A New Richard III from theatreANON
April 2019 will see the premiere of Richard III: Hour of the Tyrant, edited by David MacDowell Blue from Shakespeare’s play about the last Plantagenet King (with additions from several other of Shakespeare’s works). Auditions are scheduled for Saturday, January 26 starting at 11am until 3:45pm, on OMR, 6468 Santa Monica Blvd. (four blocks west of Vine), Hollywood CA 90038. Anyone wishing to try out should contact Mr. Blue at zahir13@gmail.com to schedule a time. An overwhelming response has filled up all the blocs for January 26, so a second bloc is available on Sunday February 3, at 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm at Studio 100, 900 East 1st Street Los Angeles, 90012. This lies just east of Little Tokyo Gold Line Station.
Actors of all ages groups, genders and ethnic types are welcome. Everyone may be considered for any role. At least two performances will involve all the understudies and the leads switching roles!
Blue, a graduate of the National Shakespeare Conservatory in NYC, has been writing a successful blog reviewing Los Angeles Theatre since 2012. His past directing credits include Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw and The Public Eye by Peter Shaffer. He also helped co-direct (with well known actor-writer-reviewer Mark Hein) his own adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. He was recently interviewed by the New York based podcast The Stage Door at BlogTalkRadio.com.
Richard III: Hour of the Tyrant makes for a radical edit of Shakespeare’s most popular play about a “bad king.” Blue cut the almost- four hour play in half, removing extraneous characters, fusing other characters together, re-arranging some events, even introducing speeches and lines from other plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Titus Andronicus. His avowed purpose in the edit was to emphasize the story as a tragedy of a man who destroyed himself as well as all around him.
This marks the first full scale production by theatreANON, a new company aiming to bridge past and present into the future by re-imagining classics, while fostering original works which echo the classics in some way. Had they been produced today, theatreANON would have produced Eugene O’Neill’s re-telling of the ancient Greek Oresteia, titled Mourning Becomes Elektra. Others works in development are a modern, politically aware tale a la the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and a (hopefully) mind-blowing version of Shakespeare’s most controversial comedy.
Right now theatreANON has found a home at Oh My Ribs Theatre, on Theatre Row, next to the Complex. It stands at 6468 Santa Monica Blvd. , Hollywood CA 90038
https://youtu.be/x3r4ZvNSJEw
AUDITION: RICHARD III
January 8th, 2019
Audition, Featured, Theater
