Auditions

DINNER WITH FRIENDS

AUDITION TIME & LOCATION:
Sun Dec 15 or Mon Dec 16 @ Theatre in the Country
5708 Glover Road, Langley, BC

Directors: Thomas Smith & Gabe Kirkley
Producer: Reg & Erin Parks
Stage Manager: Michaela Freeman

NEEDED for your Audition:

Fill out the form to the left and let us know the best time period to book you in (you can choose more than one)

• NEW! Submit headshot (or picture) and resume (or list of shows) in the form
  • Please name your Headshot with your full name – not just ‘headshot’
    • Please send your resume or show list as a PDF with your name and the word resume (ie:  JillActor Resume.pdf)
    • IMPORTANT NOTES: – if you don’t do as follows your audition request may be returned to you.
    • Sides will be sent out to you once you have requested an audition time.  Please be familiar with the material.

• Please arrive early in order to fill out an audition form.
• Please read below for character descriptions

A FEW NOTES ABOUT THE SHOW

• Rehearsals will be on Monday & Wednesdays from 6:30-9:30 and Sundays from 3-9 starting in February
  
• The show will run for 2 or maybe 3 weeks in April
• Please NOTE: There is some on stage intamacy required by all characters in this play. Kissing and affection only
• DINNER WITH FRIENDS will be TIC’s submission to the Theatre BC Festival which will mean an additional show in May and possibly July in Port Alberni
• If you wish to audition but are not available for any of the dates please use the form to left to let us know that.  No promises, but we will do what we can.

SYNOPSIS

In this contemporary age when couples befriend other couples to find family companions with common ground, Dinner with Friends seeks to explore what happens when one of these romantic pairs breaks down, and the waves that can make across households. Gabe and Karen, collaborators in the industry of food literature and a husband-and-wife duo that boast a relationship to aspire to, maintain a constant closeness with another couple in their life, Tom and Beth. Tom, who has known Gabe since college, and Beth, a friend of Karen’s, were set up years ago by Gabe and Karen on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard that they all took together. When, in the first scene, Beth informs Gabe and Karen over dinner that Tom is leaving her, a chain of events is set off that may impact more than one kind of love. Though the events of this play center first around a romantic breakup, they are hardly limited to that specific kind of human bond. Friendships, too, are challenged and made raw as this drama moves through a subtle examination of why we keep people constant in our lives, and what it means when both people need to move on. Through recollections, arguments, impassioned grasps for personal freedom, and revelation of past hurt, each of these four adults rediscovers the meaning behind their connection to one another. When the dust has settled and the healing on all sides is closer to completion, more than one relationship may have found its end. Cross-talk and subtext are noticeable tools of this play, and both honor the realism with which these people come together and come apart. The motif of bonding over a meal not only highlights Karen and Gabe’s love for the art of food, but also the vulnerability often found in the breaking of bread as a means of relating to other humans on a very basic level. This thematic element is ever-present in the aptly-titled Dinner with Friends, an eventful but quiet and moving meditation on challenge and communication in relationships of every kind.

AVAILABLE ROLES:

NOTE: Even though the roles were orignally written for people in there 40’s, we are looking for actors sho can play any where from late 20s to mid-50’s.

GABE is a food critic and the husband of Karen. He and Karen met in early adulthood and immediately clicked. Their interests complement one another without one person overshadowing the other, their morals are more or less aligned, they communicate, and they are happy. Gabe is incredibly shaken by Tom and Beth’s split; it causes some earnest reflection on his part about what his relationship with Karen actually means to him. He doesn’t take it lightly that one member of a relationship could be so dissatisfied without the other one knowing, and that difference could mean the end for so much. He is careful to not assign blame, even when it appears that blame might be self-evident, and in his own time comes to his own conclusions about his moral standing in Tom and Beth’s breakup. It is equally important for him to investigate his relationship with Karen, to take the pulse of their connection and ensure that it’s as steady as he assumed it to be. Good-natured, trusting, and amiable, Gabe may think he’s unflappable but unrest in those he loves presents a new side of agitation, new even to Gabe himself.

KAREN is a publisher and the wife of Gabe, she thinks very highly of her relationship with her husband. The two collaborate on books together, travel together, parent their children together, and face the chaos of the world together. Her trust in their commitment is hardly touched by Beth and Tom’s announcement, until Gabe begins to worry too hard. Even then, Karen is fairly steadfast in her belief that they chose each other for a reason. Karen is chipper and friendly, and loves hosting as much as Gabe does, so the dinner parties they throw as a family are the anchor that holds many of their outside friendships together. Warm, a bit spontaneous, and adventurous, with a great deal of trust and loyalty, navigating the waters of re-evaluating your attachment to another person is new territory for Karen, who struggles with some insecurity at her inability to help things resolve with happiness. Regardless of her good nature, Karen makes it clear after learning of Tom’s affair that mistrust and lying, especially in the form of cheating, are non-negotiable problems for her.

BETH is an artist and the wife of Tom. Beth and Tom were connected by their friends Gabe and Karen over 12 years before the play began, and after having shared a marriage and the parenting of two young children for a long time, are splitting up after Tom reveals that he wants out of the marriage so he can be with his mistress Nancy. While initially, Beth is beside herself with betrayal upon discovery of Tom’s infidelity and her own complete ignorance that anything was the matter, after some time she resolves to keep the blame away from herself. She is on the quieter side and was very unique in her earlier years of adulthood, and her career as an artist is one Tom has never fully supported. Her talent is also a point of debate between the other three characters in this play, and she ultimately decides that Tom was right and leaves it behind for a new life. She also finds comfort in a new relationship, with a man who it turns out she may have had an affair with years ago. Beth experiences emotions deeply, and is often self-critical, but through her own capability for self-determination is able to map a new and possibly happier life for herself, away from an ex-husband who never spoke up when he needed more from her.

TOM is a lawyer and the husband of Beth. Tom is a sharply fragile person, with a dismay towards his own life that accompanies his restlessness perfectly. Tom and Beth met through Karen and Gabe years ago and both couples have remained close; with the discovery that Tom is cheating on Beth and wants to leave her for the woman named Nancy he now loves, a shockwave is sent through their small bubble of domesticity and security. Tom is having what some might call a midlife crisis; he feels he has been calling out for help for years, and his pleas have gone unanswered, especially by Beth. Without any further attempt to salvage things, he declares their relationship finished and moves on with his life. Tom states that he was never truly in love with Beth, nor did he want the family ‘normalcy’ thrust upon him, a state of mind that deeply divides Tom and Gabe. After gaining what he sees as a second life with Nancy, Tom is able to live a thrilling post-bachelor existence he claims to have missed for so long. Regardless of the morality of his actions, he does find a deeper version of his own happiness for himself in a love with far fewer attachments and obligations.