CASTING BREAKDOWN

My Sister In This House
Deaf West Theatre
AEA 99-seat
Director: Michael Unger
Playwright: Wendy Kesselman
Producers: Ed Waterstreet, Laura Hill
ASL Master: David Kurs
Casting Director: Michael Donovan, CSA

Audition start: 2/17
Callbacks: 2/18 and/or 2/19
Rehearsals begin: 3/8 for deaf actors and signing actors
All others begin rehearsal: 3/15
Previews begin: 4/10
Opens: 4/17
Runs through: 5/30

Contract: AEA 99-seat
Rate: $25 per show
Performance schedule: Thurs. - Sat. eves at 8, Sun. matinees at 2

PLEASE SUBMIT ELECTRONICALLY -
USING BREAKDOWN OR ACTORS ACCESS ONLY, PLEASE!

SEEKING:

CHRISTINE (Female, mid-20’s) Deaf or hard of hearing, signs only. She is the dominant sister and the caretaker. She is the personification of the efficient maid and keeps the house running like clockwork until her sister joins her and things start to unravel. She has profound resentment for her mother who, after abandoning both sisters to a convent, pulled Christine out of that same convent she loved and forced her to begin working as a maid so the mother could collect the profits. After her sister joins her in the house, Christine’s goal becomes the total absorption of her sister to the exclusion of all other influences: domestic, romantic, sexual and otherwise. She becomes addicted to the relationship which is the downfall of all four women in the house. Very brief tasteful nudity will be required for this role.

LEA (Female, early 20’s) Deaf or hard of hearing, signs only. This role will be played by a deaf actress. She is the personification of innocence and devotion. She is hardly the efficient maid as compared with her sister but her dedication is admirable. At the beginning of the play, she is still tied to her mother – a connection that Christine succeeds in severing as quickly as possible. Once that break happens, Lea finds everything she needs in Christine until her innocent curiosity with her employer’s daughter begins to threaten the bond with her sister. This sparks a jealousy in Christine with catastrophic results. Very brief tasteful nudity will be required for this role.

MADAME DANZARD (Female, late 40’s - late 50’s) Hearing, possible signing. This role will be played by a hearing actress. She is the iron-fisted, white-glove-testing controller of the house. She is a fierce, condescending employer and smothering mother. Even though she speaks often of her daughter’s impending betrothal, she seems to be doing everything in her power to keep her daughter in the house forever. She has no tolerance for inefficiency which is why Christine is such a perfect maid for her at the beginning. As the relationship of the maids starts to grow upstairs, so too does the resentment and dissatisfaction on the main floor. Madame has a few brief, private moments when we see how she experienced joy through music and dance as a younger woman – but those moments of comparative elation are soon squelched when she notices her daughter is watching. She is arrogant, entitled and cruel to her employees while being sickeningly sweet and over-bearing with her daughter.

ISABELLE (Female, mid-20’s) Hearing, some signing. This role will be played by a hearing actress. She is the daughter of the house who doesn’t know much about the world beyond her own four walls. And that’s the way her mother likes it. She is dutiful, obedient yet extremely curious about the two sisters who move into her house. As the play progresses, she comes to realize and enjoy the power she holds over the younger maid – the source of extreme jealousy for the older one. The more Isabelle understands and resents the sheltered existence foisted upon her by her mother, the more like her mother she becomes.

PHOTOGRAPHER/MEDICAL EXAMINER (Male, 30’s-50’s) These roles should be played by a hearing actor who knows or can learn sign language. These roles are written as a voice over in the script but in our production, this actor will be seen, will sign and will speak. As the
photographer, he is a warm, kind man who takes a picture of the maids – an event usually reserved for people of the upper classes. He seems to know a lot about the town in which they live and therefore gives us some backstory on the Madame and Isabelle. As the Medical Examiner, he reports the gruesome events of the murder. In doing so, he is cool, monotone and unaffected by the horrific things of which he speaks.

CHRISTINE’S VOICE (Female, mid-20’s) This actress will be reading the lines of Christine over the sound system. It will require a full-out performance, although as communicated only through the voice. See above character description. The audition will be a standard reading as opposed to simply a voice-over audition. (Obviously, no nudity required!)

LEA’S VOICE (Female, early-20’s) This actress will be reading the lines of Lea over the sound system. It will require a full-out performance, although as communicated only through the voice. See above character description. The audition will be a standard reading as opposed to simply a voice-over audition. (Obviously, no nudity required!)

Synopsis: “My Sister in This House” is the true, gruesome story of the Papin Sisters who murdered their employer and her daughter with unprecedented brutality in Le Mans France in 1933. It is the same case on which Jean Genet modeled his “The Maids.” Many thought the murder was the result of the class struggle between the sister/maids who had very little in their lives beyond each other; and their employer who barely said a word to them in the seven years of their employ. Because of their abusive childhood and their estranged workplace, the two young women find emotional and physical solace in the only place they can: each other.
We will be using a unique combination of sign language, captions and simultaneous spoken dialogue to emphasize some of the core issues of alienation between the classes in this production.