On June 11th & 12th, North Fulton Drama Club will be holding open, Non-Equity auditions for a new production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Auditions will be held from 6:30 pm to 9:30pm. Call backs are on Thursday, June 14th.

**We are interested in actors of any and all races, ethnicities, body types, flavors, heights, whatever. Come as you are, because you are awesome.**

Show dates are evenings Fridays & Saturdays, September 21st through October 6th, with a Sunday Matinee on September 30th at 4pm.

Actors should come prepared to perform cold-readings from provided scripts. Monologues, particularly Shakespearean, are appreciated, but not required. Headshots and theatre resumes are appreciated, but not required.

Auditions will be held on the property of Barrington Hall in Roswell, Georgia. The Hall is located at 535 Barrington Drive, on the south side of the Historic Roswell Square, near the intersection of GA Hwy 120 and GA Hwy 9. Follow Barrington Drive and turn left on to King Street to access the graveled parking behind the blue barn. There is very limited parking available in the main lot, so please park around back.

Deal breakers include inability to be at ALL shows and inability to be present during the entirety of tech week. If you feel you have a particularly strong case for missing ONE day during tech week, please feel free to attempt to reason with us. We are nothing if not reasonable.

Please note: NFDC accepts actors who are age 14 and at least freshmen in high school.

Find Barrington Hall on Google Maps.

Questions? Email us at nfdramaclub@gmail.com or call us at 678-561-BARD.

NOTE:
NFDC is an all-volunteer community theater, and as such, no stipend or compensation is offered.

And while he’s been studied and analyzed and denied, there are questions we’ll never answer.

Was he a morning person? I doubt it. Artists and writers wake early out of necessity. Only the night has a silence and a seeming isolation that fosters the imagination of grander ideas.

What did those 37 plays do to him? Literally, I wonder. How was his vision? Did he write into the blur of sleeplessness, until he felt the salt burn around his eyes? And what of his back? His writing hand? Hunching over, working by candlelight, squinting into the night. This conduit for the human condition, working unaware of how the world would later perceive him and his words.

He was just a guy making a living, wasn’t he?

It wasn’t until college, and it was late even then, that I developed any appreciation for William Shakespeare. It is all to easy to say that I’d never the right introduction, but while I owe a debt immeasurable to Dr Cooley, Berry College’s resident expert on most things Elizabethan, the revelation was long in coming.

A public school education in Georgia guaranteed a minimum four encounters with Shakespeare over the course of a high school career. Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth.

Of these four, Romeo & Juliet is remembered fondest. In the mid-80s, there was no Baz Luhrmann film adaptation to pull from the media center. Instead, we had the Zefirelli from the early 70s. A beautiful film, remarkably true to the source material, Zefirelli’s take presented a public school teacher with a challenge of timing. Why? A partially naked Olivia Hussey, of course.

I remember like yesterday the sight of Ella Greene, high school English teacher, dashing across the room, manila folder in hand. She covered the screen just in time.

But Romeo & Juliet was the one play in the four to include anything like a teenager. By all rights, my classmates and I should’ve lapped this up like the everyday drama that washed up and down the locker-strewn hallways. And yet, it remained apart from us, something cold and learned and disconnected from reality. In my middle-aged conceit, I wonder how much more we’d have learned from just standing and saying the lines out and in the open. What teenager couldn’t relate to the immediacy of infatuation that feels like the end of the world, starstruck and lovedrunk?

But I know better. There was no time. There were tests to take, standards to meet. Bells ring and we shuffle on to the next class of the day.

And later, after we graduate, and then we graduate. And sometimes after we graduate again, we’ve just no time. We’re so busy.

We’re all just making a living aren’t we?

I’m asked often why we at NFDC stick to Shakespeare. Don’t we ever want to do anything different? When will we expand our horizons?

For about six months out of the year, we get to immerse ourselves in the words of this amazing, hard-working man. We go to our day jobs from 8am to 5pm, we dash through traffic, grab a bite to eat (or not), then we gather for rehearsal. Blocking, scenework or choreography will take us through to 10pm. Then we drive home, ideas still percolating in our heads of how to tackle the same thing tomorrow. Sleep, wake, repeat.

We do this because we have the time. Because we are blessed. All of us in this company, we attempt twice yearly to form a conduit of human creativity.

And once the show goes up, just as our Steampunk Tempest has … perhaps someone will come to this space we’ve created from nothing, expecting little more than an evening’s entertainment, then walk away with the strange comfort that there once was a man who knew them, all their human failings and glories.

And a little over four hundred years ago, that curious man had so much to say that he fought off sleep and cracked his knuckles and allowed himself maybe one more hour’s writing before going to bed.

Happy Birthday, William.

Thank you for staying up a little later.

That’s Loie Fuller, performing her “Serpentine Dance.” Pretty cool right? We kind of freaked. We looked up the patent. We brainstormed. That looks like, after all, a very large amount of fabric.
And it is. If I had to guess, I’d think that’s a good 7-10 yards depending on length. There were a number of reasons we thought anything that big was going to be a bad idea:

1. Height. These girls were going to be platforms at least 8 feet up in the air.
2. Climbing. They weren’t going to have steps, but ladders. Anything too big would also be too heavy.
3. Cost. For one scene – for five minutes – we were having a hard time making the cost case for the kind of fabric we’d need.
4. Time. Something that big is just time consuming.

We didn’t forget about it, but we shelved it, to let the inactive parts of our brains think about it. And then one of our Ariels showed up with a curtain. From WalMart. That were $10 each, and it was 52×84. She’d seen it pretending to be water in a window display at a local cafe. Did we mention our cast is awesome? So these things were pretty dang cool, and probably would work.

Thusly armed with curtains, we made something to approximate Loie Fuller’s gigantic serpentine dance costume, and in the end, we got this, which I think is pretty awesome. And pretty ingenious. And pretty much does the job 100%. Nothing like a total win.

As for me, I’ve been a fan of Steampunk from before I knew there was such a word.  Back in the ’80s, I would stay up late on Saturday nights to watch episodes of Doctor Who on Georgia Public Broadcasting. When Tom Baker played the Doctor, the interior of his time machine, the TARDIS, had the appearance of a Victorian drawing room, all full of brass and what looked like mahogany.  

The lesson there was that it was great to travel through time, but if you could do it in style, then all the better!

So what does this have to do with The Tempest?  North Fulton Drama Club has always taken Shakespearean plays are placed them solidly in various eras of history.  We’ve done Louisiana in the 1930s, a turn of the century India, a New Wave 1980s and even the Wild West.  For a few years now, we’ve kept Steampunk in the back of our collective mind, just waiting for the right play.  At some point last year, it just clicked: The Tempest‘s Prospero is a wizard who loved his books, who steers thunder and lightning to further his goals, who seeks to control of often invisible forces just beyond his comprehension.

In that way, Prospero has a lot in common with some real-life wizards from history, like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and (in particular) Nicola Tesla.  From there, it was a matter of looking at the character of Ariel like the embodiment of electricity and the deformed Caliban as nature standing (or stooping) resistant to being tamed and ordered.

Like we said in our Kickstarter:

“The last of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Tempest is a wonderful tale of magic both real and imagined, of love as a voyage of discovery, of wild things that cannot be tamed.”

I adore The Tempest.  Some of my favorite lines are spread throughout the text, and so many of them will be familiar to the audience even before they settle in for our production.

This production is our most ambitious to date.  It’s huge and exciting and a little terrifying, but we can’t wait to get it in front of an audience.

Download (PDF, 1.13MB)

Download and share with your students, kids, or interested adults!

Along with our organization, the FCAC also helps to support lots of other groups in the county. You can see a gallery of artists on their website, and you can download a list of current artists/groups as well. The FCAC supports organizations small and large, as well as public art throughout Fulton County.

So that’s pretty important.

What can you do to help?

Contact Your Commissioner. The number one most awesome thing you can do is talk to your elected officials and tell them that you think the FCAC is important. Talk about shows you’ve seen that the FCAC helped to sponsor (like ours!) and tell them why it’s important to support the arts in our communities.

Take Advantage of FCAC Programs! Maybe you want to take a class? That’s another topic you can bring up with your Commissioner!

Take Our Patrons’ Survey By filling out the survey, you help us gather vital information about our audiences and help us serve you better.

Thank you for supporting NFDC and the arts in Fulton County!

Frankly, we are freaking out.

That is amazing. You knocked our socks off. And then you funded us OVER our goal. We’re flabbergasted.

What you may not know, is that if you backed our project, you are part of a group of people who are helping Kickstarter to be on track to out-fund the NEA. Now, not every dollar on Kickstarter goes to “the arts” per se, but all of these are creative projects. The guy with the awesome iPhone dock. Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s performance art tour. Some crazy people making a comedy series right here in Atlanta.

And now, you’ve funded The Tempest.

That is a lot of Kickstarter success, but also keep in mind that something like half of all the projects on Kickstarter do not get funded. While we were really confident we had a great idea and an awesome community behind us, we also knew that we had a 50/50 chance of not making it. The fact that we did make it, that we more than made it, is a testament not only to the value of our idea but also to the strength of our community.

We’re working out our exact plans for your money now, and we’ll be showing our backers secret updates about how we’re spending the funds before the show gets on its feet. We’ll also be sending out a bunch of administrative emails to backers to help us plan and execute getting out all of your premiums. Please, if you are a backer, ensure your email address is one you will be able to check!

Again, thank you so much. We’re endlessly grateful.

Mark your calendar now! NFDC is proud to announce our Spring 2012 production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Opening April 27, 2012!

1893.

The World’s Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago … Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 premiers … Prospero, the Duke of Milan, is deposed, exiled and set adrift at sea with his infant daughter, Miranda … and his books …

1909.

Ernest Shackleton’s expedition discovers the South Pole … The Grand Isle Hurricane devastates Cuba … Alonso, the King of Naples, shipwrecks with his crew on the shore of a strange, uncharted island …

And this is where our steampunk Tempest begins.

Friday & Saturday Evenings April 27th through May 12th at 8pm
Sunday Matinee May 6th at 4pm

Seating begins at 7pm; Show begins at 8pm (more or less dusk)

General Admission: FREE!
Suggested Donation of $5 – Please consider giving in advance via our Kickstarter Campaign!

Reserved seating at tables will be available for this show. Tables seat six, and come with tablecloth and candle.
Click here to reserve a table today!

Location:
Barrington Hall
535 Barrington Drive
Roswell, GA 30075

Map:

View Larger Map

Funding for this program is provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council.

Our graphics courtesy of Erica Cruz. If you want some awesome graphics, just drop us a message and we’ll hook you up with the best graphic designer in the ATL.

• Prospero – Zip Rampy
• Miranda – Jo Arellanes
• Ferdinand – Justin Munson
• Ariel Prime – Cynthia Brower
• Caliban – Paul Riley
• Alonso – Donovan Craig
• Antonia – Emma Greene
• Gonzalo – Gary Heffelfinger
• Sebastian – Christo Taoushiani
• Adrianisco – Ren Robinson
• Stephano – Ben Silver
• Trinculo – Jessica DeMaria
• Boatswain – Adam Levenstein
• Master of the Ship – Kirsten Milliken
• Mariner – Lyle Chadwick
• Ceres – Kate Rasnick
• Iris - Sarah Frey
• Juno – Sarah Keyes Chang
• And featuring as Aspects of Ariel: Ilene Miller, Emily Gail Howell, Emily Arvidson, Hannah Twiggs, Aleah Burgdorf, Shari Bohnsack

To say we’re overwhelmed is an understatement. We thought it would be a risk to go for even $2,500, but this community … this still growing and generous community … has proven more supportive than we humbly imagined.

So again … thank you.

What do we do now?

We keep going. Our official Kickstarter goal cannot change and it has been wonderfully met, but we’ve another 36 whole days to go in this campaign. So in the next couple of days, we’ll be unofficially raising our funding goal a little higher. While we can do so much with $2,500, we can do even bigger things with a little more.

And as promised, you’ll be seeing a new Kickstarter video in a few days and we’ll be filming the third video this weekend. Though we’ve met our official goal, we’re just getting started.