Audition Information
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play auditions
Silver Spring Stage announces auditions for IN THE NEXT ROOM, OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Jen Katz.
Auditions will take place:
- Sunday, November 11, 7:30-9:30 pm
- Monday, November 12, 7:30-9:30 pm
- Callbacks: Wednesday, November 14, 7:30-10:00 pm
Where: Silver Spring Stage, 10145 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20910
Show Dates: February 22 – March 16, 2018
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm
Sunday matinees on March 4 & March 10 at 2 pm
Rehearsals will be held 3–4 times per week on weeknights and weekends, starting shortly after casting and scheduled based on cast availability. Please come prepared to list your conflicts during the entire rehearsal/performance period.
For auditions, a prepared monologue (under 2 minutes) is preferred but not required.
You will also be asked to do cold readings from the script.
- Please sign up for an appointment slot using Sign-Up Genius.
- If possible, please bring a theatre resume and headshot.
- Actors of all ethnicities are encouraged to audition.
Questions? Feel free to email the production team at vibratorplay@ssstage.org.
All roles are unpaid. Silver Spring Stage is an all-volunteer community theatre.
THE PLAY
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play is a comedy about marriage, intimacy, and electricity.
Set in the 1880s at the dawn of the age of electricity and based on the bizarre historical fact that
doctors used vibrators to treat ‘hysterical’ women (and some men), the play centers on a doctor
and his wife and how his new therapy affects their entire household.
In a seemingly perfect, well-to-do Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings
has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating “hysteria” in women (and
occasionally men): the vibrator.
Adjacent to the doctor’s laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn
daughter—and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room. When a new “hysterical”
patient and her husband bring a wet nurse and their own complicated relationship into the
doctor’s home, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their own marriage, and what it
truly means to love someone.
This play contains adult themes, and familiarity with the script before auditioning is highly
recommended.
CASTING and CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS – 3 male, 4 female
DR. GIVINGS – a man in his forties, a specialist in gynecological and hysterical disorders.
CATHERINE GIVINGS – his wife, a woman in her late twenties.
SABRINA DALDRY – his patient, a woman in her early thirties. Proficiency playing piano
preferred, but not necessary
ANNIE – a woman in her late thirties, Dr. Giving’s midwife assistant.
LEO IRVING – Dr. Giving’s other patient, an Englishman in his twenties or thirties.
ELIZABETH – an African-American woman in her early thirties. A wet-nurse by default.
MR. DALDRY – Sabrina Daldry’s husband, a man in his forties or fifties.
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