Auditions:

Roles for two Equity actors*

Tuesday, April 27                    

10AM-5PM

* The role of Judge Biddle is cast.

                                                            Tri-State Actors Theater
                                                                            PO Box 7225
                                                                            74 Main Street
                                                                            Sussex, NJ 07461

                                                                 Directions at www.tristateactorstheater.org/maptat.htm
                                                                 Bus: Lakeland Bus Lines--http://www.lakelandbus.com
                                                                   (Ride to Newton Shop Rite stop)
                                                                Local Bus: Sussex County Transit: call 973-579-0483No appointment necessary. The producer will run all aspects of this call. Equity Principal Audition procedures are not in effect, and no Equity Monitor will be provided.

Sides will be provided at the audition and  on our web site --www.tristateactorstheater.org--prior to the auditions. Sides(large type) will be provided to visually challenged actors two days before the auditions by calling 973-875-2950. Please bring a picture and resume, stapled together.

Breakdown: The role of Sarah is available; the role of Judge Biddle is cast.

 

Sarah Schorr--a twenty-five year-old girl who has been hired to be Judge Biddle's secretary.  She is a direct, plain-spoken, pleasant girl, originally from the prairie province of Saskatchewan.  Full of the naiveté of youthful convictions and pronouncements, Sarah spends much of the play  "trying" to negotiate and span the enormous differences of youth and age, of class and culture between herself and Judge Biddle, who is eighty-one, aristocratic and cantankerous.

 

Judge Biddle--(Audition is for possible replacement.) An eighty-one year old, once brilliant man who was Attorney General of the United State under Franklin Roosevelt.  After a long and illustrious career he now functions, as he says, "somewhere between lucidity and senility". He is the aristocratic scion of an old, Main Line Philadelphia family.

 

Synopsis:

TRYING is set in Georgetown, Washington, DC in November of 1967 in the office of Francis Biddle, former Attorney General for FDR.  He is in his 80's. Sarah is his new secretary.  The play deals with their attempts to "try" to negotiate and span the enormous differences of youth and age, of class and culture between a plain-spoken young woman from the plains of Canada, and Biddle, a Philadelphia main-line aristocrat, judge at the Nuremburg trials and an elderly man very set in his ways. It is a story filled with cantankerousness, clashing wills, and finding a common way through the hardest moments we face.  TRYING is both comic and touching.

Sides for Trying
(Sarah)
SARAH.  Judge Biddle, I'm a prairie populist.  It was hard for me, at the ad agency, to
      see the Smithies being promoted just because they wee Smithies.  I believe that one
      has to zealously take issue with unfair practice--

 BIDDLE.  "To zealously take issue" is a split infinitive! Split infinitives were not
        allowed a Groton.

 SARAH.  Sir, I believe that one has to take issue zealously with unfair practices.  And I think
       it's important to take issue zealously with this cherished eastern belief that one's worth is
       measured by one's school.  Or worse, that one's worth is measured by one ancestors. 
       The measure of one's worth is the measure of one's journey.

 BIDDLE.  One's journey.

 SARAH.  Yes,  The distance between one's origins and one's accomplishments.  For instance, if a black man, whose great-grandparents were slaves, graduates from college,

That accomplishment is more impressive than when a white man, when a white man----

Whose family began with forty-three thousand acres of what is now New Jersey, graduates from Harvard.

 BIDDLE. Young woman, and I don't mean young lady, you need to be reminded that I was
         fifty-six years old when you were still on the potty. ……

 SARAH.  "Young woman, and I don't mean young lady," is not only outmoded, it is elitist,
         eastern-establishment snobbery.
         .....................
BIDDLE.  Madam, your tenacity defeats me!  How can this be?.....

 SARAH. Sir, when I say that I am "not one of those," and you call that statement "sour grapes,"
         you imply that, if I don't covet an Ivy League education, I should.  And that is contrary to all
        of your words and all of your deeds over fifty years of this century.  Have you forgotten your
        commitment to Pennsylvania Coal miners?

 BIDDLE.  Have you forgotten your much vaunted Canadian civility?  It has shriveled up and
        piss-ad-eared into thin air!

 SARAH. Oh, for God's sake, sir, I went to the library!  I got Walker's biography.  You
       were "Main Line" Philadelphia!  When you joined the Democratic party the
       Republicans called you a "radical patrician."  They said you were a traitor to you
       class.  When you chaired the National Labor Relations Board the Democrats called
        you, "the noblest Roman of them all."  Are you no longer a democrat?
       (near tears.)
        Have you become nothing more than a hectoring, domineering old man?

(Biddle)
BIDDLE.  Obviously you’re cold.
           .......
       You're cold because you came early, and not when you were told to come.  You probably wanted
        to  make a good impression on your first day.  You'll find, if you stay, that I'm far more impressed
        by adherence to rules.
        ........
       The place is heated by these hideous gas heaters.  The operation of them--this is very important--
       the operation of them must be left entirely to me.  We will work mornings only, nine until noon.  If  I
       arrive at eight-thirty, and you arrive at nine, I'll have the heaters up and running.
       (He sighs, wishing that he was not "obliged" to say the following)
       And I suppose I must add, since employers are obliged to set terms, that if you arrive at nine fifteen
       you’ll be tardy and I'll be irritable.  Now.
      (He bends down to the dial, leaning on a chair; in pain.)
      These damned heaters are as ancient as I am.  The imbecile who designed them put the dials down
      at the floor.  I should get something with a wall dial, but I won't go to the expense because I don't
      expect to last much longer.  In fact, I'm fairly certain this is my final year.
     (He cannot rise without clutching the chair.)
      That’s the bathroom, over there.  If you're like all the other, you'll go in there to cry.