The Winter’s Tale

Pay Rate: $50 plus donations evenly distributed amongst the artists

Audition Date and Time: Due Aug 24

Audition Location: Self Tape

Contact Person Email: modernarchaiccasting@gmail.com

Contact Person Name: Jesse James Hoover

Material to Prepare:

Time Commitment:

Rehearsals will be:
* At a location Chicago Danz Theatre
*Exact Dates and Time will be built around cast conflicts
- They will be in the window of Early September - Early November
- They will be in the evenings for 3-5 hours
- And their will be 3-5 per week (again depending on schedules)

Tech & Performance Dates:
November 13, 14, 15, 21, 22

Character Type/Restrictions:

The Characters:
Note: Anticipate doubling. The following characters are in no particular order.

Leontes - The king of Sicilia, and the childhood friend of the Bohemian king, Polixenes. He is gripped by jealous fantasies, which convince him that Polixenes has been having an affair with his wife, Hermione. His jealousy leads to the destruction of his family.

Hermione - The virtuous and beautiful queen of Sicilia. Falsely accused of infidelity by her husband, Leontes, she apparently dies of grief just after being vindicated by the oracle of Delphos, but is restored to life at the play’s close.

Polixenes - The king of Bohemia, and Leontes’s boyhood friend. He is falsely accused of having an affair with Leontes’s wife, and he barely escapes Sicilia with his life. Much later in life, he sees his only son fall in love with a lowly Shepherd’s daughter, who is, in fact, the lost Sicilian princess.

Paulina -  A noblewoman of Sicilia. She is fierce in her defense of Hermione’s virtue and unrelenting in her condemnation of Leontes after Hermione’s death. She is also the agent of the (apparently) dead queen’s resurrection.

Florizell -  Polixenes’s only son and heir. He falls in love with Perdita, unaware of her royal ancestry, and defies his father by eloping with her.

Perdita - The daughter of Leontes and Hermione. Because her father believes her to be illegitimate, she is abandoned as a baby on the coast of Bohemia and brought up by a Shepherd. Unaware of her royal lineage, she falls in love with the Bohemian prince, Florizell.

Camillo -  An honest Sicilian nobleman. He refuses to follow Leontes’s order to poison Polixenes, deciding instead to flee Sicilia and enter the Bohemian King’s service.
Antigonus - A nobleman of Sicilia, and Paulina’s husband. Also a loyal defender of Hermione, he is given the unfortunate task of abandoning her baby, Perdita, on the Bohemian coast.

Autolycus - A roguish peddler, vagabond, and pickpocket. He steals the purse of the Shepherd’s Son and does a great deal of pilfering at the sheep-shearing, but he ends by assisting in Perdita and Florizell’s escape.

Shepherd - An old and honorable tender of sheep. He finds Perdita as a baby and raises her as his own daughter.

Shephard's Son (Clown) -  The Shepherd’s buffoonish son. Sometimes known as “the Clown,” he is Perdita’s adopted brother.

Mamillius - The young prince of Sicilia, Leontes and Hermione’s son. He dies, perhaps of grief, after his father wrongly imprisons his mother.

Cleomenes - A lord of Sicilia. He is sent to Delphos to ask the oracle about Hermione’s guilt.
Emilia - One of Hermione’s ladies-in-waiting.

Archidamus - A lord of Bohemia