This Sunday and Monday AUDITIONS at RIVERWALK THEATRE for
SWEAT - By Lynn Nottage
Directed by George Popovich - needs actors of COLOR…(and a few white folks, too.)
Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize
Auditions: August 18 and 19, 7 pm Performances: Oct. 3-6 and 10-13, 2019
It’s 2000/2008 and union blue collar workers in Berks County, Reading, Pennsylvania enjoy a decent middle class life and secure future until management at Olstead’s Steel Tubing Plant decides to make some changes including layoffs and the recruitment of Latino workers. Friends become rivals and enemies, loyalties shift and change as the workers are pitted against themselves and their friends. Examines America’s aspirations, hopes, dreams and disappointments through the lenses of class, race and politics.
Evan, Male, 40s. Black / African Descent - displays a tough, direct, and no-nonsense approach. A career parole officer, he is committed to helping his parolees succeed through a mixture of tough love and challenge He can more than take care of himself.
Cynthia, Female, 45/53. Black / African Descent - is a steel worker. Starting at the plant as a teenager, she and Tracey have been best friends, and have given their lives to the line. Focused, ambitious and sturdy, despite the derision of her colleagues, she applies for a promotion and finally escapes the line and becomes a floor manager. Cynthia’s loyalty to her colleagues and friends is tested when the closing of the plant is announced.
Jason, Male, 21/29. White / European Descent - has the strong build of a young man who went from the gridiron straight to the production line. He has deep working class roots, is proud of his blue collar heritage and still has faith that his life will be spent in the factory. He is youthful, tough, funny and charismatic. In prison he hardens into a white supremacist, his optimism transforming into rage.
Chris, Male, 21/29. Black / African Descent- is the son of Cynthia and Brucie. He is Jason’s best friend. He is muscular, charismatic, youthful, warm; a steel
worker, with aspirations to educate himself and find a life beyond the steel plant. He eventually hardens into a disillusioned ex-con and turns to religion to help him fight his darkness within.
Stan, Male, 50s. White / European Descent - is friendly but stern, a former steel worker who was injured at the plant. Stan now tends the bar that the plant workers frequent. He has watched the lives of his customers play out and is deeply empathetic with their struggles, but his word is the rule of law. It would be a mistake to cross this man.
Oscar, Male, 22/30. Latino / Hispanic Descent - is Colombian-American, a busboy at the local bar. He keeps to himself, always conscious that in this community of the disenfranchised and powerless he is at the bottom of the heap. When the steel plant locks out the workers, Oscar is willing to risk everything to cross the picket lines and seize the opportunity to better his life. Although he was born in Berks County, he is still considered an outsider.
Tracey, Female, 45/53 White / European Descent - is a steel worker and true company loyalist. She has given her life to the line. She is funny, brassy, bossy, opinionated and fiercely loyal. As her life begins to spiral out of control she can no longer manage the cocktail of disillusionment and anger that simmers below her surface.
Jessie, Female, 40/49. White / European Descent - is a steel worker and a former hippie with a warm disposition and easy access to her humor. She drowns her sorrows in booze and is a sloppy drunk whose anger and disappointment with the cards she’s been dealt bubble up when she drinks.
Brucie, Male, 40s. Black / African Descent - is Chris’ father and Cynthia’s estranged husband. Handsome, but fading fast, he is a former textile factory worker, now a smooth-talking heroin addict. He was once charismatic, but has fully succumbed to his addiction. He is still capable of being charming, but as his circumstances become increasingly desperate so does his behavior
Come prepared to read from the script. Contact Mike Siracuse about the availability of a perusal script mailto:rwt@riverwalktheatre.com517-582-5700
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