Auditions for The Pam Kitto Black Box Theatre

Character Breakdown

Jim Fingal (mid 20s) A Harvard graduate and intern at the magazine, Jim is eager to prove himself in his new job and absolutely dedicated to getting it all correct. He’s a little anxious, a lot tenacious, and willing to fight for what he believes is right.

Emily Penrose (late 40s to 60s) Manages an upscale, journalistic magazine. A master of multitasking and efficiency. She excels in her career, and believes strongly in the power of the stories her publication tells.

John D’Agata (40s to 60s) A renowned author and essayist. Talented, well educated and with a strong belief in what he sees as truth through art, he can also be abrasive, sarcastic, and arrogant.

Audition Monologues

JIM You claim it’s a traffic jam. And you claim that there were five dozen cars and one hundred people there. How can you know this? Was someone there counting? To say nothing of your claim that this was in fact a jam, because let’s be clear: This was no jam. But let’s assume that this was a jam because you say it’s a jam. You say it’s a jam so I think it’s a jam. Right here: where Baltimore Avenue comes in from the west and dead-ends at Las Vegas Boulevard. You said so, plus I confirmed it on a map.

EMILY If you don’t want to have to deal with someone like him, then don’t shake me, don’t plant cute little bombs all over this thing. You do not understand the difference between…MY magazine and the Bumblefuck Literary Review this is going to end up in. It’s one thing to say it was sunny on a day it was cloudy. It’s another thing to claim that a girl hanged herself when in fact she jumped off a building! Lorena Ortiz! She’s as dead as Levi, and you pissed on her memory for the sake of some literary conceit. And what do I do when her parents read the story? When her father sues the magazine for emotional distress. Really? He has to prove in a court of law his daughter’s death was important.

JOHN Stop annotating and listen a minute! If you draw an oval around England, Scotland, and Wales and measure the circumference, you get one answer. And of course if you tighten the oval, hug the coast closer and closer, your answer gets more accurate and it also gets smaller. Makes sense. You’re zeroing in on the truth. But keep doing it–hug the coastline closer and closer, start digging into every cove and inlet and point and jetty, more and more “accurately,” something strange starts to happen. The answer starts getting larger. Every inlet and jetty has inlets and jetties, and those in turn have inlets and jetties. A thousand miles turns into two thousand miles turns into ten thousand miles-the coastline never runs out of miles. Even the most precise numbers in the world tell you nothing.