HANNAH SENESH– A Play With Music - NYC EPA
Folksbiene National Yiddish Theatre
AUDITION DATE
Mon, Apr 01, 2019
9:30 am - 5:30 pm (EDT)
Lunch 1 to 2
CONTRACT
Special Agreement Salary: $515.00 /week for AEA Members
SEEKING
Equity actors. IMPORTANT NOTE: This play will be performed in English. The characters will also use some phrases in Hungarian, Hebrew, Yiddish and/or in German. Dialects will be used in the play. PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY DIALECTS FOR THE EPA.
See breakdown.
Stage Managers: There are no stage management positions available at this time
PREPARATION
Actors will read sides provided at the EPA. Please bring a headshot and resume, stapled together.
LOCATION
Actors' Equity New York Audition Center
165 W 46th St
16th Fl
New York, NY 10036
PERSONNEL
Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director
Writer: David Schechter
Based upon the diaries and poems of Hannah Senesh
Translated from the Hungarian by Marta Cohn and Peter Hay
Developed in collaboration with Lori Wilner
Music composed and arranged by Steven Lutvak
Director: David Schechter
Casting: Jamibeth Margolis, CSA
IN ATTENDANCE AT EPA:
Writer/Director: David Schechter
Artistic Director: Zalmen Mlotek
Associate Artistic Director: Motl Didner
Casting: Jamibeth Margolis, CSA
OTHER DATES
Rehearsals begin: Spring 2019
Performances: Spring-Summer 2019 (exact Dates TBA)
Venue: Off Broadway’s Safra Hall at the Museum Of Jewish Heritage, NYC
OTHER
EPA Procedures are in effect for audition.
An Equity monitor will be provided.
Equity’s contracts prohibit discrimination. Equity is committed to diversity and encourages all its employers to engage in a policy of equal employment opportunity designed to promote a positive model of inclusion. As such, Equity encourages performers of all ethnicities, gender identities, and ages, as well as performers with disabilities, to attend every audition.
Always bring your Equity Membership card to auditions.
BREAKDOWN
IMPORTANT NOTE: This play will be performed in English. The characters will also use some phrases in Hungarian, Hebrew, Yiddish and/or in German. Dialects will be used in the play. PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY DIALECTS FOR THE EPA.
Synopsis:
Adapted from Hannah Senesh's diary, the play tells the true story of Hannah, often referred to as Israel's Joan of Arc. The play begins in 1934. Hannah is a precocious 13 year old Jewish girl living in the culturally sophisticated city of Budapest. She aspires to being a writer like her late father. As she matures she experiences the growing wave of anti-Semitism and becomes passionate about the dream of building a Jewish state in the land of Palestine. Against her mother's wishes, Hannah emigrates to Palestine to work on an agricultural kibbutz. She is restless there, feeling her intellectual and artistic gifts are not being utilized. Then, she hears reports of the concentration camps in Eastern Europe where Jews are being murdered. She decides that she cannot stay in Palestine when the Hungarian Jews, particularly her mother, who has stayed behind, are in such grave danger. She joins an elite group of Jewish paratroopers who drop behind Nazi lines, first to work with the Partisans in the forests of Yugoslavia and then to cross the border into Hungary to try to save the Jews at risk of deportation to the death camps. Hannah is captured trying to cross the border from Yugoslavia into Hungary and taken to a fascist prison in Budapest. She is severely beaten and tortured when she refuses to cooperate with her fascist captors. At the last gasps of the war, she is executed at the age of 23. Her compelling diaries and poems were left behind, tracing her evolution into a Jewish heroine. In the play, her poems are set to music and sung by the actress playing Hannah as part of the storytelling.
SEEKING:
HANNAH SENESH/CATHERINE SENESH (Played by the same actress):
HANNAH SENESH (pronounced SEHnish) - played by a versatile actress ages 20 -35 with a wide emotional range. Must also have a strong singing voice, with strong upper register. Must be very physically fit and move well. Hannah ages from 13 -23. Starts the play as a precocious, intellectual, insightful and resilient Hungarian Jewish teenager with a strong moral compass. She feels things very deeply. She can also be headstrong and impulsive. When she sets her mind to something, she is determined to carry it through. As she grows, so does her sense of mission. She is torn between wanting to be a writer and a poet and the responsibility she feels to the wellbeing of others. She is majorly brave, becoming the first female paratrooper in World War Two. The one place she lacks confidence is in personal romantic relations.
CATHERINE SENESH (HANNAH’S MOTHER, played by the same actress as HANNAH) :
Catherine is a well educated, culturally sophisticated, upper class Hungarian in her mid-fifties. She carries herself with enormous dignity. She does not show her emotions easily, but one can sense a deep well of them. She dedicates herself to keeping the memory of her martyred daughter Hannah alive by proudly speaking about her to gatherings all over the world.
OFFSTAGE UNDERSTUDY FOR HANNAH SENESH: SEE ABOVE
GUARD: Male. 25 - 40 Imposing, frightening fascist border guard. Barks out orders like an attack dog.
Equity’s contracts prohibit discrimination. Equity is committed to diversity and encourages all its employers to engage in a policy of equal employment opportunity designed to promote a positive model of inclusion. As such, Equity encourages performers of all ethnicities, gender identities, and ages, as well as performers with disabilities, to audition.
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