The Tesseract Theatre Company announces non-Equity auditions (all roles open) for Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance on Sunday, June 4 from 5 - 8:30 p.m. and Monday, June 5, from 7-9:30 p.m. at Zack theatre, address 3224 Locust St. Callbacks, if needed, will be on Sunday, June 11, from 6 – 9:30 p.m.  Anyone being asked to attend callbacks will receive an email from director Stephen Peirick by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 7. Please note: not being invited to callbacks does NOT mean you are not being considered for roles in the show. It just means we have seen all we need to see at the general auditions. All actors will receive an email notifying them of where they stand in the casting process no later than 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 14. 

 

Those auditioning will be asked to prepare a monologue from the show (while the monologue does not need to be memorized, you should be familiar with the piece). You can find a link to the requested monologues for each character on The Tesseract Theatre Company’s website: https://www.tesseracttheatre.com/inheritance-sides
 

Please bring a headshot and resume to your audition. We ask that you show up 5 minutes prior to your auditions to sign in with the staff and complete your audition form. 

 

Presented in two parts, The Inheritance brilliantly transposes E.M. Forster’s novel “Howards End” to 21st-century New York. A generation after the peak of the AIDS crisis, what is it like to be a young gay man in New York? What is the legacy left to them by previous generations? What do they owe the future and each other?  Award-winning playwright Matthew Lopez explores these and many other profound themes through the turbulent and often hilarious experiences of a group of young, ambitious New Yorkers in a work that has been hailed as “perhaps the most important American play of the century so far.”

 

The Inheritance, directed by Stephen Peirick, runs April 26 – May 5, 2024 at The Marcelle Theatre. Rehearsals will begin around January 20, 2024. Additionally, we’ll try to plan two different days sometime from October – December 2023 to read and discuss each play before jumping into rehearsals in 2024. Please be prepared to list all known conflicts between January 20 and May 5, 2024. Please understand that The Inheritance is comprised of two, full-length, three-act plays, so additional conflicts that arise after casting likely may not be accommodated.

 

In the room:

Stephen Peirick- Director

Dani Mann- Assistant Director

Rachel Downing- Stage Manager

Taylor Gruenloh- Creative Director for Tesseract Theatre

Brittanie Gunn- Creative Director for Tesseract Theatre

Kevin Corpuz- Creative Director for Tesseract Theatre

All roles are open. Roles to be cast:

 

Young Man 1/Adam McDowell/Leo: Male-Identifying, 20-29, any race/ethnicity (lead, brief nudity required)

Adam: A charming wide-eyed child of privilege. Physically attractive. Naturally seductive. He hides these qualities beneath a veneer of innocence and inexperience but beneath the surface, he’s calculating and methodical. He’s too skilled a manipulator to ever be caught at it. Underestimate him at your peril. Also plays, Leo: A guarded, damaged young man but underneath his messy exterior, he’s a young man aching for connection and kindness. A sex worker now, intermittently homeless and in the throes of addiction, Leo trusts no one because his life has taught him this is the only way to survive. Possessed of a first class mind that has been undernourished by years of neglect.

 

Young Man 2/Jason #1: Male-Identifying,, 30-39, Black (supporting)

To play multiple roles, including: Jason #1 – high school science teacher, bookish and sweetly nerdy. The kind of person who doesn’t speak at parties until they’ve had a couple of drinks and then you can’t shut them up. He has the ability to look at an argument from every possible angle. He is a steady ship on increasingly stormy seas. He often takes on the role of peacemaker.

 

Young Man 3/Young Henry: Male-Identifying,, 18-29, any race/ethnicity (supporting)

To play multiple roles, including: Young Henry, appears as a memory or the shadow of the adult Henry Wilcox. Traumatized by what he witnesses during the mid-1980’s, at the start of the AIDS epidemic, he moves through the world cautiously, with his emotional guard resolutely up. The only person who can pierce his defenses is Young Walter, with whom he has fallen hopelessly, desperately in love.

 

Young Man 4/Young Walter: Male-Identifying,, 18-29, any race/ethnicity (supporting)

To play multiple roles, including: Young Walter appears as a memory or the shadow of the adult Walter Poole. We also encounter him at the start of the AIDS epidemic. A deeply feeling, intensely loyal, innately principled young man. Outwardly, he is as gentle as a cherry blossom. Inwardly, he’s steel-spined and indestructible. Whereas the epidemic almost crushes Henry, it reveals Young Walter’s true strength and resolve.

 

Young Man 5/Charles Wilcox: Male-Identifying,, 18-29, any race/ethnicity (supporting)

To play multiple roles, including: Toby's Agent a budding young power agent at one of the big agencies. Thrives on protein shakes and hot yoga. Not without compassion for Toby but increasingly frustrated by his client’s erratic behavior. Knows how to gently pet with one hand and cut throats with the other.

 

Young Man 6/Tristan: Male-Identifying, 25-39, Black (supporting)

as Tristan an ER physician who spends his days dealing with trauma of all kinds. He is calm under pressure and knows how to diffuse the most volatile situations. He can be droll and wickedly funny when he wants to (and he often does). He can also expertly dissect thorny, seemingly impossible problems with reasoned, blazingly intelligent thinking. His observations are never like speeches-instead, they are examples of a dazzling mind at work, working out problems in real time.

 

Young Man 7/Jasper: 30-39, Male-Identifying, white (supporting)

To play multiple roles including Jasper, a “social justice entrepreneur,” who works in the political realm as a movement influencer. He is wickedly smart if also a little self-righteous and blind to his own privilege. He has a good heart and good intentions. When we meet him, he’s an amiable doofus with boyish charm who hasn’t really matured past the age of 22, which is the average age of most of his boyfriends. The 2016 election hardens him in unhealthy ways. He becomes prone to pronouncements over analysis and develops an ideological rigidity and inflexibility that causes his relationships to fracture.

 

Young Man 8/Jason #2: Male-Identifying, 25-39, Latin/Hispanic (supporting)

To play multiple roles including Jason #2, a first-grade teacher who often treats the world as if it were his classroom. Big-hearted, joyful, and deliriously idiosyncratic. Jason will often hijack a serious conversation with his decidedly out-of-the box thinking. The fact that he is able to coherently argue his somewhat baffling points of view is evidence not only of his fertile imagination but also his rock-solid intellect. Jason is a perceptive and compassionate man who possesses the ability to understand the emotional stakes of any situation-eventually.

 

Young Man 9/Eric Glass: Male-Identifying,, 30-39, White (lead)

Deeply compassionate. Tender. Loyal. Undervalues himself and doesn’t realized how special he is. Tested along the way by heartbreak and loss, he uses these disappointments as fuel to build the growing fire inside him. Doesn’t know that he’s the lead of this play. Once he does and makes a decision to act bravely and decisively, he discovers he has the ability to change the world to an extent far greater than anyone knows.

 

Young Man 10/Toby Darling: Male-Identifying,, 20-35, any race/ethnicity  (lead)

A raging whirlwind of ambition, sex appeal, self-regard, self-doubt, and ultimately self-destruction. Charming. Verbose. Funny. Sharp-tongued. A self-made man who charges through life as if he were indestructible-ultimately discovering that he is not. He knows the glory of tremendous heights and the devastating lows of self-annihilation. A star that burns too brightly and is extinguished too quickly. He can delight you and appall you, make you swoon one minute and break your heart the next. All of his bluster is to cover the fact that he is the most fragile character in the play.

 

E.M. Forster/Walter Poole: Male-Identifying,, late 40s - late 50s, any race/ethnicity (supporting)

To play E.M. Forster, the eminent British author of “Howards End” and “Maurice.” A spiritual and literary guide to a group of young men attempting to tell the story of their lives. Straight-laced. Proper. Occasionally playful and even joyfully wicked. Having grappled with his dishonesty and cowardice in life as closeted gay man fearful of exposure, in death he is a teacher who learns just as much as his pupils about life in the modern world. And Walter Poole, Henry's gentle, honest, partner. A haunted man possessed of tremendous compassion but also tremendous emotional caution. He survived the AIDS epidemic by sacrificing himself to the needs of others and now he seems to be half in this world, half in the spirit world-in the process, it seems, of becoming a ghost. Note: As this doubling covers both British and American characters, the role(s) requires an actor extremely deft with both accents.

 

Henry Wilcox: Male-Identifying, late 40s - late 50s, White (supporting)

A gay billionaire Republican real estate developer. Walter’s partner. Charming, fiercely intelligent and emotionally inaccessible. He survived the AIDS epidemic by closing himself off to needs of others. In trying to ignore his trauma he has live a life completely divorced from his emotions, from joy, from connection to others. But the desire for happiness does not come without cost-and he is forced to finally face his past.

 

Margaret: Female, 60 - 80, Female-Identifying, any race/ethnicity (supporting, only appears in part 2)

A haunted woman. The mother of a young man who died of AIDS in the mid-1980 and who she was estranged from, she has spent her life atoning for her personal failings. Flinty, pugnacious, no-nonsense. She is tasked with caring for Walter’s house and, by extension, all its secrets as well as some of her own