Red Octopus Theatre Company is holding open auditions for:
The Night of the Iguana
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Bonnie Ross
Auditions: Sunday, June 7th @ 6pm
Callbacks: Tuesday, June 9th @ 6pm
Performances Oct. 16 – Nov. 1 in the David Ogden Stiers theatre.
Winner! 1962 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play
Nominee: Three 1962 Tony Awards, including Best Play
Nominee: Two 1977 Drama Desk Awards
Nominee: Three 1992 Olivier Awards
Set against the lush, suffocating heat of a Puerto Vallarta hillside in 1940, Williams’ sweeping drama explores the fragile human need for connection, the burden of the past, and the desperate search for meaning at the edge of everything. By turns darkly comic, heartbreaking, and profoundly tender, The Night of the Iguana stands as one of the great American plays — a work of blazing humanity from the master of the American stage.
Produced by special arrangement with Concord Theatricals.
ALL ROLES ARE OPEN
Maxine Faulk
Affable, truth-teller, earthy; lives to fullest; prefer bilingual (Spanish) but can work around.
Larry Shannon
Middle-aged man in emotional/mental crisis; drinker; lost soul.
Hannah Jelkes
Middle-aged; ethereal; quietly resigned to her life; antithesis to Maxine.
Nonno (Jonathan Coffin)
Hannah’s grandfather; in his 90s; frail.
Judith Fellowes
Middle-aged to older; stern, nasty-tempered, angry; described as “butch.”
Charlotte Goodall
Late teens to early 20s; vapid, flirty, provocative.
Hank
Shannon’s assistant tour guide; in his 20s; tasked with keeping Shannon sober and on schedule.
Jake Latta
Shannon’s middle-aged corporate boss; all business; appears late in play.
Pedro & Pancho
Maxine’s Mexican boy-toys; shirtless, sexy; few lines – all in Spanish – but present often on stage.
Fahrenkopf Family
Frau and Herr, their adult daughter Hilda, and Hilda’s husband Wolfgang
Any appropriate ages for family relationships; loud, plumpish Germans given to breaking into singing Nazi anthems; smaller roles but intensive rehearsals because of German-speaking and singing. (Speaking German is not required, but if you do – that’s a plus!)
ABOUT THE PLAY
It is 1940, the world is at war, and the air at the Costa Verde Hotel on the Mexican coast is thick with heat and humidity. The hotel is run by Maxine Faulk, a brassy, pragmatically sensual widow who is as weathered and resilient as the cliffs surrounding her. Into this tropical purgatory stumbles Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, a “defrocked” priest turned tour guide who is currently suffering a spectacular nervous breakdown. He arrives with a busload of indignant Baptist schoolteachers, led by the vengeful Miss Fellowes. Shannon’s career is imploding: he is accused of “heresy and fornication” with an underage traveler, Charlotte Goodall, and he has hijacked his own tour to seek refuge at Maxine’s. The hotel’s isolation is soon broken by two “New England transients” – Hannah Jelkes: A delicate, ethereal, and fiercely dignified “peripatetic” artist, and Nonno – Hannah’s 97-year-old grandfather, the “world’s oldest living and working poet,” who is struggling to finish one final masterpiece. As a tropical storm gathers, the characters grapple with their “blue devils” (Shannon’s term for his internal demons). The play’s central metaphor is a captive iguana tied up beneath the veranda, frantically snapping at its tether—a reflection of Shannon’s own spiritual and mental captivity. While Miss Fellowes works to finalize Shannon’s professional ruin, a profound, platonic intimacy forms between the jagged Shannon and the serene Hannah. They find a “broken” kind of grace in one another’s company, discussing how to endure the “long tunnel of the night.”
PLEASE NOTE – CONTENT ADVISORY: Themes addressed in this play include alcoholism, religion, homosexuality, and underage sex. The play is set in 1940 and reflects the language idioms of that time. Recommended for mature teens or older.
To help ensure an enjoyable experience for all, we kindly encourage guests to consider attending fragrance-free in support of those with allergies and sensitivities.
Red Octopus Theatre Company encourages any/all in the community who may be interested in theatre to join us for auditions, as we love to see new talent and welcome new folks to our stages. Our auditions are open to all because we want to see our coastal theatre community grow! Please arrive on time and let the attendant know if you will need to leave early. Callbacks are by invitation only.
Red Octopus Theatre Company is committed to inclusivity and does not discriminate with regard to gender, race, age, size, or ability. Most characters we encounter currently are on the binary and are written with he/him or she/her pronouns, and you will see that in the descriptions we provide. But however limiting the descriptions are, our casting seeks to be as inclusive as possible, and we invite gender non-conforming, genderqueer, transgender, and non-binary actors to submit for the roles they most identify with. We will also list race/ethnicity when specific to the character, but are otherwise seeking all races and ethnicities.