Auditions for The Great American Trailer Park Musical Announced

WALPOLE FOOTLIGHTERS ANNOUNCE AUDITIONS FOR
THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL
 
The Walpole Footlighters are pleased to announce auditions for THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL by David Nehls and Betsy Kelso on Monday, June 13 and Wednesday, June 15 with callbacks on Thursday, June 16. All audition sessions will start at 7:30 pm at the Footlighters Playhouse, 2 Scout Road, East Walpole, MA.

THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL will be directed by Marianne Phinney. The Music Director is Dan Moore and the Choreographer is Lisa Kelleher.
Performances will be October 21, 22, 28, 29, November 4, 5 at 8:00 pm and October 30 and November 6 at 2:00 pm. We will have a one or two music rehearsals and a read-through in June, then rehearsals will start in late August.

THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL is a country-rock and blues musical about agoraphobia, adultery, 80's nostalgia, spray cheese, road kill, hysterical pregnancy, a broken electric chair, kleptomania, strippers, flan and disco.  Most of the show takes place in “Armadillo Acres,” a trailer park in the North Florida town of Starke. The musical comedy centers on a regular guy and his agoraphobic wife, whose marriage is threatened by a hot young stripper who just shows up one day in Armadillo Acres. The trailer park also plays home to a trio of women, each dysfunctional in her own right, who serve as the Greek Chorus.

Ages are “stage age”. This show is strong country and rock and requires strong singers who also have comedic flair. The show contains adult language and situations.  Pippi performs a pole dance during one scene.

Auditioners should prepare 32 bars of a country or rock song. Bring sheet music; an accompanist will be provided. Wear shoes you can dance in and be prepared to learn a combination. We will also do cold readings from the script.

For information and an audition form, please visit our web site: http://www.footlighters.com/auditions.html.

Characters:

Jeannie Garstecki - 35-45 years old. (Belt and Mezzo) Jeannie has lived in a trailer at Armadillo Acres for 20 years with her husband and high-school sweetheart, Norbert.  A faded beauty, she was 17 when she married, 18 when her son was born and 23 when he got kidnapped.  That, coupled with a really bad perm, has turned her into an agoraphobic.  She hasn’t left her trailer in all these years, and the man she loves is drifting further and further away and she’s determined to get him back…that is if she could manage to get out of the trailer to do it… 

Norbert Garstecki - 35-45 years old. (High Baritone) Jeannie’s husband Norbert collects tolls for a living and tries to be as good a husband as one can be to an agoraphobic.  A former high-school football star, any good looks he may have had when younger, are now marred by fatigue and the stress of his difficult marriage.  He is a simple man who desperately wishes his wife could get out of the trailer, but he’s not equipped with the emotional or intellectual tools to help her do it.  He has never loved or slept with another woman other than Jeannie.  That is until he meets…
 
Pippi - 28-35 years old. (Big Belt) Up to this point, Pippi’s life has been about surviving.  She is a professional stripper who has gotten by on her looks and talents for dancing and petty theft.  She means no harm and is ready to stop making bad choices and start making changes, but first she has to get lost in a hick-town trailer park in North Florida so she won’t be found by her last bad choice… 

Duke -24-28 years old. (Rock Tenor) Duke is Pippi’s obsessive, possessive and excessive Magic-Marker sniffing boyfriend; ex-boyfriend according to Pippi.  Not so, according to Duke.  Not the brightest guy south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Duke leaves a trail of disaster in his wake wherever he goes.  His road trip to Starke is no exception and his arrival at the trailer park is full of surprises- even for a group of people who have had their share of excitement… 

Betty - 38-50 something. (Rough Belt) Betty attended high school with Norbert and Jeannie Garstecki and has lived at Armadillo Acres for just as long.  She now runs the leasing office and makes it her business to know everything about everybody who passes through the trailer park.  Though a self-proclaimed bad-ass, Betty is really a mother hen to the denizens of the trailer park.  Of all “The Girls,” Betty is the most grounded, earthy and dry. 

Linoleum (aka Lin) - 30s. (Belt) So named because her mother gave birth to her on the kitchen floor, Linoleum has a husband on death row at the Florida State Prison.  His fate is the electric chair that doesn’t work properly unless most of the town’s electricity is turned off.  So Lin watches everyone's lights and appliances very closely in the hopes that she can keep the chair on the fritz.  Sometimes self-absorbed and sometimes just a smart-ass, she hints at a wild, rock-and-roll past and is the fieriest of “The Girls.”
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Donna (aka Pickles) - 17 or so years old. (Belt) A newlywed, Donna is called “Pickles” because she is perpetually hysterically pregnant- that is, she is so convinced she should be pregnant she’s exhibiting symptoms.  Her husband is a lot fancier than she is, as he is from the big city of Jacksonville.  His parents haven’t been very supportive of his marital choice, so Pickles is desperate to give her husband a family of his own - even if she has to fake it.  The dimmest of “The Girls,” Pickles is airy, sweet and blissfully ignorant.