UPDATE: Auditions for the LTGI production of The Taming of the Shrew will be Friday, January 22 and Saturday, January 23 at 7 pm in the Sam Johnson (Black Box) Theater in the Fine and Performing Arts building at TAMIU.
Coming Spring 2010 Laredo Theater Guild International will be following up the highly successful Man of La Mancha production with a well-known Shakespearean comedy, The Taming of the Shrew.
The theater guild, in collaboration with the Department of Language and Literature, invite the Texas A&M International University and Laredo communities to come out and audition for the March 25-28 mainstage performance.
There are seventeen male and five female roles, all ranging in age. According to John Maxstadt, the director for The Taming of the Shrew, “We need a lot of people [and] not all of the roles will call for slapstick physical comedy.”
Maxstadt places an emphasis on this being one of Shakespeare’s more entertaining plays. “[As] one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, The Taming of the Shrew is also one of the brightest and funniest, a merry knockabout farce about love and marriage. It’s the story of the two daughters of wealthy merchant Baptista Minola, how they were wooed and won and wedded, and how things worked out for them afterwards,” continues Maxstadt.
In short, Kate, the elder of the two Minola daughters, is made to wed Petruchio, and is transformed through the duration of the play from a scowling “shrew” to a dignified woman. Meanwhile, her sister, Bianca, deemed the lovelier of the two is drowning in potential suitors, only to be revealed in true Shakespeare fashion at the end of the play as the “bad one.” Because of the sometimes daunting Shakespearean dialogue, Maxstadt wants potential auditioners to be comfortable performing Shakespeare, not simply just reading to make sense of it.
“You have these fifteen line speeches in blank verse and it’s a little bit different from ordinary theatrical dialogue. There’s a certain universality of sound that you want…make big round sounds and annunciate the constants. I don’t want people stumbling over the language. Of course, its not the be all, end all. I’m looking for acting primarily but what I wanted was people to be ready at the auditions to get past the language to the acting,” says Maxstadt.
Maxtadt’s directorial credits include Laredo production, Arsenic and Old Lace, as well as several productions outside of Laredo theater community.
Auditions will be a cold read and be held tentatively in January. Exact dates have not been set. All those interested in auditioning are encouraged to contact John Maxstadt at (956) 717-9829 or john.maxstadt@gmail.com.