A Stroke of Inconvenience
by Performing Arts San Antonio (PASA)
Jan. 11 (2014)
Open Auditions for A STROKE OF INCONVENIENCE by Vaughn Taylor and Megan Boles.
Needed characters:
ROSE – Nicknamed “Ran” she is the matriarch of the four generations of women in this piece. Eccentric in ways that explain themselves later, Ran is obsessed with concerns for her bodily functions. Married three times in an age when divorce didn’t happen she mothered children that were dysfunctional before there was a name for it. Somewhere between 75 years and death, Ran still gets around using a walker she may or may not need and has an ongoing battle with the thermostat.
IVY – At 55 years the eldest of Ran’s two daughters is damaged goods. She compensates with obsessive compulsive behavior to try to keep her world in order but at the same time is unable to finish things. This is reflected in the fact that she went to college for years but has never graduated. She also carries the burden of an ugly secret that Ran can no longer remember or has chosen to forget. Though she believes in equality of the sexes, women’s rights, racial equality and world peace she has realized that her party of choice only believes in these things when convenient and has become politically bitter and angry.
LILLIAN – Lil is Ivy’s 43 year old daughter. Her father, Ivy’s “husband”, died in a plane crash when Lillian was an infant, or so the story goes. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology but is completely lacking in compassion as well as common sense. She and her husband Ron run a book store,”Read on Read Street”, and she hates dealing with the public. She is a recovering alcoholic and a “clutter queen” who is only organized when everything is a mess. In spite of education, marriage and child birth, which she likes to think have stabilized her emotionally, she harbors unresolved “father” issues.
IRIS – Lil’s daughter, by her first marriage to Kevin, is Iris. 19 years old she is a college student just into her second year. A bit naïve she has an odd connection to her great grandmother Ran but doesn’t see it. She is blithely unaware that Ran is not really her great grandmother’s name and that many of her own habits mirror Ran’s. Sensitive and beautiful she is not only the peace maker in the human menagerie she is the one to finish what Ivy leaves partly done. Yet she is oddly unable to see the “bigger” picture.
Saturday, January 11, 2 - 6 p.m.