Overview
After their in-performance deaths, six female Shakespearean characters find themselves in a holding area until the play they are a character in gets revived by another Shakespeare company so that they can (re)live their tragedy over (and over) again. It’s a comic romp that evokes Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” meets Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” meets “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
Casting & Production
Casting
CHARACTER LIST: (Flexible, gender-blind casting for 7 actors.)
TAMORA: From the play Titus Andronicus. Sensible. Blood around her mid-section because she was stabbed by Titus.
JOAN: From the play Henry VI, pt. 1. Resolute. Speaks in French and English. Covered in black ash because she was burned at the stake.
JULIET: From the play Romeo and Juliet. Melodramatic. Has a dagger between her breasts.
LADY MACBETH: From the play Macbeth. Paranoid. Bruises on her face because of her suicide.
OPHELIA: From the play Hamlet. Unhinged. Singer. Soaking wet because she drowned in a nearby river.
CLEOPATRA: From the play Antony and Cleopatra. Haughty and sensual. Has snakes draped around her neck because she placed them there as a method of suicide.
DIRECTOR: Affected, British accent. Any gender. Pretentious and lofty.
Setting:
Three door frames on a bare stage. Seven ‘harpbacked’chairs knocked over and disorderly on stage.
Time:
The Present.
