SG Casting is helping BETC, based in Boulder CO, cast their upcoming production of..
COAL COUNTRY, by Erik Jensen, Jessica Blank, and Steve Earle.
Looking for a local or Nationally-based actor to play Roosevelt!
AEA or non-union!
Rehearsals Oct. 2-27
Opening Oct. 28
Closing Nov. 19
(evening rehearsals and weekends, beginning in Englewood then moving to Boulder for tech and 4 weekends of shows–which will be:
Thurs & Fri @ 7:30pm,
Sat @ 2pm & 7:30pm,
Sun @ 2pm)
$500/wk plus housing
Considering both AEA or non-union.
BETC pays AEA health and pension benefits.
Please submit a link to your video audition, along with your headshot and resume, to this link:
https://airtable.com/shrwjXIQjj0xDdV5o
Please tape BOTH of the below sides for your audition submission.
Reels will NOT be accepted.
Any materials that are not the below sides will not be viewed.
Video submission deadline is Wednesday, June 28th, 5:00 PM MST.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
ROOSEVELT, 30 – mid 40s, African-American, physically powerful, soft-spoken due to sadness but a strong undercurrent of life and humor just under the surface.
INFO:
COAL COUNTRY by Erik Jensen, Jessica Blank, and Steve Earle is a fairly new show–it did really well at the Public Theater. It’s a verbatim theatre piece based on interviews of a West Virginian mining community after a 2010 explosion in one of the mines–an explosion that happened due to the greed and negligence of the corporation in charge. It holds strong relationships, community, resilience and heartbreak, for sure. (More details about the show here.)
SIDES:
Side #1, p.10, ROOSEVELT
After a while I started working at the UBB mine with my dad. Once you get down there, for some people, it’s addictive. And then a lot of people can’t do it, going underground, can’t see the sun. Affects people differently. Eventually I wound up workin’ dispatch while my dad was underground. So he was inside I was outside. He went to work at the same time same route every single day. I’d be comin’ he’d be leavin’, certain spot in the road, we would always pass, we’d pull over and talk, just conversate.
Big money up at UBB was that longwall. That’s that good coal, deep inside the mountain, bout an hour and a half in. They could get more than half a million a day off that. This ain’t shovels and picks. Longwall’s a huge machine, it’s on a track, it’s like a huge thick wall of coal, all the way in there (gestures to illustrate) and it’s like a cheese slicer, you know at the grocery store? You go down and come back, you shear all the coal, like cutting through hot butter (gestures)–shoo. They get more coal out of the longwall. More expensive coal. Way more.
Side #2 p. 38, ROOSEVELT
You know, they say West Virginia is a good place to raise your kids: it’s quiet, ain’t the fast pace, hustlin’ bustlin’, none of that–but now. Everything dryin’ up, all the mom and pop stores closed, some towns ain’t nothin but a ghost town. Ain’t got no school for the kids, they got ‘em going to school in FEMA trailers. Even though my whole family here, I’d even think about leavin’– but ain’t nobody gonna buy no house where there ain’t no school. (beat) My Daddy gave most of those records away, but the ones he really liked, they sittin’ in my Mom’s house. I keep telling her I need to clean out my basement before I go get ’em all. I know there’s one, two, three, four, at least five boxes of albums, still over there. I know where it is. I got a record player, and I’ll play em someday, yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, we gone play.
