Playing May 21 - June 20, 2010

Setting
The action of the play takes place in England in 1982 with a flashback to 1981 and moves from a restaurant to an employment agency to Joyce’s home. In a posh restaurant, Marlene celebrates her promotion to managing director of the Top Girls Employment Agency by throwing a delightful Mad Hatter’s dinner party for an array of mythical and literary women. The guests include a Victorian-era Scottish traveler, a Japanese courtesan turned Buddhist nun, Pope Joan, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Patient Griselda and Dull Gret, the subject of a painting by Bruegel. Crossing cultures, generations and politics, the women’s conversation reveals the choices, sacrifices and joys they have in common with one another as each in her own way has pursued her life goals. Each has given up significant relationships—as mother, wife, lover, nurturer, partner—in order to attain a place in a patriarchal society. After this smashing opening, the rest of the play is set firmly in reality as we follow Marlene in her day-to-day experience as a woman working in Britain during the 1980s. She goes into the office the next Monday morning, gossips with her coworkers, interviews clients and deals with a surprise visit from her niece Angie. Soon the author’s point becomes abundantly clear: this contemporary woman has a lot in common with her party guests, as she faces her sister, her niece, her coworkers and her own choices.

Characters
(Six actresses will play 2-3 characters in the play
one actress will play the sole role of Marlene):

Marlene, early 30’s, managing director of the Top Girls Employment Agency
Joyce, late 30’s/early 40’s, Marlene’s older sister, a housecleaner
Angie, Joyce’s daughter, 16 years old
Kit, Angie’s friend, 12 years old
Nell, late 20’s/early 30’s, employee of Top Girls Employment Agency
Win, late 20s’s/early 30’s, employee of Top Girls Employment Agency
Mrs. Kidd, 40’s-50’s, married to an employee of Top Girls Employment Agency
Jeanine, early 20’s, a job applicant
Louise, late 40’s, a job applicant
Shona, early 20’s, a job applicant
Isabella Bird (1831-1904), lived in Edinburgh, traveled extensively between the ages of 40 and 70
Lady Nijo (b. 1258), Japanese, an emperor’s courtesan and later a Buddhist nun who traveled on foot through Japan
Dull Gret, the subject of the Bruegel painting Dulle Griet, in which a woman in an apron and armor leads a crowd of peasant women charging through hell and fighting the devils  
Pope Joan, disguised as a man, is thought to have been pope between 854 and 856
Patient Griselda, the obedient wife whose story is told by Chaucer in "The Clerk’s Tale" of The Canterbury Tales
A Waitress

Auditions
Saturday, March 27, 1-4pm & Sunday, March 28, 7-10PM.

Auditions will be held at The Barn Theatre, Marin Art and Garden Center, Lagunitas and Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross.

Please come prepared with a 1-minute contemporary monologue, British dialect desired.

Non-AEA, stipend.

Callbacks:
Tuesday, March 30, 7-10pm.

Rehearsals:
Begin April 5, 2010

Performances:
May 20 – June 20, 2010

Audition Appointments:
Please call Cris Cassell at (415) 731-0263