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Audition Notice: Nora: A Doll's House

NORA: A Doll’s House

By Stef Smith

Directed by Ann M. Shanahan

First Rehearsal: October 4, 2022

Performances: November 11 - 20, 2022

Audition Information:

Auditions will be in-person, as follows:

Generals: Saturday, August 27, 1:00 - 5:00 in Pao Hall 2154

Callbacks: Tuesday, August 30, 6:30p – 10:30p in Pao Hall 2154

Actors will be notified of a callback via email.

NOTE: All actors are required to bring a picture of themselves or a headshot and a completed audition form to the general audition. Audition forms are available on the callboard outside 2165.

Purdue Department of Theatre Acting Graduate Students, Majors and Acting Certificate Students (required to audition):

Please prepare and memorize 1-2 min modern or contemporary monologue, dramatic or comedic, realistic or poetic (spoken word).

Purdue Department of Theatre Majors, Theatre Minors, Theatre Design and Production Majors and Non-Theatre Majors:

Please prepare and memorize a modern or contemporary monologue or choose from the options provided on the board. The monologue do not need to be memorized; however, it’s best if actors are very familiar with it.

Scripts: For a perusal copy, limited script copies of NORA are available for check out in the Theatre Office or in the Purdue University Library. (E-copies of A DOLLS HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen upon which the play is based can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l100cy3ugtork6b/A+Doll%27s+House+Final+Draft+ 2.2.16.pdf?dl=0

Content advisory: This play contains strong language, references to trauma, self-harm, sexual exploitation and abuse, and addiction.

A Note on Staged Intimacy: All staged contact will be led in rehearsals by a consultant trained in staging intimacy. All instances of staged intimacy for the characters required of the script are noted in parentheses in the character description below (*). If actors prefer not to be considered for characters because of staged intimacy or have questions they will be given an option to indicate this on the audition form.

A Note on Staged Violence: All staged contact will be led in rehearsals by a consultant trained in staging violence. All instances of staged violence for the characters required of the script are noted in parentheses in the character description below (**).

A Note on Movement: This production will build upon the poetic nature of the script to develop gestural ensemble movement as part of the staging and character work, involving all actors. The process devising this movement will be consent-based and will be modified to personal limits for health or other reasons. Please ask any questions of the director.

** Important Note on COVID-19: Please note that with social distancing and safety considerations related to COVID-19, staging, including intimacy and violence may be curtailed, abstracted, or cut.

Undergraduates must have a GPA of 2.5 or higher to be eligible to be cast.
Enrollment Requirement: Student actors cast in this production must register for 2-3 credits of THTR 536 Rehearsal and Performance in the Fall semester.

Note on the script: In NORA, Stef Smith bases the main action of the play on A DOLLS HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen, the iconic realistic drama of 1879, in which Nora Helmer faces injustice in her marriage and makes a choice —unheard of at the time — to leave her husband Torvald and three children to find her own independent identity. The play ends in what was called “the door slam heard around the world.” A model of a “well-made play” A DOLLS HOUSE has been widely adapted since the late nineteenth century. Stef Smith’s play is a powerful look at the pervasiveness of Nora’s conflict since then, rendered with contemporary candor and clarity, and which reconsiders the ending in the context of modern realities and new limits to women’s freedoms.
Smith places the characters in three time periods (1918, 1968, and 2018). Each role is personified in each period, marked by numerals 1-2-3. In our production Nora 1-2-3 and Christine 1-2-3 will each be played by three different actors; Thomas, Nathan, and Daniel will be played by the same actor for all three years.

ROLES OPEN FOR CASTING

Nora 1 a middle class, young upwardly mobile woman in 2018, strives to be the ideal wife to Thomas, a stay-at-home mom with three children, passionate, funny, full of life and struggling to live up to social norms and with double standards, with anxiety, depression and addictions to alcohol and shopping.[*Embraces, holds, grabs, flirts, kisses on cheek, forehead, neck and mouth with Thomas, majority receiving, some initiated, pulls up dress to reveal underwear to Daniel, Daniel rubs hand down her leg and feet; **slaps Thomas, threatened slap from Thomas, grabbed by Thomas.]

Nora 2 a middle class, young woman in 1968, strives to be the ideal wife to Thomas, a stay-at-home mom with three children, passionate, funny, full of life and struggling to live up to social norms and double standards, with anxiety, depression and addiction to valium and shopping. [*Embraces, holds, grabs, flirts, kisses on cheek, forehead, neck and mouth with Thomas; Thomas places his hand on her leg, her hand on his groin; Daniel rubs hand down her leg and feet, Sustained romantic look with Kristine; kiss on the mouth with Kristine; **slaps Thomas, snaps hand away from Thomas’s groin, defends against threatened slap from Thomas, pushes Thomas away.]

Nora 3 a middle class, young woman in 1918, strives to be the ideal wife to Thomas, a stay-at-home mom with three children, passionate, funny, full of life and struggling to live up to social norms and double standards, with anxiety, depression and addiction to sugar and shopping. [*Embraces, holds, grabs, flirts, kisses on cheek, forehead, neck and mouth with Thomas; Daniel rubs hand down her leg and feet, holds hand of Kristine; **slaps Thomas, snaps hand away from Thomas’s groin, defends against threatened slap from Thomas, pushes Thomas away.]

Christine 1 a girlhood friend of Nora, 2018, widowed and single, struggling financially, practical, wise, warm; was formerly involved with Nathan, loves Nora. [*Handshakes, hugs, embraces Nora.]

Christine 2 a girlhood friend of Nora, 1968, widowed and single, struggling financially, practical, wise, warm; was formerly involved with Nathan, in love with Nora. [*Long romantic look with Nora; kiss with Nora; initiates long embrace with Nathan.]

Christine 3 based on the Ibsen character of the same name; a girlhood friend of Nora, 1918, widowed and single, struggling financially, practical, wise, warm; was formerly involved with Nathan, loves Nora. [*Handshakes, hugs, embraces Nora.]

Thomas (1,2,3 played by the same actor) Nora’s husband, based on Ibsen’s Torvald Helmer, a conventional, conservative man focused on making money and advancing his career at the bank, excited by a recent promotion, loves Nora as a plaything, a sexual doll, quick to anger, judgmental and condescending without realizing it. [*Embraces, holds, grabs, flirts, kisses on cheek, forehead, neck, and mouth with Nora; receives and initiates, places Nora’s hand on his groin; **slapped by Nora, threatens to slap Nora, pushed away by Nora.]

Nathan (1,2,3 played by the same actor) a school friend and employee of Thomas the bank, based on Ibsen’s Nils Krogstad, widowed with several children, struggling to provide for them; jealous of Thomas, desperate and determined. [*Embrace with Christine, receiving.]

Daniel (1,2,3 played by the same actor) based on Dr. Rank, a single well to do doctor, a man who is friend to Thomas and Nora, who he is secretly in love with. He reveals to Nora that he is terminally ill. {*Mutual embrace and clasp hands with Nora, runs hand down Nora’s leg and feet.}

2 – 4 Understudies